Sneaky Good: Rustic Canyon and its Natural Incognito

I had never been to Simi Valley in my life. “Steamy Valley” as locals know it too intimately, was never on my radar of places to casually stop by and take a visit. Travelers looking for the beaches of Santa Monica might glance at the “Highway 118 to Simi Valley” sign, and then immediately resume their focus on the chaotic Los Angeles traffic in front of them. Most cars don’t even get off of Interstate 5 in time to even know it exists. But I was on a mission, and had gotten up too early in the morning to drive five hours to go play a golf course that costs $30 in blistering 90 degree heat. Yes, we golfers have to be a little off in the head sometimes.

As I scaled the highway, ascending out of the LA basin and the Simi Valley being presented in front of me through a thick, early afternoon haze, it felt like I was on the final leg of a trip to Mordor. I could hear Frodo in my ear saying, “Nico, we’ve found it!” in an anti-climactic, please just drop the ring already kind of way. The air conditioning in my 2003 Toyota Tacoma wasn’t quite working at peak condition, so I was feeling all of that valley sun beating through my windshield. But as I turned off onto Princeton Road and found myself on the quietly shaded Happy Camp Canyon Road, the excitement started to build. I had heard about Rustic Canyon for a long time, ever since my interest in architecture and design started as a freshman in high school. There were really only a couple of things I knew about it before I arrived. It was rated “The Best Value in Golf” by Golf Digest, and was in the top 100 public courses in America when it opened in 2002. Hanse Golf Course Design, a name that’s associated with one of the greatest portfolios in the world of golf architecture, designed and constructed the course on both sides of the natural, sand washed arroyo running through the center of the property. But getting out of the car, walking to the first tee and seeing the natural cragginess of the land spoke for itself: this course demands respect.

1999 was an interesting year in the eyes of the golfing world. Most of the courses being constructed were “Control C, Control V” projects, focused primarily around the benefit of a real estate community as an added amenity. “To hell with the natural land when we have bulldozers” was the common theme among architecture circles. Hills and undulation were being leveled to make flat fairways and flat greens. Rates were still skyrocketing due to the want for perfect maintenance everyone had seen when watching the Masters that year. Celebrity architects, usually famous retired players, were still charging exorbitant construction and architect fees to have a “_______ signature course”. But David McLay Kidd, a 30 year old amateur architect from Scotland no one had ever heard of before, broke down all the walls of exclusive pretentiousness when he finished Bandon Dunes on the southern Oregon coast. It became one of the world’s best public courses over night and forced everyone to reevaluate their business plan. And in that same year, a crazy coincidence being the year of my birth, Ventura County put a piece of property located in Moorpark on the market, the lease allowing for the construction of a “moderately priced” public golf course. No big clubhouse? No championship quality maintenance? No crazy water features? Who in their right mind would want to build a golf course 50 miles northwest of LA without at least a cool looking waterfall? Golf blasphemy.

Nothing has ever been so simple and makes so much sense than the creek bed at Rustic Canyon. Phrases like “scrubby arroyo”, “dried up river”, and “sandy wash” have been attributed in trying to describe this. For over thousands of years, water from the Santa Susana Mountains has been carving out the amphitheater-like valley in which Rustic Canyon resides. What this phenomenon created was three separate sections of the property: the center creek bed, and two outlying ridges within the walls of the valley. In an interview with the Fried Egg, Geoff Shackelford, who was given co-design credit with Hanse Golf Course Design, said “…I’m seeing this corridor right through the middle that obviously you would not touch because it was sensitive. But on the sides of that you have this area that has been grazed by cattle that you could build on.” Any routing really takes shape and maturity through an independent variable. It was surprisingly difficult for Sand Hills in Mullen, Nebraska to really take shape because there was almost too much land to work with, and no key features to really work off of. All Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw had was hundreds and hundreds of acres of glacial dunescape. All Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf Design had when routing Ballyneal in Holyoke, Colorado was 700 acres of vacant chop hill, taking them two years in order to finalize a routing and move onto construction. If an architect has an ocean, a flourishing creek, or maybe two dune ridges to experiment and theorize with, then the routing has that much more sense of place, and the architect is able to visualize the property much more efficiently. Tom Doak had the ocean when routing Pacific Dunes. Perry Maxwell had the flourishing creek when routing Southern Hills. Donald Ross had the two dune ridges when routing Seminole. Hanse and Shackelford had the dry creek bed when routing Rustic Canyon. For most of the holes, the closer the player gets to the hazardous native area, the better the line on the approach. The player is forced to either hit the harder shot off the tee, or on the approach. “Make sure you reward the drive that flirts with the wash and penalize the person who bails out from it. I mean, it’s really not that complicated. And that’s why I think it has that day to day variety and interest.”, explains Shackelford. Who said making a good golf course was hard.

