At a time when most new courses are centerpieces of private clubs or add-ons to top-dollar resorts, Poppy Ridge is a welcome exception — a high-pedigree, public layout priced for everyone. On rolling terrain in Livermore, Calif., about an hour east of San Francisco, the architect Jay Blasi (his recent credits include a first-rate restoration of Golden Gate Park Golf Course in San Francisco) took the best land from three existing nines to create a compelling 18-hole design that opens to daily-fee play this weekend.
To coincide with that ribbon-cutting, here’s everything you need to know about a course that ranks among the most significant newbies of the year.
Poppy Ridge belongs to the Northern California Golf Association, which also owns Poppy Hills in Monterey, Calif., formerly a part of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am rota. Like Poppy Hills, Poppy Ridge offers discounts to the NCGA’s 220,000-plus members, who can play it for as little as $70 on weekdays. For non-NCGA members, rates max out at $175.
Poppy Ridge has been a relative bargain since its birth in 1996. But its original three nines were undermined by severe shifts in elevation and endurance hikes between holes. Blasi got rid of those egregious features. In his new routing, the 18-hole walk is a mile-and-a-quarter shorter than it was before, and while there’s still plenty of movement from tee to green, the transitions have been mellowed (there’s now 400 feet less elevation change across the property). And a course that once cried out for you to take a cart now counts as a great place to hoof and carry.
Course design doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Influences flow back and forth. On the par-3 3rd, which plays anywhere from 106 yards to 197 yards, the mounds and ridges behind the green mirror the outline of hills in the distance — a cap-tip from Blasi to the famed Canadian designer Stanley Thompson, whose heralded Golden Age work at Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course in Alberta includes green complexes that match their Rocky Mountain backdrop. At Poppy Ridge, this nifty flourish serves an extra aesthetic function: it hides a man-made pond (like a lot of architects, Blasi dislikes artificial water features) that sat in plain view in the old design.
According to the scorecard, Poppy Ridge plays 4,225 yards from its most forward tees and 7,010 from the back. But Blasi also made room for an even lengthier set of tees, meant not for daily play but for the NCAA events and other tournaments that the course intends to host. From those boxes, it’s a 7,350-yard par-70 design.
On the old Poppy Ridge, pushed-up greens, forced carries and fronting bunkers made the aerial game essential. The new course flips that script, with ground-game pathways to most targets and bouncy turf that allows for inventive attacks.
As on a links, the wind can blow at Poppy Ridge, and the course has ample fairways to accommodate. The challenge here isn’t finding your ball, it’s figuring out how to best play it next. Pick from the right tees, and you’ll likely wind up pulling every club in your bag and putting up a variety of numbers. There are plenty of brawny holes, but also reachable par 5s and — again, depending on where you peg it— drivable par 4s, including the wildly entertaining 6th, with an elevated punchbowl-green inspired by the 12th hole at a country course in New Zealand called Waverley Golf Club.
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