Riviera wants the U.S. Open. To get its wish, the storied Los
Angeles club is enduring a makeover by turfmaster Paul Latshaw.
"I love it," says Latshaw, who's tackling the task of
rehabbing Riviera the way his hero George Patton approached
warfare. "I'd do it 24 hours a day if I could."
In 1994 Noboru Watanabe, Riviera's owner, hired Ben Crenshaw and
Bill Coore to rebuild the club's decaying greens for the '95
PGA. The sod didn't take, and the greens got worse. To stay in
the running for future majors, Riviera offered to host a U.S.
Senior Open, a so-called poison pill that can leave its host
club deep in the red. "The 1995 Senior Open cost us more than
$700,000, but it was worth it," says Ed Burke, former president
of Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., "We put on a
good tournament, got the '97 U.S. Open and made two to three
million." Following Congressional's lead, Riviera took on this
year's Senior Open and promptly borrowed Latshaw, who had
transformed Congressional's ice-damaged Blue Course into what
Jack Nicklaus called the best-manicured layout he had ever seen.
Latshaw commutes across the country while trying to revitalize Riviera. (Doug Pensinger)
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The son of a Pennsylvania Dutch poultry farmer, Latshaw studied
agronomy at Penn State. He made his name by prepping Oakmont's
fairways for the '78 PGA—replacing bluegrass with bentgrass,
then aerating fairways with machines normally used on greens and
cutting them with triplex mowers instead of tractors. Latshaw
would move on to Augusta National, where he was superintendent
for the Masters from 1986 to '89, and Congressional, where he
put 75 volunteers to work hand-mowing fairways for last year's
Open.
Now splitting time between his office at Congressional and a
golf cart 3,000 miles away, Latshaw spends five days a week in
California directing his troops, whipping Riviera into shape for
the July 23-26 Senior Open. He has introduced computerized
weather forecasts and new wrinkles in irrigation at Riviera, and
replaced some or all of the sand in each of the course's 57
bunkers. What was wrong with the old sand? "It was dirty,"
sniffs Latshaw.
"The course looks fantastic," says Senior Open chairman Dan
Stevenson. A good showing by Riviera in July may restore the
prestige of Hogan's Alley and bring a multimillion-dollar U.S.
Open bonanza early next century. A happy ending? Perhaps, but
there's a dirty secret here too. Workaholic Latshaw may have
saved Riviera, but he hasn't kept a few patches of crabgrass
from sneaking into his lawn at home.
Issue date: May 4, 1998
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