“I play here for the low green fees.”, was something I was expecting to hear out of the locals mouths. “Who is Gil Hanse?”, and “Oh. I never even looked at it like that.”, was not what I was expecting by any means. It’s always interesting, in my opinion, to get the local’s look at there own track. If you were to ask why no one plays the Old Course on a Sunday, locals would look at you as though you had lobster claws for ears and merely respond with “Because it’s Sunday.” Or if you were to ask a PGA Tour player if there’s any good fish in the ponds and streams at Augusta National, they would most likely be squeamish about their answer, being that merely talking about fishing there is strictly forbidden. Failing to hide one’s love for fishing at the National will most likely, according to the membership, result in your ball finding a home with the species that inhabit those ponds and streams. But I was taken aback at the lack of attention given to the brilliantly strategic qualities of Rustic Canyon by those who play it almost everyday. After exclaiming to my playing partner that holes five through seven was one of my favorite, and one of the most strategically intentional stretches of golf I’ve ever played, his response was a staggering: “Is it really that good?” I don’t know if that’s necessarily a local quirk per se, but it is something that is consistently evident with those that call “Rusty” there home. The comment that I heard a lot about Rustic Canyon from those that had played it a lot and have lived in the northern Los Angeles area was that the two nines were too different; the front nine being flatter with wide fairways and the back nine being, well, the opposite. Geoff’s response is pretty simple: “That’s what the land gave us.” And boy, did the good God above craft that piece of property for golf. Niche, architecture terms like “hillocks”, “undulations”, and “risk reward” become commonplace in the conversation with playing partners in the midst of ones round. One of the most interesting holes I’ve ever played is the par 5 13th. It takes strategy and, more interestingly, creativity to get from the tee to green. A center line bunker immediately tasks the player with a decision that needs to be thought through with the utmost of precision. If one takes on the center line bunker, then going for the green in two is up for grabs. But if passivity, or what quitters call “smart play”, is interjected into the thought process of the player, then the player is faced with a boomerang green that tilts severely from right to left. Out of position? Feel like flopping your ball over the lion’s mouth style bunker in front of the green? Just flex those creative muscles and those hillocks and undulations will come to the rescue, feeding your ball closer and closer to the pin.

There’s a difference between someone who merely views the land and someone that purveys the land. Viewing invokes mere recognition of key land forms and maybe the placement of a fancy, overpriced clubhouse. It is minimal. Purveying on the other hand is where golf can actually come to life. It is moving with the land, taking what, in Geoff’s words, the land gave you. Purveying is demonstrating maturity and expertise through observation. It is beyond evident that Rustic Canyon was purveyed upon by those with a deep seated love for golf that is accessible, fun, and timeless. And as I started to make my way back to known civilization, driving past the “Thank you for visiting Simi Valley” sign, I thought to myself if I would have ever come across such a course independently. Again, the average golfer probably won’t go looking for amazing experiences there. But this was the case for that course in southern Oregon built by that amateur architect no one had ever heard of before, and they can’t find open slots in their tee sheet even if the President shows up for a quick loop. When will Rustic Canyon have its true time in the sun?