“An airport runway with grass,” is how City of Ventura Golf Manager Greg Gilmer recently described the old Olivas Park Golf Course in the Ventura County Star.
That’s a pretty harsh description of the old course but an understandable one once you have seen the new one. Compared to the new track, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the one that opened in 1969 and faithfully served generations of Ventura golfers for 37 years, the old one just seems like it was an old runway with grass. That’s how much better Olivas Links is than Olivas Park.
 Designed by course architect Forrest Richardson, who calls this effort the punctuation point on a long and storied career, Olivas Links isn’t particularly long by modern standards, but length and playing length are two entirely different matters when a golf course is as close to the Pacific Ocean as Olivas Links. The cold damp ocean winds blow virtually every day of the year, so bring plenty of windshirts and layered clothing.
“It’s not only a spectacular golf course but a difficult one to boot,” said PLGA Course Rating Chairman Jim Gonzales after his Team completed the new course’s initial Temporary Rating April 13. From its Championship tees Olivas Links’ Course Rating is 73.7, and its Slope Rating is 135; from the “Blue” Tees the Rating is 72.4, and the Slope 132; from the “white” Tees 70.2 and 123 respectively. There are additional sets of men’s forward tees for those players whose skill levels suggest that they might have a better experience playing a course less daunting than these Ratings and Slopes would indicate.
The course starts out a bit slow. The early holes are a bit more open, a bit shorter, a bit less challenging. But the course builds like some great crescendo of difficulty, with each set of succeeding holes getting more and more difficult. The back nine is clearly the harder nine. If you’re not accurate with your driver from holes 11 through 16, you better bring plenty of golf balls along. If the Hazards, and Out-of-Bounds stakes don’t get you, the long swirls of native grasses will.
 With the opening of the new Links on May 1, the City of Ventura completed the refurbishment of both of its municipal golf properties – a process funded by the issuance of Lease Obligation Bonds and made possible by the city’s use of an enterprise fund methodology for the financial management of its golf courses. Buenaventura, which opened in October 2005, was the less ambitious of the two renovations. There the city aimed for an upgrade that would simply update the much older and more traditional municipal track and keep it “friendly” to recreational golfers both playability-wise and greens fee-wise. At Olivas Links the city aimed for a course capable of challenging the games of the best players and of hosting great championships. The city hit its target and managed to do so while keeping fees quite reasonable for a course of its quality – $35 weekdays for residents and $41 weekends.
PLGA will get its first taste of Olivas Links when the 2007 J.C. Cunningham Senior Championship visits on July 8. Ventura resident Sam Williamson, who is a member of the Buenaventura Golf Club, will try to capture his 3rd consecutive PLGA Senior title on July 8-9 at Olivas Links and Buenaventura respectively.
Tee times and tournaments can be booked by calling (805) 642-2907 or e-mailing cvanvallier@eaglgolf.com.
Information regarding membership in the Olivas Park Men’s Golf Club is available at www.opmgc.com. Information regarding membership in the Olivas Links Senior Men’s Golf Club is available by calling Membership Chairman Alan McIntosh at (805) 676-1039. Information regarding anything and / or everything about the new Olivas Links is available by either calling (805) 642-4303 or going to www.olivaslinks.com on the World Wide Web.
|
