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Find your way to Lost Canyons for superb golf.
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Sixteen of the world’s best golfers tee off tomorrow at Sherwood Country Club near Los Angeles, each trying to cash the bloated $1.35 winner’s check from Tiger Wood’s “silly season” event, the Target World Challenge.
Sherwood is certainly a nice layout, but it’s a private course, and, believe it or not, there are better places the public can play while on a Los Angeles golf vacation. You just need to drive about an hour north from all the hubbub to find them.
A great one is Lost Canyons Golf Club in Simi Valley, about 15 miles from where the pros will be playing, offering two fantastic courses. Etched into the steep hillsides of the Santa Susana Mountains on a site that was once a set for Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie, the Sky and Shadow courses here are so sublime and seemingly so isolated, that it boggles the mind that more than 14 million people inhabit the metropolitan region just over the hills.
Although America’s most diabolical course designer largely followed nature’s lead upon this very rugged terrain, both courses are pure Pete Dye, which is to say they can be a handful on a Los Angeles golf vacation, even for single-digit handicappers. They play stoutly uphill, with numerous blind shots, lengthy forced carries, frequent fall-offs into oblivion, and nary a level lie.
At the same time, they inhabit sublime golfing grounds, with jaw-dropping vistas of mountains and sky, colorful wildflowers, native wetlands and vast elevation changes that make you feel like a superhero off the tee. What must be similar for the Hollywood hopefuls nearby, Lost Canyons can simultaneously be a beautiful and brutal experience on a Los Angeles golf vacation.
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