San Francisco Golf Club

A.W. Tillinghast

Tillinghast’s only original course west of Texas. The 7th looks down on a duel.

The club started at the Presidio in 1895 — one of the first west of the Alleghenies. It moved twice before Tillinghast finished the Lake Merced ground in 1918 and came back in 1923 to put his pots and greens on it. The par-3 7th is the Duel Hole: the last legal duel in California was fought on that hillside, 1859, Broderick and Terry. Tom Doak and Jim Urbina put three lost holes back in 2006. Early light, Monterey cypress, pots around the green — that is the architecture people mean when they say the Club.