Olympic Club, Lake Course

Olympic Club, The -Lake, is a Private, 18 hole golf course located in San Francisco, California.

The Olympic Club is a San Francisco, California-based athletic club with three golf courses located at San Francisco's border with Daly City, California. The club's main "City Clubhouse" is located in downtown San Francisco. The club's "Lakeside Clubhouse" is located just north of the city's border with Daly City. The two clubhouses are separated by about 10 miles.

The three courses at the Olympic Club are the Cliffs, Lake and Ocean courses. The Lake and Ocean are eighteen hole par 71 courses, and the Cliffs is a nine-hole par-3 course that is on the bluffs of the Pacific Ocean. All three courses are lined with many trees (almost 40,000 on the Lake course) and offer views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The United States Golf Association recognizes the Olympic Club as one of the first 100 golf clubs established in the United States.

The OLympic Club is the oldest athletic club in the United States. The Olympic Club was established on May 6, 1860.

The Lake Course has been recognized by Golf Magazine in its list of the Top 100 Courses in the U.S. It has also been recognized in Golf Week's category of "America's 100 Best Classical Courses." In Golf Digest's list of the U.S. 100 Greatest Courses for 2007-2008, the Lake Course was ranked 23. The course sits almost entirely within the borders of San Francisco.

In 1918, The Olympic Club took over the Lakeside Golf Club, which had opened in 1917 but was struggling financially. Lakeside was an 18-hole golf course designed by Wilfrid Reid. The Olympic Club decided to build a "new" Lakeside course in 1924. The course was designed by Willie Watson and built by Sam Whiting. The course was completely redesigned and rebuilt by Whiting in 1927. Whiting stayed on as golf course superintendent until 1954. In 1953, the Lake course was modified by Robert Trent Jones in preparation for the 1955 U.S. Open.

The regular yardage of the Lake Course is 7,060 yards from the new championship tees, with a course rating of 74.9 and a slope rating of 140. From the next set of tees forward, the course measures 6,529 yards, and has a course rating of 72.3 and a slope rating of 132. From the next set of tees forward, the course measures 6,235 yards, and has a course rating of 70.9 and a slope rating of 129. From the front tees, the course measures 5,593 yards, and has a course rating of 68.6 and a slope rating of 122.

The Lake Course has been lengthened in recent years to prepare for the 2007 U.S. Amateur and 2012 U.S. Open. New tees have added significant length to the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 12th. In addition, drastic changes were made to the par-4 seventh and par-3 eighth holes. A new two-tiered green at the seventh replaces the old three-level green constructed in the 1970s. This green is located approximately 20 yards behind the old one. The most dramatic alterations were made at the 8th. Previously just a short uphill pitch, a completely new hole has been built with a teeing area well back and to the right of the original, changing the angle of approach and pushing the length of the hole back to 200 yards. A new green has also been built at the par-3 15th, and the controversial 18th green has also been changed further.