Nine Holes on
the Island

A course for the summer colony

In the spring of 1914 Belvedere was still mostly a summer place, and each May its San Francisco families moved over to their houses above the bay.¹ That April the San Francisco Call reported that the island was preparing for the season in a new way, with "the laying out of a golf course and the erection of tennis courts on the north side of the island, that portion of it known as the 'Pasture lands.'"¹

The course filled nearly all of the island's open northern end, about a quarter of a square mile north of Oak Avenue, from San Rafael Avenue and the lagoon to the crest above Richardson Bay.^2,3 Tamalpais, North Point, Marin and Buckeye avenues, and the lower ends of Golden Gate and Bayview, were cut through the old fairways between the 1940s and the 1960s, and, as the Landmarks Society's Dave Gotz put it, they "probably all have lost golf balls buried beneath their asphalt."²

The land belonged to the Belvedere Land Company, the club's landlord to the end, and the Land Company built the clubhouse.² In April 1914 it let a $3,500 contract to George M. White for a golf club building on lot 4, block 26.^4,5,6 That building still stands at 1 Britton Avenue, now a private house.² Who laid out the nine holes is a question the newspapers do not answer. No designer, greenkeeper or professional is named in any 1914 report found for this history.

Two opening days

The club has two birthdays. The Landmarks Society's histories say it opened on 23 May 1914 with 127 active and four junior members.^3,2 The newspapers report the opening on Saturday, 1 August 1914. "A golf club at Belvedere has long been a dream of that community," wrote the San Rafael Tocsin that morning, and it called the day the members' first opportunity of playing there.⁷ All day, the Call said, residents and their guests tried out the new course, among them the Crockers, the Mailliards, the Pages, the Blandings, the Dimonds and the Wallachs.⁸ Until that summer, the Tocsin noted, the island's golfers had to use the Marin Country Club's links or cross the bay to the Presidio or Ingleside.⁷ Two days later the San Rafael Clarion put it simply: "The links of the new Belvedere Golf Club were christened last Saturday."⁹

Both dates can be true. Since the clubhouse contract was let only in mid-April, the May date is probably the day the club was organized or opened its rolls, not the first day of golf.^4,7 Neither Landmarks newsletter says where the date comes from, and a golf directory of 1923 muddied things further by listing the club as "Estd. 1915."¹⁰ A week after the opening the Sausalito News counted close to one hundred members and praised the course's "natural obstructions that seldom exist on links."¹¹ That afternoon the club gave an informal dansant in the new clubhouse for the younger set of San Francisco and the Marin towns.^7,11

Dances, tennis and the war

For its first years the club lived mostly on the society pages, and its season followed the summer colony's. In July 1915 Dr. Florence Ward and Mrs. James W. Edwards gave a dance there that the Call expected to be one of the largest of the summer.¹² By 1916 it held an informal dance every month, with Mrs. Ward Mailliard chairing the house committee.^13,14 Golf was played too, though the early record of it is thin. In 1915 the Western Golf Association added the club to its membership.¹⁵ For the Fourth of July in 1916 there were handicap events "over the club's sporty nine-hole course," and that September the annual tournaments followed, with match play for the championship and two silver cups from Mr. and Mrs. Pierre Moore for a mixed foursome.^16,17 The papers found for this history do not name the winners of those first championships.

The war gave the club a cause. In July 1917 the island held a Red Cross benefit there, a dance and then tennis on the club courts organized by Mrs. Pierre Moore, with an entry list that included William Johnston, the 1915 national champion.^18,19 Byron "Babe" Batkin won the final over Willis Davis.²⁰ The island raised nearly $6,500 for the Red Cross war fund against an allotment of $2,500, and the club itself gave $100.²¹ By the end of that August the war had reached the tennis players too: Charlie Sonntag, Belvedere doubles champion with Fred Bass, had joined the officers' reserve at the Presidio.²²

A professional and Mike Brady

In May 1918 the Tocsin reported that Robert Clark had been chosen as the club's instructor, the first professional the papers name there.²³

