Players at this week’s Genesis Invitational will again find their way up just over 50 steep steps at the back of the 18th green to the ladies locker room within the stunning clubhouse at Riviera Country Club in suburban Santa Monica.

Yes, the ladies locker room!

The expansive Riviera ladies locker room is at the top of the staircase and given it’s close proximity to the back of the 18th and the close-by 1st tee, it’s used as a temporary scorer’s room for the annual Tiger Woods Foundation hosted event.

However, this ladies locker room is unlike no other but let me get to that a little later in this piece.

The Riviera County Club had first hosted a PGA Tour event in 1929 with a purse of $10,000 and since the club has welcomed the Tour in 1930, 1941, 1945 to 1953, 1973t to 1982, 1984 to 1997, and then every year from 1999 to a year ago when Max Homa was handed a $1,674,000 first prize cheque from a purse of $9.3m. This week’s Tiger Woods Foundation hosted event boasts a staggering $12m in prize money.

The stunning cliff-top clubhouse and eucalyptus trees-lined fairways well below were opened in 1926 costing $244,000 to build and, at the time, making it then the most expensive in golf history.  Also, given its closeness (13 miles away) to the Hollywood film studios, Rivieria became not only a motion picture location but a club to movie legends.

Your author on the 1st tee at the Riviera CC (Photo @TourMiss)

Then childhood star Elizabeth Taylor learned how to ride at the club’s riding school in preparation for her role in the 1944 movie National Velvet.

Wikipedia highlights the 1952 movie Pat and Mike, starring Katharine Hepburn and Babe Zaharias, was filmed at Riviera, as was The Caddy, starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, with a cameo appearance by Ben Hogan, and Follow the Sun, about Hogan, starring Glenn Ford and Anne Baxter. During the silent era, the 1927 movie Spring Fever was filmed at the new club, in which it was called Oakmont Country Club.

Riviera has had many famous members, which included Humphrey Bogart, Glen Campbell, Vic Damone, Peter Falk, Jack Ging, Dean Martin, Gregory Peck, Walt Disney, Hal Roach, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford. 

In mentioning Bogart, there is a sycamore tree just to the left of the 12th green named Bogart’s Tree, as its understood the star of The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca and other cinema greats used to park himself beside the tree to watch the golf tournaments.

Bernie pointing to ‘Bogart’s Tree’ located on the left front edge to the 12th green at Riveira. (Photo @TourMiss)

Anyway back to my story as it was six years ago in attending the Genesis Invitational I joined a handful of media talking with Padraig Harrington within the Riviera ladies locker room and shortly after he had posted an impressive opening round of 67.

Adorning the walls of the locker room is a collection of photographs you will never see anywhere else.  Photographs of the greats of Hollywood playing golf at Riviera Country Club.

What has always been great about Harrington, is that it’s never a short conversation and such was this occasion.

As we chatted with Harrington he was leaning up against a wall in the ladies locker-room and there is a stunning photograph of Katherine Hepburn, a winner of four ‘Best Actress’ Academy awards. Hepburn is in golf attire and holding a club.  Harrington stopped the conversation and pointed to the photograph saying:  “What do you like about that photograph?”

I responded (and now smiling) in a mischievous tone:  “Wow! She’s really good looking”.

Harrington’s now saying: “No, no, no.  Look at her grip.  Look at her grip and how good it is”.

Hollywood legend Katharine Hepburn and with Padraig Harrington very impressed by her swing. (Photo @TourMiss)

Padraigh Harrington admiring the photograph of Katherine Hepburn (Image by @TourMiss)

Judge for yourself and have a look at Hepburn’s grip.

Hepburn had been playing golf since a very young age, with her parents owning a house that backed onto a golf course in Connecticut.  As a teen, Hepburn took daily lessons at Hartford Golf Club. She often shot in the low 80s and advanced to the semi-finals of the Connecticut Young Women’s Golf Championship.

When Hepburn’s acting career took her west to California, she continued to play golf.  It’s the reason she lived on the 14th hole at Bel-Air Country Club, just 30-minutes from Wilshire. And the stories of her being courted by Howard Hughes, the business tycoon and film producer who was also an avid golfer, has become the stuff of legend.

As the story goes, Hughes, who was also a pilot, was late for a date with Hepburn. So, he landed his Sikorsky amphibious plane on the eighth or ninth fairway at Bel-Air, where Hepburn was in the midst of a round. Hughes, who exited the plane with his golf bag in tow, insisted on completing the round alongside her. The pair never married. Hepburn was briefly married to a Philadelphia businessman whom she divorced in 1941. She was often linked to her Spencer Tracy, her co-star in nine films.

Hepburn spent the final years of her life at Fenwick Golf Club in Old Saybrook, where she lived as a child. The movie star always insisted on carrying her own clubs and to those around the course and surrounding town she was simply known as Kate.

She died in 2003 at the age of 96 but her ‘golfing’ memory lives on within the walls of the Riviera Country Club,