February 2025 – Played Santa Ana CC in CA through Thousand Greens and continue to be very happy with my TG experiences. For this trip, I needed a few miles (Loyalty Points) by the end of the month to maintain my Executive Platinum status on American so planned a last second trip to see my buddy who was out here on a six-month work project and worked a round in here and at Black Gold (public) in Yorba Linda (nice course in the home town of Richard Nixon).
I booked my hotel through American Travel to again build Loyalty Points (a sucky experience where I had to pay a $150 penalty because I put the wrong first name in the guest booking, the hotel wouldn’t let me change and referred me back to American. I couldn’t edit online so just cancelled and they said they went back to the hotel who wouldn’t give me credit. Fuckers). So I rebooked at the Hyatt House (not bad) which was on the entry road to Disneyland (which was on the other hand very bad). Fucking buffet breakfast was a fucking zoo. Between the annoying Disney kids and the worse yet Disney-loving couples sporting those stupid fucking ears, the experience ranked super high on the annoyance scale. I called it the Gates of Hell. In fact, I stupidly booked dinner at Naples in Downtown Disney which unlike Disney World, is right in the smack dab middle of the park. The crowd was annoying and the food at Naples sucked. Like how can you fuck up spaghetti and meatballs?!?
We did hit Javier’s the first night, previously described in my Pelican Hill review, which is awesome and now has locations in Vegas, Cabo and a few more throughout SoCal. By the way, Pelican Hill is now $500 to play and while really nice, it’s not worth that kind of $$$$.
My Santa Ana host was new to TG and the club. What an awesome host and experience. While my golf suckiness continued, he hit one under, didn’t drink and still put up with my bad golf and boozing. What a great host! While I tried and failed to get on at Shady Canyon for the trip, I couldn’t be happier than my experience at Santa Ana. The great thing about my 1,000 course journey is playing hidden gems like Santa Ana that if you were just looking to check off top 100/200 courses, you’d miss. Golf is an experience for me, not just an architecture exploration. I love a good design but I love a great experience more and Santa Ana delivered. It may be the underrated club of the year for me!
Before I get into any review of the course, and I didn’t even save my score to give you a blow-by-blow (literally and figuratively as in my game would blow-by-blow, shot-after-shot), I couldn’t get the Steely Dan song, Babylon Sisters, out of my mind all round: So fine so young, Tell me I’m the only one. Here comes those Santa Ana winds again. So there’s this pretty cool series of Meta posts on top ten songs by various classic artists. SD is one of my faves and since I didn’t want to be that guest and ask to play music all round, I couldn’t drum the song out of my head so came up with my own top ten Steely Dan songs.
- The Caves of Altamira (a real deep tracks song from Royal Scam)
- Don’t Take Me Alive (Royal Scam)
- Dirty Work (Can’t Buy a Thrill)
- Your Gold Teeth II (Katy Lied)
- Deacon Blues (Aja)
- Any Major Dude (Pretzel Logic)
- Kid Charlemagne (Royal Scam)
- Rose Darling (Katy Lied)
- Aja
- Reelin’ in the Years (Can’t Buy a Thrill)
Ah but I digress. To the course. SACC is jammed into about 145 acres of prime Orange County real estate next door to John Wayne airport. So far this is a theme for the year, nice private tracks jammed into tiny parcels of prime land. We walked with carts as SACC is imminently walkable.
So SACC was founded in 1901 and is the fourth oldest club west of the Mississippi (or so I was told). They claimed the current parcel in 1923, that course designed by Ted Robinson and was completely redone, rerouted in 2016 by Jay Blasi. The redo threw off serious Wilshire vibes and if it was up in Santa Monica or closer to LA, would receive much more acclaim! I showed one above and would be so, so with the camera so will try and label. I think we played the III/IV combos but not sure of that. If so, these measured 6289 (which seems short for what we played) and is rated 70.4/124 which doesn’t seem to accurately demonstrate how tough this course is. The greens were amazing and defended par and took a while to understand the movement of these and speed. The top of the page is my approach on one, a short 358-yard opener. Thought I was back on track as I just missed par here but no that wouldn’t happen – though I did play much better the next day at Black Gold.
Two from the trap, 15th handicap and just 310 yards. I was in this bunker behind the green and would take two to get out thus starting me on my path to suck.
Three is the number one handicap which brings you back to the clubhouse. 421 yards and tough! Water right which I was able to avoid but still a double.
Four is your first par three, 130 yards. Hit a good shot but a little toey and rolled back into the water.
Here’s the par five 5th. Here’s why I swear we played some different tees as this was damn near 600 yards. Water is not in play but just a l-o-n-g hole.
Still five and on and on we marched.
Six. Showing off the green complex and bunkering. Such a well designed and maintained course and feels like you are nowhere near such a populated area. In fact, absent the planes taking off, this is well secluded inside the fences.
Seven. The hole is tucked in a remote corner of the property protected by the waste area. I was really struggling by now but would put a gap wedge just off the green and almost hit the bogey of my life!
Eight is another par five (514 yards). Here from my drive.
I missed the front closer, a 167 yard par three which again, I really think we played it from longer than that! This is ten and finally started playing better. Number two handicap and got my first par of the round.
Almost positive this is the par-5 eleventh. 563 yards. Long par fives here.
191 yards. Tough par-three 12th and yet the #18 handicap!
I think #13 and if so a long, 423-yard par four and #4 handicap.
Not sure which hole but wanted to show off the waste areas and why this reminded me of Wilshire (which I understand is going through another major remodel). Speaking of which, SACC will be redoing the clubhouse in less than a year to more of a Spanish architecture and a smaller footprint to rid themselves of some unused banquet space. As it was, love the bar here overlooking the 18th and the men’s grill. On Thursdays they have a wood stove outside churning out awesome pizzas. All part of an awesome experience.
This is 16. 365-yard par four that I missed the bunker on my drive but duffed a shot into. Oh my woes on the golf course of late.
And here’s 18. A short par five coming back to the clubhouse. Again, I really loved my experience here and between the design, conditioning, etc., SACC has a serious shot of being one of my all-time underrated courses and likely the most underrated of the season when I do my 2025 recap.
Golf Scrapbook 