A month later, on 16 June, the club held a Red Cross tournament open to golfers from around the bay.^24,25 The Call described the course as "the smallest in the west," with a par of sixty, narrow fairways and trouble on every hole.²⁴ The star was Mike Brady, the Boston professional, then in the Naval Reserve, who played an exhibition foursome with Willie Locke, John Black and Clark before more than 150 golfers. Brady scored 125, Black 127, Locke 131 and Clark 137, over thirty-six holes, four trips around the nine; Black and Clark won the match 2 up.^25,26,27,28 It was Brady's first golf since enlisting, and after his 125 he was sure, the Call reported, that the navy had not hurt his game.²⁷ That year the club also put in grass greens, though the papers did not report the work until the next autumn, when they were said to be "in fine shape."^29,30 In November 1918, as the war ended, Belvedere was one of thirteen bay-area clubs arranging tournaments for the United War Work Fund.³¹

The 1919 season

In 1919 Belvedere entered the Northern California Golf Association championship at Burlingame.³² That June Clark arranged a tournament to be played, in the Call's phrase, "in sort of Chinese fashion—backward," probably meaning the holes in reverse order.³³ A week later he told the Call of a freak shot: his long drive at a ninth hole "went into the cup, 287 yards away, came out and rolled within four inches of the hole."³⁴ The Call did not name the course, and if it was Belvedere the distance is puzzling, since the club's card a few years later gave the ninth as 187 yards.³⁵ The club championship began on 28 June, with H. P. Braddock the Call's pick to win; the result has not been found.³⁶ In September the members elected Burr W. Freer president, and the report of the election called the course "one of the best around the bay district."^29,30

The year ended with a disappearance. On 2 November 1919 Frank P. Simons, a thirty-year-old broker with Mailliard & Schmiedell just out of the Marine Corps, finished a round on the links and told his brother he was going for a swim.^37,38 When he failed to appear at his office the next morning, Stuart Simons and Ward Mailliard went searching and found his clothes, watch and money still in the pockets, near the Union Fish Company's wharf, and boats dragged Richardson Bay without success.^37,38,39 No body was found, and he was given up for drowned. More than four years later, in January 1924, the papers reported him alive and working in Seattle.^40,41

It was an unsettling close to the club's first five years. Even so, the summer amusement of 1914 now had a professional, grass greens and a place in the Northern California Golf Association. In the spring of 1920 it challenged the new Mill Valley Country Club to a home-and-home match, the first of the inter-club matches that fill the next chapter.⁴²

In the spring of 1920 the Belvedere Golf and Country Club went looking for a fight. Early that April the Mill Valley Record reported that Belvedere had challenged the Mill Valley club to a home-and-home match, one meeting on each club's course¹. Charles F. Preusser sent up a Belvedere line-up of fourteen, among them Harry P. Braddock, J. W. Mailliard Jr. and Burr W. Freer, the club's president since September 1919^2,3.

Mill Valley was the newcomer, the infant among southern Marin's three clubs, while Belvedere had been playing its hill since 1914^4,5. On 11 April 1920 the infant won by 29 points to 4. "Many of the Belvedere team had never negotiated our scenery before," the Record explained, kindly enough⁶. In May the Mill Valley men came down for the return, arriving "in machines, including players, caddies and fragments of families," and won again, 27 points to 18⁴. The Sausalito News, loyal to the island, insisted the course "was in fine condition"⁷.

Preusser had launched a rivalry that would last the rest of the decade. Within weeks he was also the club's champion, having beaten Henry Q. Hawes over thirty-one holes on a scorching day, and by September the papers were calling him its president^8,9. Belvedere already had a seat at the regional table, too: F. Somers Peterson sat for the club on the executive committee of the Northern California Golf Association in March 1920¹⁰.

A Hole Named for a Swiss Peak

The liveliest picture of the course comes from the Mill Valley man who wrote up the May 1920 match. It lay on the island's northeast flank above the lagoon, on ground that today carries Tamalpais, North Point, Marin and Buckeye avenues^4,11. From the first tee, he wrote, "the green appears to be located several thousand feet below the edge of a steep precipice"⁴.

Then came the hole everyone remembered, "appropriately named after a famous Swiss peak," where play backed up while the players ahead tried and failed to clear the height with one shot⁴. This was the Matterhorn, the sixth: a short, steeply uphill par three, according to the Landmarks Society's history, with a view of Mount Tamalpais from its green⁵. The round finished with "The Rifle Range," running uphill through a corridor of trees to the clubhouse, which still stands as a private house at 1 Britton Avenue^4,5.

