It doesn’t matter who you ask—Riviera Country Club is widely considered not only one of the best golf courses on the PGA TOUR, but also one of the best in the United States. The routing, the features, the aesthetics—it all combines to create the perfect stage for professional golf.
But the true mastery of the George C. Thomas Jr. and William P. Bell design lies in its ability to torment the world’s best without the presence of hazards. There’s no water, no out of bounds in play—it’s an expert-level mind game.
“When you look at this golf course and you look at it on paper, it seems kind of easy,” Scottie Scheffler said on Wednesday. “Then you start playing it…then the golf course just eats away at you over time. I feel like this golf course can be about as frustrating to play as any on TOUR, just with the little tricks that it has.”
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One of those tricks is the par-3 fourth, which now measures 273 yards. Back in 2024, the last time the Genesis Invitational was played in the Pacific Palisades, it measured just over 230 yards.
Two years ago, it ranked as the third-hardest hole and yielded just 11 birdies compared to 60 bogeys. With an additional 40 yards to contend with, I have a hard time seeing more than a handful of twos at the fourth this week.
When asked about the change, Rory McIlroy called it “horrible,” noting that players rarely found the green in regulation at its previous yardage.
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“If you want it to be a 275-yard par 3, you have to change the apron leading up onto the green,” McIlroy said. “It can’t be Kikuyu; it has to be another type of grass that can help you run it onto the green because, again, in the right conditions, you try to fly that ball onto the green with a 3-iron, it’s going to finish up on the fifth tee box.”
The apron McIlroy referred to is the Redan to the right of the green. It’s designed so players can use the kicker to propel their ball toward the green instead of flying it all the way there. However, Kikuyu is sticky, making it next to impossible to use the contours of the green complex.
“The problem with it being soft is that you can’t really use the Redan as it’s intended to be used by design,” J.J. Spaun said during his pre-tournament presser. “But with how soft the greens are, you can pretty much just fly it at the green and it should plug and roll out maybe to the mid-center or back-center of the green…three 3s or four 3s there is going to be a pretty good score this week.”
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Collin Morikawa, fresh off his win at Pebble Beach, expressed disappointment with how little thought goes into playing the course’s cleanup hole, dubbing it “hit and hope.”
“It’s too soft, unfortunately, to have a lot of control to say, ‘Man, I’m going to play a tight 5-iron and run it up.’ I think a lot of us play it left to chip uphill, but with a 3-wood in hand, that cart path on the left honestly comes into play because the dispersion just gets that much bigger. There’s not a lot of thought to it other than just kind of hitting the green and moving on, unfortunately.”
Defending Genesis champion Ludvig Åberg, who won at Torrey Pines when the tournament was forced to move due to wildfires in the Los Angeles area, added that when the ball lands in the soft Kikuyu, it stops dead, but when it lands on firm greens, it bounces away.
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A challenge? Yes—but with the potential to be an unfair one.
Now, the weather has played a factor. Riviera has seen lots of rain over the last few days which has softened the entire course. If we’re lucky enough to see the property dry out a bit over the next few days, maybe we’ll get to see the guys play the hole as it was designed.
At the end of the day, every player in the field has to contend with it. Whoever handles the adversity best will have a leg up on everyone else. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a point of contention as the week unfolds.