There’s a hole at Maggie Hathaway Golf Course in Los Angeles patterned on an architectural template — the Lion’s Mouth, a classic feature defined by a meddlesome bunker fronting much of the green. You’ll find versions of it at select private clubs, and at marquee public courses where tee times require months of advance planning. Most days at Maggie Hathaway, you can walk up and get on.
It’ll cost you, though. Green fees max out at $9.50.
Maggie Hathaway is a nine-hole par-3 course that has been in operation since 1962, but not always under its current name and not always in its current form. It was originally known as the Jack Thompson Golf Course before being rechristened in 1997 in honor of the woman who helped make public golf in Los Angeles the melting pot it is today.
Hathaway was a blues singer, actress and civil rights activist who organized pickets of segregated courses and petitioned L.A. public officials to open county layouts to everyone. She wasn’t alone on the front lines of that fight, but she was a leader, and the course that bears her name is a monument to a worthy battle won.
Glen Porter never met Hathaway, who died in 2001. But he knows her namesake layout about as well as anyone. It was where he learned the game some 20 years ago, long before he came aboard as general manager. Some things haven’t changed since he first set foot on property. Now, as then, the course gives way to sweet views of the city, sweeping west across downtown and on to the Hollywood sign in the distance. Junior rates remain $1, the same fee Porter paid as a kid.
In that sense, the place feels as familiar as ever. In other ways, though, it’s dramatically transformed.
“Like night and day,” Porter says.
In late March, Maggie Hathaway reopened following a comprehensive renovation that delivered a new routing, new turf, new irrigation, new green complexes, and sandy waste areas, along with an expanded and relocated practice range and a large, unruly putting green.
Once soft and spongy, the terrain has been remade into a firm, fast playground, with the same tight-mown grass varietals golfers enjoy at Los Angeles Country Club, and a fresh injection of strategic intrigue.
“The greens used to be small, flat circles,” Porter says.
Today, they are rumpled, flanked by speedy runoffs and shot through with nods to classic design features, from a double-plateau green on the 4th hole that borrows from the work of C.B. Macdonald to a flip-wedge 9th hole whose green was inspired by the par-3 10th hole at Pine Valley.
In its prior iteration, Maggie Hathaway was light on bunkers. Sand now figures prominently, in waste areas that lend a rustic aesthetic and green-side bunkers that compound the consequences of errant shots. One such hazard is the Lion’s Mouth, lurking at the front of the 2nd green.
Like other recent headline-making muni renovations, including the Patch in Augusta and the Park in West Palm Beach, the Maggie Hathaway project was propelled by a public-private partnership. A fundraising effort, led by members of Los Angeles Country Club, brought in a total of $21 million. The county contributed another $8 million, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner — the architects who reworked both courses at LACC in advance of the 2023 U.S. Open — pitched in their design services for free.
One measure of the payoff can be seen on the tee sheet. The course now sees some 180 rounds a day, Porter says, roughly double the pre-renovation volume. And with a clubhouse and training center under construction, it will soon have even greater gravitational pull. Already, local public-school programs have a home at Maggie Hathaway, though the course is a magnet for old-timers, too. Many of the regulars came of age in the game here decades ago. Some drifted away but have found their way back. Porter is one of them. The $1 junior who grew up to run the place.
He never crossed paths with Maggie Hathaway. But he knows enough about her to know she would be pleased.