The Matterhorn soon had its legend. In March 1921 Mill Valley's Walter Young made a two on it, drive and approach into the cup. "Now this is not a typographical error," the Record insisted¹².

For all its drama the course was tiny. Par for two trips around the nine was 60, and when the members played for the Harry Lauder gold medal in September 1920, Ernest C. Mailliard won with 59 net, one better than par^13,14. Visitors from the longer courses around the bay found it a different game. An Oakland writer warned in 1922 that it "calls for deadly accuracy, or huge totals may easily be accumulated"¹⁵. The club kept a teacher on hand: Ray Ball, formerly of the Olympic Club, gave lessons on weekends from July 1920, and in March 1921 A. L. Longstaff of Chicago was appointed professional instructor^16,17.

Ladies' Day on the Island

Belvedere's women made the club a destination as much as its men did. On 1 October 1920 they invited women from nearly every club around the bay to luncheon and an eighteen-hole competition, with guests met off the boat at Tiburon¹⁸. The society columns counted visitors from Burlingame, Claremont, Menlo and the Presidio at a handsome luncheon in the clubhouse¹⁹. Mrs. Ezra T. Stimson took the cup with a net 74²⁰. By June 1921 every Thursday until October was ladies' day²¹. That summer Mrs. Harry P. Braddock led a combined Mill Valley and Belvedere women's team against the California Golf Club, losing the last of three matches by a single point^22,23. Mrs. Braddock was named women's captain early in 1922, and in May Mrs. Charles F. Preusser, now captain, played host to visitors at a Belvedere invitational^24,25. In July the guests came from Sequoyah and Claremont²⁶. In September 1922 Belvedere's women beat the Santa Rosa women on the island links²⁷.

The Marin County Cup

By 1921 Belvedere's golf ran to a printed calendar, drawn up by a tournament committee under J. T. Sargeant, that opened in March with the Mill Valley home-and-home²⁸. Mill Valley won that one 21 to 10, and the return in September by a single point, 7 to 6^12,29.

In July 1921 the rivalry grew into something larger. Belvedere, Mill Valley and the Marin Golf and Country Club of San Rafael agreed to meet three times a year, once on each course, for the championship of Marin County. Each would send its eight best men, and the lowest total gross score over the three courses would hold a new perpetual cup for a year³⁰. The three clubs had donated the trophy, valued at $100³¹.

The series opened on the island on 10 July 1921, and Belvedere took the day with 620 strokes, to Marin's 633 and Mill Valley's 636. Tom Patterson of Mill Valley and Belvedere's J. A. "Babe" Ritchie each went round in 65, which the Record said equalled the amateur record of the course³². The home advantage did not travel. Mill Valley won on its own course in August, and Marin won at San Rafael in September, finishing with 2,042 to Mill Valley's 2,089 and Belvedere's 2,126^33,34. The Landmarks Society's history notes that "the club boasted no Bobby Joneses but the players had fun"¹¹.

The 1922 series began with a very bad day at San Rafael, and Mill Valley won the championship, with Belvedere third^35,36. In 1923 Belvedere had the best total on the island on 24 June, 601, led by Eric Stewart's 71, but Marin took back the cup on grand totals of 1,972 to Belvedere's 2,007 and Mill Valley's 2,067³⁷. George Ritchie was away in Seattle for the Pacific Northwest amateur championship³⁷. The course record stayed murky: the club's own page in The Green Book of Golf credits Babe Ritchie with a 58, a round no newspaper has yet been found to describe³⁸.

Blues, Reds and the National Association

On 1 February 1922 the club was elected to the United States Golf Association, with Preusser listed as president⁴⁵. He did not stay to enjoy it; at the end of March the Call reported that he would leave shortly for Manila on an extended business trip⁴⁶. That season was the busiest yet. Belvedere beat the Marin club eleven matches to one in April, and found a new rival in Santa Rosa, winning there 6 to 4 and at home 11 to 3^47,43,48. The Press Democrat admired the clubhouse as "a beautiful rustic structure overlooking the bay"⁴⁸.

The members played among themselves for fun, too. The club championship of 4 July 1922 went to W. F. Stewart Jr., who beat P. S. Moulton on the thirty-seventh green⁴⁹. At the end of July 1922 the "Blues" beat the "Reds" 8 to 2, and on 12 August the clubhouse put on the "Belvedere Blues," a musical burlesque of the club's own members^50,51. The papers do not say whether the show took its title from the golf team.

