Photos: Lake Merced Golf Club in California to reopen in October after restoration and renovation by Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner

Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City, California, is slated to reopen in October after a comprehensive restoration and renovation of its Alister MacKenzie layout by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner.

Working with course builder Heritage Links, Hanse and Wagner rebuilt 18 greens, refurbished 150,000 square feet of bunkering, restored and expanded every tee complex, moved the practice facility from one side of the property to the opposite and installed new irrigation.

Originally designed by Willie Lock in 1922, the private Lake Merced Golf Club was reworked by MacKenzie – famous for designs such as Cypress Point and Augusta National – later that decade. In the 1960s, construction of Interstate 280 forced the club to surrender some property and rework the course, with several MacKenzie holes lost and Robert Muir Graves renovating the layout. The course before the recent renovation tied for No. 182 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of classic courses built before the 1960s in the U.S.

Hanse, Wagner and Heritage Links were able to restore many of the remaining MacKenzie holes using detailed photography shot before the interstate went through. Elsewhere on the course, the team rerouted the course and created new holes, such as the par-4 10^th and the par-3 16^th, in the MacKenzie style.

“Sixteen was an attempt to achieve that (MacKenzie) vibe,” Wagner said in a media release announcing the completion of the heavy lifting. “It plays over the beginning of a barranca to a green on this little ridge that sits across the expanse. At the same time, that green is set right beside the green at 13, which is a hole we restored using great old photos that really showed everything, the unique green setting tucked into that hillside. So that was daunting, to create a new green in the MacKenzie style that sits beside a restored original.”

Hanse and Wagner have tackled several significant restorations in recent years, with many of those course hosting major championships, including Southern Hills in Oklahoma for this year’s PGA Championship and The Country Club in Massachusetts for the U.S. Open. They have become extremely familiar with several classic architects’ work, so how does Wagner describe that MacKenzie vibe?

“It’s the size, scale, look and placement of the bunkering mainly,” Wagner said, “with edging that reminds a lot of people of cloud formations. But it’s also the way they sit in the landscape, down into the green while some float above grade. When you put that look into a landscape with vegetation, like cypress trees, it just screams MacKenzie.”

In all, about 75,000 cubic yards of dirt was moved in the restoration/renovation that started in October of 2021 at Lake Merced. The final four greens were seeded June 15.

“I have to say, it is amazing to watch these guys work,” Heritage Links vice president Oscar Rodriguez said. “I mean, Jim and Gil are on a bulldozer shaping all these greens themselves. The members see that from the sidelines and they are ecstatic about it. One day it looks like a bomb went off. Then a few weeks later, they say, Oh, that’s what they were doing.”

Check out a selection of photos from the project below.