First Out at the New Maggie Hathaway, Southern California's Most Important Golf Project

I'd heard about The Maggie a lot after moving to Los Angeles just over two years ago. When I arrived, the 2023 U.S. Open at LACC was long gone, but what remained in its wake was much more important than golf course critique. Around $20MM was raised alongside the USGA to support the Southern California Golf Associations efforts to keep public golf thriving in the city. The marquee project? A renovation of The Maggie Hathaway Golf Course by none other than Gil Hanse.

But before we get to the Gil of it all, we gotta talk about Maggie. A Louisiana-born singer, actress, and civil rights pioneer who'd landed in Los Angeles in 1931, she stumbled into the game in 1955 after winning a bet against Joe Louis at Griffith Park. She hit the green on her first swing, he bought her the clubs, and the rest of her life became a crusade.

Hathaway wrote golf columns for the California Eagle and the Los Angeles Sentinel, founded the Minority Associated Golfers in 1963, picketed PGA events, and served jail time for her activism—all to crack open a sport that had no interest in letting people who looked like her in. She also co-founded the NAACP Image Awards with Sammy Davis Jr. Quite simply, Southern California public golf was desegregated because Maggie Hathaway was who she was.

The first green from above.

Now, her legacy and her namesake course are getting the modern shine they deserve. Gil Hanse—who has restored or renovated such courses as Oakmont, Merion, and Winged Foot to name a few—set out to bring The Maggie into the now. With Bermuda and bentgrass and barrancas alike, the Maggie Hathaway Golf Course looks a whole lot more like its private contemporaries in the region. Hanse said he wanted to bring in some of the sensibilities of George C. Thomas, who designed Riviera, Bel-Air, LACC, and the public tracks Wilson & Harding up at Griffith Park.

The results are jaw-dropping. No hole at the new Maggie Hathaway is more than 110 yards, but every hole presents both a unique challenge and a straightforward strategy. No matter your skill level, every hole is gettable one way or another.

On the day we played—three days before the official opening—we made some of the first ball marks and dew lines on Maggie's greens. Every one immaculate and rolling true. Usually that's about all I need to deem a course worthy of my addiction. But what stood out the most to me throughout our nine holes were the spaces in between and surrounding the holes.

Some of the George Thomas-inspired features you can see on Maggie's 8th hole.

I can imagine someone who's been coming to the Maggie for decades stepping up and still fully recognizing their favorite course. You're still hitting all of the same shots, but your peripherals are filled with wildlife and undulation you're only used to seeing on TV. The looks are all the same, but it looks completely different. I think that's the best part of what Hanse accomplished here: investing in familiarity while at the same time making the Maggie feel a lot more like Riviera than Rancho Park.

I was truly honored to set foot on this property for the first time since the project began. But I'm not unaware of who and what came before me. The truth is, as great as the Maggie will be for me as a SoCal golfer, it's what it represents, and who will take it into the future that really matters.

That the community surrounding this course now has a high-quality place to practice golf. That the youth in the area have a top-class spot to learn the game—to have the same types of lies and green reads as their heroes on TV—that's what makes this the most important golf project in Southern California.