The rivalry with Mill Valley grew friendlier along the way. On 11 December 1921 the two clubs simply swapped courses for the day, though in September 1922 the valley club ended a Belvedere winning run, 9 to 5^52,44.

By 1923 a national directory listed Burr W. Freer as president again and described a nine-hole course of 1,957 yards with grass greens, reached by the Sausalito ferry, with a visitors' fee of a dollar a day⁵³. Belvedere had become a club with a national affiliation, a county trophy to chase and a famous mountain of a hole. The cup itself would have to wait.

The Card of the Links

Some time in 1923 the club sent its particulars to The Green Book of Golf, the California golf annual, and the three pages it got back are the closest thing we have to a portrait of the club at its height.¹ Burr W. Freer was president, Edgar M. Wilson vice-president and M. Peirce Cook treasurer. E. F. Halloran chaired the green committee, Charles F. Preusser captained the men and Mrs. T. H. Camp the women, and the professional was J. W. Muirhead.¹

Nine holes, every one with a name, measured 1,736 yards in all. Par was 30 for men and 33 for women, so two trips round made an eighteen-hole par of 60.^1,2 Today Britton, Tamalpais, North Point, Marin, Buckeye, lower Golden Gate and lower Bayview avenues run across this ground, which stretched north of Oak Avenue from San Rafael Avenue and the lagoon to the crest above Richardson Bay. As the Landmarks Society's history puts it, all of those streets probably have golf balls buried beneath their asphalt.³

The newspapers never reported Babe Ritchie's record 58, and in June 1923 the Mill Valley Record had called a 65 on these links "a record," so the 58 is probably the club's own figure from a friendly round.⁵ In the 1923 club championship S. S. Brown beat H. S. Henderson 2 and 1 in the final, and Harry Halliday took the President's Cup.¹ The handicap list ran to fifty-three men and twelve women, from scratch, held by George and J. A. Ritchie, up to 30. The annual called Preusser, at 13, the "best home bred at Belvedere," probably meaning the best player the club had developed itself.¹

"Alpine Golf"

In February 1924 the golf writer for the Petaluma Argus-Courier told anyone who loved "Alpine Golf" to take his clubs to Belvedere some Sunday.⁶ Some greens sat high on the hills and others were "hanging over yawning chasms, giving the course the appearance of the Alps." From the higher tees a player looked over the bay, San Francisco and the Golden Gate, with Mount Tamalpais to the west. The par was 30, he wrote, "not a difficult par and yet not so easy a par, either," and he found the clubhouse pretty, well furnished and fairly large.⁶

That July the course turned up in a less flattering report. Halloran complained that mosquitoes were swarming over the links. The Belvedere Land Company, raising the road to Tiburon, had filled in an old culvert, so a little marsh could no longer drain into the lagoon. A new culvert went in the next day and the water soon drained away.^7,8

The women kept a busy calendar of their own. In August 1923 they hosted women from the other Marin clubs for golf, bridge and Mah Jongg, and late in May 1924 a Woman's Day luncheon served eighty-six guests.^9,10 That autumn an invitation tournament brought players from the East Bay, and Mrs. Coussick of the home club finished second.¹¹ There was a Halloween dinner dance in 1923, with the rooms done in black and orange and forty to fifty members from Belvedere and Sausalito.^12,13

Away Days and Home Games

With the Ritchie brothers on the team, the club played well beyond Marin. Santa Rosa had won at home in April 1923, but on 21 October the return match on the Belvedere links went to the home side, 10 to 2.^14,15 In March 1924 the Press Democrat introduced the visitors by their star pair: "Babe" Ritchie, then municipal champion of California, and George, a former northern California champion.¹⁶ In April 1924 the club travelled to Stockton, where the Stockton Independent hailed the brothers as "two of the foremost amateurs in the state," and Stockton won 28 points to 4, though George beat Sam Frankenheimer 4 and 3.^17,18 That September George reached the semi-finals of the state amateur at Pebble Beach.¹⁹

