Drifting north on El Camino Real,
the “King’s Highway” that links California’s 21 colonial missions, I can sense
Junipero Serra’s presence in the red-tile roofs and whitewashed adobe walls all
around us. My wife, for some reason, cannot.
“Nobody can walk that far for that
long and not collapse,” she insists. But Serra, a frail, asthmatic priest who
wandered from San Diego to San Francisco, established these outposts for
Spain’s distant monarchy.
“This land belonged to the
Chumash, one of the richest and most sophisticated Indian cultures in the West,”
I lecture. We are embarked on an Old California golf trip that, as a devoted
history geek, I have been planning since high school. “King Carlos III expelled
the Jesuits from his Mexican colonies and moved the Franciscans in. Father
Serra, head of the Franciscans in Baja, started walking north, beyond where
Europeans had penetrated.
“We are the product of an empire.
Centuries of dirt and wind blown by colonial dreams.”
“Sure,” she replies. “If you say
so.”
Thousands of Chumash were equally
circumspect and fomented rebellions against Serra’s legions. Thousands more gave
in and were baptized as Christian neophytes. This clash of cultures is still
evident in Santa
Barbara, where sun-dappled hills and stately Colonial
architecture seem touched by both natural and divine inspiration. Visiting
missions at San Buenaventura, Santa
Barbara and La Purisima Concepcion, I find a trio of
unforgettable golf courses that, as Junipero Serra once said of his own adobe
creations, “catch heaven in their nets.”
The first of these destinations
lies 15 miles east of Mission San Buenaventura at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa.
With dusk washing over ancient oaks and guests wandering in silent contentment
in their cotton spa robes, it looks like a page from the friar’s sketchbook. The
resort’s 6,305-yard course, tucked in a natural bowl of live and valley oaks, it
was built in 1923 by George C. Thomas Jr.
In 1988 Jay Morrish reworked
Ojai’s greens to USGA standards and revived Thomas’ signature tongue bunkers.
Ten years later, Jay’s son, Carter, along with director of golf Mark Greenslit
(and with input from Ben Crenshaw) rebuilt two lost holes. To gaze down on the
203-yard 16th (originally Thomas’ 3rd) and the majestic Topa Topa Mountains is to behold the joy and terror
of Golden Age strategic architecture.
