In standing apart from its own time, Rustic Canyon took inspiration from the deeper past of Southern California golf. The course seems especially influenced by George Thomas’s work in the 1920s—not only his famous designs at Bel-Air, Riviera, and L.A. North, but also his unbuilt concepts, as illustrated in his book Golf Architecture in America.

Rustic Canyon reintroduced Golden Age design principles to Southern California golf. Along with Dave Axland and Dan Proctor’s Wild Horse in Nebraska, it is, in my opinion, one of the two best modern American courses that anyone can play for less than $100.

— Garrett Morrison, Club TFE

Rustic Canyon is a tribute to the very roots of the game with a lay-of-the-land creation by Hanse Golf Design. Built without detailed blueprints or working drawings, Hanse Golf shaped the large contoured, free-form green complexes and sculpted the bunkers from the natural landscape preserving and incorporating into the design the native barrancas. The canyon hills are dotted with sagebrush, cactus, waves of brome and stipa grass highlighted by a few picturesque oaks.

Rustic Canyon is an exercise in restraint with flat, wide-open fairways that fade into the native surroundings and bunkers edged with shaggy eyebrows of thick, drooping fescue. The ground game is critical as the greens play to a bump & run approach. Rustic Canyon is a strategic course for golfers who savor the discovery of a proper approach position on an expansive fairway to best attack the green depending on the pin location.

Via Rustic Canyon GC