Before a return match in July 1925, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat warned its readers that the visitors would be handicapped by lack of local knowledge on Belvedere's hills.²⁰ On 12 July the match finished level at 8 to 8 when Ben Steiger of Santa Rosa sank a 25-foot putt on the eighteenth green, which on a nine-hole course was the Rifle Range, second time round. The hosts laid on luncheon, refreshments at the nineteenth hole, and golf and tennis for the Santa Rosa women.²¹ Against Mill Valley, 1925 went badly. The bright spot was a 66 at Belvedere by the club champion, W. F. Stewart.²² The series went to Mill Valley 28 points to 5.²³

The Club in Print and on Film

In January 1925 the photographer A. D. Mills was preparing golf-course pictures for Pacific Golf and Motor and The Fairway, among them the Belvedere Club.²⁴ According to the Landmarks Society's history, its 1925 photographs of the course are all by Arthur D. Mills.³ In June 1926 The American Golfer ran a spread called "Fairways That Lure," with "the third green on the Course of the Belvedere Golf and Country Club."²⁵

A student essay reprinted in the Record at New Year 1926 said the links were considered some of the best in the Bay District, and that many San Franciscans came over during the week to play.²⁶ The film actor Richard Barthelmess came up from Hollywood in his golf clothes and took a keen interest in them.²⁷

The winter of 1926 also brought the club's strangest night. Two young men broke in through a floor, and when an employee named Angelo came to check on the building they hit him and tied a sack over his head. Quail feathers on the reception-room floor showed what they had been cooking at the fireplace. Nothing was stolen, and Town Marshal Oldfield found no clues.^28,29 Two weeks later Maurice A. Gale, the 30-handicapper of the Green Book list, holed the fourth in one, "a clean pitch directly into the cup without any roll."^4,1

In March 1926 the directors talked of a swimming tank near the clubhouse, 50 by 25 feet, at about $4,000; the papers never mention it again, and it was probably never built.³⁰ That summer F. Crosby finished alterations to the clubhouse, the building that still stands at 1 Britton Avenue, for better luncheons and dinners.³¹ They were well used: one Thursday Ladies' Day in August drew 110 guests, and in the first 1926 meeting with Mill Valley, at Belvedere, the home team won a majority of the matches.^32,33

Eighteen Holes on the Lagoon

Behind the clubhouse lay the lagoon, and in 1925 and 1926 it became the setting of the most ambitious plan in the club's history. In November 1925 the San Francisco Daily News ran a page about an 18-hole course and several thousand acres of reclaimed marsh; the Record called such plans premature.³⁴

Golf Illustrated reported in January 1926 that the Yacht Club's plans included an eighteen-hole course on eighty acres of filled lagoon.³⁵ In June 1926 the San Francisco Yacht Club voted to move to Belvedere and pay its share of a $1,000,000 dredging project in Belvedere Cove, with the mud going into the slough.³⁶ Under the agreement, said the Sausalito News, "the Belvedere Country club, which now has only nine greens, will be enlarged by another nine holes" on the new land.³⁷ The Record pointed out that the dredging would not fill the whole lagoon and that the permit still awaited Washington.³⁸ After that the newspapers go quiet. The lagoon was filled in later, but the nine extra holes were never built.³

New Greens and a New President

Belvedere started 1927 by losing twice more to Mill Valley, 16 to 7 at home and 16 to 3 away.^39,40 The county triangle matches were closer. At Belvedere on 8 May, Mill Valley totalled 588, Belvedere 590 and Marin 599, on a course the Record found in splendid condition. George Ritchie, just crowned northern California champion at Del Paso, shot 68.⁴¹

At the annual meeting at the end of July the members chose Frank T. Bowers as president, Britton Rey as secretary and A. J. White as treasurer.^42,43 In the autumn workmen were relaying the green of the first and eighth holes, which probably shared one green, though the article does not say so.⁴⁴ So the club ended 1927 rebuilding the green of its opening hole, the Lagoon.

