Quarry, which the family founded in the 1930s. They also planned to sell the adjacent, 61-acre sand and In 2000, the Chandler family (no relation to the Los Angeles Times’s Chandlers) told the club they wanted to sell the 66 acres they had leased to the club. It was a traditional parkland course, with tree-lined fairways, neatly groomed bunkers, rose gardens and ponds with Palos Verdes flagstone waterfalls dotting the namesake rolling hills. The new, 6,112 yard course was designed by Ted Robinson, from the Arnold Palmer Design Company. In 1972, the members, whose aspirations were apparent in the club’s name, signed a lease with the neighboring Chandler Sand and Gravel company for another 66 acres, enabling the course to expand to 18 holes across 99 acres. Rolling Hills Country Club opened in 1963 as a par-3, nine-hole course squeezed onto 14 acres along Palos Verdes Drive East. Kidd was correct in his assessment that the course had been cobbled together.

The 150-foot Chandler gravel pit, east of the current course, will be filled in for a pitch and put and driving range. That criticism wouldn’t apply to the Rolling Hills site because Kidd planned to level the site, literally. ‘I’ve heard a few green-eyed monsters say my courses are successful because I get great sites,” he said. Kidd was also attracted by the opportunity to build a course overlooking Los Angeles, adding views of a third global city to TPC Stonebrae, overlooking San Francisco and Beaverbrook, overlooking London.Ī third appeal, which Kidd alluded to during a recent visit to Rolling Hills, was the opportunity to quiet his critics. Knowing we had hundreds of acres of sand next to the course meant we had the sacred ingredient needed to make a great course, ” Kidd said.

“Sand is the elixir of life to a golf course designer. “I was on the point of thanking Chuck for the opportunity and leaving when we reached the highest point of the course and I was able to look down into the quarry. “It was obvious the course had been cobbled together over generations and not a lot of thought had been given to the overall composition.” It was, not the worst I’d seen, but close,” Kidd would recall. “I looked at the practice range and thought, Oh, this may not be all I had hoped for. Lande planned to build 114 fairway homes at Rolling Hills and wanted Kidd to design the club’s new golf course. Chadmar built the Grand Del Mar Golf Club, its 134 fairway homes and the neighboring, five-star Grand Del Mar Hotel. He attended Chadwick School and USC and is the founder of The Chadmar Group, named after his son Chad and daughter Marisa. Lande grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes in a home his mother still lives in. Andrews, golfing’s Scottish birthplace, and the equally historic Scottish course Gleneagles, where Kidd grew up as the son of the golf course’s superintendent.

Kidd had already achieved golfing immortality with the opening of Bandon Dunes in Oregon in 1999. That year, Kidd’s Gamble Sands in Brewster, Washington, had been named the best new golf course in the United States by Golf Digest. In April 2014, builder Chuck Lande invited golf course designer David McClay Kidd to walk the Rolling Hills Country Club golf course. David McClay Kidd tees off from a future Rolling Hills Country Club bunker.

Rolling hills country club