The brassie battlers

The spring of 1928 began the way so many Belvedere springs had begun, with a beating from Mill Valley. At the end of April the Belvedere men crossed to the Mill Valley links and came back on the short end of 14 points to 7.¹ This time the island held: Belvedere won the return match on its own course by 12 points to 5. Frank T. Bowers, playing in the last foursome, was the club's president.^2,3

The triangle matches with the Marin Golf Club of San Rafael and the Mill Valley Country Club were a different kind of contest. Each club sent eight men, every stroke counted, and the lowest total over three courses won the Marin County Cup.^4,2 The first round, at Mill Valley on 20 May, went to the home side, though Belvedere's two best cards belonged to the brothers George and James Ritchie, 71 and 72.⁵ At San Rafael on 3 June the order flipped. "Belvedere's eight stars totaled 1341," the Record said, and the Ritchies again led the way.⁶

That left the final round to be played at home, on the nine short holes between the lagoon and the ridge, on 10 June. George Ritchie went round in 66, the best score of the day by three strokes.⁷ "Belvedere won the trophy with a score of 1929," the Record announced.⁷ That figure is almost certainly a misprint: the printed Belvedere cards add up to 1939. The national press had it right. The American Golfer told readers across the country that "Belvedere's brassie battlers won the Marin County Interclub golf championship with an aggregate score of 1939 points."^6,7,8 In 1921, the first year the cup was played for, Belvedere had finished third of three, 84 strokes behind Marin. Now its name was on the trophy.⁹

A painter and a sociable club

That summer brought a different kind of visitor to the links. J. Wisby, a San Rafael landscape painter, came over to Belvedere one Sunday in May and decided to spend much of the summer on the island with his brushes.¹⁹ In early August fewer than twenty of his canvases were hung in the clubhouse, and the Record's critic noticed where he had set up his easel: "Mt. Tamalpais from the ninth green of the golf grounds seems to have been his favorite subject."²⁰ Nobody has yet traced where those paintings went, or whether any survive.

Over the winter the members took the clubhouse in hand, with new electric fixtures and lamps, upholstery and furnishings, paid for by members' subscriptions and the proceeds of bridge dinners and parties.²¹ The kitchen and the rooms were run by Mrs. A. B. Richardson, whose dinners the members praised.^22,21 Away from home, the women's teams usually lost to the big bay clubs. The steady exception was Mrs. J. Bruce Adams, who won low net in a field of fifty-eight at Claremont in December 1928 and was medalist at Sequoyah a year later.^23,24,25,26

In June 1929 the club hired F. H. Nagel as caddy master, to keep the grounds in condition and give lessons.²⁷ At the annual meeting in July, Bowers stood down after two years and Maurice A. Gale was elected president unanimously. Gale told the members he wanted tournaments worth entering and a larger social life.²⁸ He ran a sociable club, with Thursday dinners and a moving picture afterward.^13,29 In November the Record admitted that "the golf links have been quiet during the football season."³⁰

The great event of 1929 took place across the county. In August the Meadow Club at Fairfax held the first all-Marin golf championship, and George Ritchie tied for the medal at 76 and reached the semifinals.^31,12 On 4 January 1930 Gale gave a dinner and a moving picture in the clubhouse for the club's caddies, "eighteen boys who come from the community."³² According to the Landmarks Society's history, A caddies made 30 cents an hour for nine holes and B caddies 25 cents, and when off duty the boys often played eight of the holes.³³

Hospitality days

The Gales planned to go abroad in the spring of 1930, leaving the members to keep the luncheons, dinners and games going, but the trip was postponed and they did not sail until February 1931.^34,35,36 The county cup now included the Meadow Club and ran on points. Mill Valley won the first two rounds, and the Record found it remarkable that the four clubs ended one round a single point apart.^37,38 The women lost to Crystal Springs and Claremont, but they beat Orinda in March, and their win over a strong San Francisco club team on the last day of the series was the surprise of the day.^39,40,41,42 At home, under Mrs. C. F. Preusser, they held special days of golf or tennis in the morning, luncheon in the clubhouse, and bridge in the afternoon.⁴³

In May the club began a thirty-day membership drive, bought new porch furniture and colored awnings, and offered summer memberships at low rates to visitors staying nearby.^44,45 At the annual election on 9 August Gale stood down and E. H. Belcher was elected president.⁴⁶ By October Belcher was directing work on a new first tee, which the members had wanted for a long time. Andrew Taylor White, "who acquired the art of golf in Scotland," gave lessons one day a week, and Nagel kept the weekends.^47,48 The year ended as usual with a flag tournament and turkey prizes in November and a New Year's Eve ball.^49,50

Not too strenuous

In February 1931 the hostess, now Mrs. E. C. Reynvaan and almost certainly the remarried Mrs. Richardson, resigned, and Mrs. Ethel Lauff of Stinson Beach took her place.^51,52 The club began offering family memberships, and the spring opened with a member-guest tournament of twenty teams, the biggest turnout in months.^53,54 The same report described the course in words later writers have repeated: "Belvedere links have a reputation for being desirable because not too strenuous."⁵⁴ The Landmarks Society's history dates the line to 1925, but it comes from this March 1931 recruiting notice, which also announced a drive for new members at a reduced initiation fee.^33,54

There were small signs of strain. A bridge luncheon planned for April drew no replies at all and was postponed indefinitely.⁵⁵ The women's open day on 6 May was the best moment of their season: players came from Claremont, the California Club and Sequoyah, and Mrs. Adams won first honors for Belvedere with 79.⁵⁶ The men did less well, losing to Meadow, to Mill Valley and finally to Marin, which took the series at the end of June.^57,58,15 A week later George Ritchie was dead.¹⁶

The summer was quiet but not discouraging. A mixed tournament in July drew more than thirty players, and the summer brought several new members.^18,59 At the end of September, during the Nights in Venice carnival, the club opened its gates for the first time: non-members could play on payment of a green fee.^60,61 In 1928 Belvedere had won the county's championship cup, and three years later it was inviting the public onto its links.

Memberships Made Attractive

By the autumn of 1931 the Belvedere Golf and Country Club still looked like the club it had been for seventeen years. At the annual meeting on 12 September the members re-elected every officer, with E. Howard Belcher as president, and the same week an insurance man, Arthur Bancroft, brought two dozen of his San Francisco colleagues over for a tournament and dinner at the clubhouse.¹ The rivalry with San Rafael went on as before. When the two clubs finally met on the Belvedere links on 8 November, the visitors took the honors and everyone had lunch in the clubhouse.² That month Belvedere was named among the clubs organizing a new North Bay Counties Golf Association.³

Read closely, though, the Belvedere page of the Mill Valley Record had begun to sound like an advertisement. In December the club was making its memberships attractive, praising the links, the scenery and the climate.⁴ In January 1932 came the plainest sign of trouble: a moratorium on initiation fees to bring in new members, with the promise of links never crowded, as the city courses so often were.⁵ The offer brought in some new names, among them the Craig Searses and the Oliver Wassells, and outside groups were welcomed as well. More than twenty-one men from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco came for a guest day in their honor, and the men of the neighbouring Corinthian Yacht Club were invited over for an informal match.^6,7

A Last Good Season

On the course, 1932 was a better year than the notices suggested. A spring elimination series ended with Russ Ralston and C. F. Preusser, the club's old champion, level after 36 holes. They had to play again for the medal. A 72-hole handicap championship followed, and the Record added that the clubhouse grounds were heavy with roses.^8,9 The county team series was harder going. On 8 May the four Marin clubs met at Belvedere, and the home team beat Mill Valley. It was the club's last good afternoon of the series. Marin shut Belvedere out 12 to 0, the Meadow Club beat it 10 to 2, and Belvedere, with Ralston as captain, finished fourth of four.^10,11,12

The women gave the club its finest day of the year. Belvedere was one of nine founding members of a Women's North Bay Counties Golf Association.¹³ Mrs. C. F. Preusser chaired the arrangements.¹⁴ On 14 July more than sixty women came from as far as Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, Napa and Vallejo. Mrs. E. P. Halloran captained the home team, and Miss Kay Lawler of Marin won the low gross with 76.¹⁵ The Santa Rosa women went home telling their paper it had been the pleasantest event of the whole inter-club series.^16,17 Through that summer the men played informal matches, and the tennis courts were at the height of their popularity, with Mayor and Mrs. F. W. Boole, the Carleton Hydes and the Britton Reys among the regulars.^14,15

At the annual meeting in August 1932 Belcher, president since August 1930, declined to stand again, and the members elected Effingham Sutton president. The report spoke of new members, a well-run clubhouse and a much-admired garden.¹⁸

Reorganizing

Just before Christmas the Record announced that the golf club was reorganizing and had made C. F. Preusser its president, and the Oakland Tribune reported him elected president of what it called a newly organized club.^19,20 The Record still called him president in February 1933, but by September it again listed Sutton. The papers never explain the switch back.^21,22

Preusser's answer was to open the gates. In January 1933 he gave the golf teams of Tamalpais High, Marin Junior College and San Rafael High the courtesies of the course, since students had found the game almost impossible to take up because of club restrictions and cost.²³ Through the local Work Council, jobless boys of high-school age could also play on weekdays in return for work under the greenkeeper.²¹ The delegates from other clubs liked the idea and said they would take it home to their own members.²¹ The students came. On 26 February the Marin Junior College coach, "Scoop" Carlson, held tryouts for the college's first golf team at Belvedere, and in April the Tamalpais High coach planned to choose his team there.^24,25

In March the club and the San Francisco Yacht Club agreed to exchange full privileges. The initiation fee was waived until further notice, and a playing family membership was now $5 a month, a playing membership for a man $3 and for a woman $2.50. The nine holes were short, the announcement admitted, but very sporty.²⁶

Ben Sewell, the club's secretary, who had lived at the clubhouse with his mother, left in April for a bank job in Saratoga.²⁷ In May the team finished a distant last in the county series.²⁸

Voluntary Players

The summer of 1933 shows what the club had become. The women's North Bay tournament set for Belvedere in July was postponed indefinitely, as the Santa Rosa paper reported on the very morning of the event, after Santa Rosa had already picked its team.^29,30 The Record said the golf links were now visited mostly by players in casual individual games, and that tennis had been the game of the season.^31,22 At the club's last recorded election, in September, Sutton was returned as president.³² In October one line in the Belvedere column noted that the couple who had looked after the grounds and clubhouse had moved to San Francisco.³³

The end itself is not in the newspapers. According to the Landmarks Society's history, on 18 October 1933 the Belvedere Land Company, the landowner, announced it would take over the abandoned clubhouse, and four months later it voted to sell the club's property to cover $7,950 in unpaid rent.^34,35 The Society's historian, Hillary Don, noted that the club had fallen five days and seven months short of its twentieth birthday.³⁵ No notice of the closing has turned up in the Record.

The clubhouse did not stay dark for long. By July 1934 a new Belvedere Beach Club, keenest on tennis, was using the old club's property, which the Record described as closed for the time being. Its members planned to improve the old court, played interclub matches with the Mill Valley Tennis Club, and were preparing a dinner dance.³⁷ This fits the Landmarks Society's account that the clubhouse was used for social events for a time before becoming a rented residence.³⁵ A water district audit that fall showed the Belvedere Golf Club still owing $329.63 for water, a small sum beside the Meadow Club, which had paid nothing on its lease since November 1931.³⁸ The Depression had caught every club in the county.

Epilogue: What Became of the Course

The Land Company already had plans for its ground. A 1937 resubdivision map turned the former fairways into Blocks F to L, ranging from about 3 acres to nearly 15, wrapped by new curves of Golden Gate, Tamalpais and Bay View avenues.^39,40 According to the Landmarks Society, Tamalpais, North Point, Marin, Buckeye, lower Golden Gate and lower Bayview avenues were cut through the course from the 1940s to the 1960s, and lost golf balls probably lie under their asphalt.³⁴

When C. F. Preusser died in 1941, after a stroke at his home on Corinthian Island, his obituary recalled how much he had done to build the golf club.⁴¹ In 1946 the Mill Valley Tennis Club's own history listed the Belvedere Golf Club among the thriving Marin clubs of 1929.⁴² By 1957 a wire story listed the Belvedere Golf Club among the North Bay courses lost to the Depression and the building boom that followed.⁴³ Its game lived on a while: the 1954 county amateur champion, John Campagna, had learned his smooth game at the old Belvedere links.⁴⁴

The clubhouse survived. In 1965 it appeared on a Belvedere house tour as the house that had once been the Belvedere Golf and Country Club, with a beamed living room, a huge fireplace, a tennis court, a pool and gardens.^45,46 In 1978 the Record's street-name column noted that Britton Avenue "crosses the ridge of the old Belvedere golf course," named for Joseph Britton, a founder of the Belvedere Land Company. His great-nephew Britton Rey had been a director of the club in its final years and became Belvedere's first city manager.^47,32 The Landmarks Society gives the clubhouse's address as 1 Britton Avenue, where it still stands as a private home, and the porch where the caddies once turned a fire hose on the luncheon crowd still belongs to it.³⁴