Despite phenomenal weather, wealth beyond measure and historic Northern California players including Johnny Miller, Ken Venturi and Julie Inkster, the Greater Bay Area is generally bypassed by the elite golfing world, with a few exceptions.
There are courses in Northern California that rival anything you can find in the world, but with the exception of the Pebble Beach area and Olympic Club in San Francisco (technically, Daly City), the pro tours don’t come to Northern California all that much.
When it comes to men’s golf, the game has, basically, outgrown many of courses in Northern California. On the 18th hole of TPC Sawgrass in Sunday’s final round of the PGA Tour’s Players Championship, winner Cameron Young hit his drive 375 yards. College men are routinely pumping out 300-yard drives and turning even long-ish courses into bomb-and-gouge tracks.
But many of the courses in the greater Bay Area are perfectly suited for the women’s game, which is why more and more tournaments are finding courses to play, on the Peninsula, especially. Over the last few years, Peninsula Golf & Country Club in San Mateo has hosted a US Women’s Open qualifier as well as the California Women’s Amateur championship.
And now, the LPGA is making a stop in Menlo Park, followed by the annual collegiate women’s showcase event.
Two big events will put the Peninsula in the golf spotlight for the rest of the month. This week, the LPGA Tour will be at Sharon Heights Golf & Country Club in Menlo Park for the Fortinet Founders Cup tournament.
At the end of this month Green Hills Golf & Country Club hosts the fourth annual Silicon Valley Showcase, featuring 11 collegiate women’s teams, where some of the top female college players and teams will tee it up.
The Fortinet Founders Cup, which begins Thursday and concludes Sunday, is in its 15th year and will feature some of top women’s players in the world, including 2025 winner Yealimi Noh and 2024 winner Rose Zhang, who twice won individual NCAA championships at Stanford.
Additionally, 20 of the top-25 players will be playing, including world No. 1 Jeeno Thitkul of Thailand and No. 2 Nelly Korda of the United States.
And of local interest, Victoria Cui, a sophomore at Crystal, got a special invitation and sponsor’s exemption and will be in the field. Cui is the reigning Daily Journal Girls’ Golfer of the Year after she won the West Bay Athletic League Co-Player of the Year honors before going on to win the Central Coast Section and CIF State girls’ golf championship this past fall.
For more information, go to www.thefounderslpga.com.
A little more than a week later after the conclusion of the Founders Cup, 11 collegiate women’s teams will tee it up at Green Hills Golf & Country Club for the fourth annual Silicon Valley Showcase, hosted by Santa Clara University and Silicon Valley Showcase Foundation.
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Santa Clara, UC Davis, Cal, Stanford, UC Irvine, San Diego State and University of San Francisco will represent California, with teams from Washington State, University of Wyoming, Kansas State and Eastern Michigan rounding out the field.
There will be a new individual champion this year as Pepperdine, which has won the individual and team title each of the first three years, won’t be playing in the event this season.
The SVS is a two-day event, which features 54 holes played over two rounds — including a 36-hole marathon on Monday, March 30, followed by a shotgun start for the final 18 holes Tuesday.
For more information, go to thesiliconvalleyshowcase.com.
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While there is not a lot of similarities between the tournaments on courses on opposite ends of the Peninsula, there are some historical connections between the Fortinet and the Silicon Valley Showcase.
Green Hills was designed by famed golf architect Alister MacKenzie in 1930, whose protege, John “Jack” Fleming, designed Sharon Heights in the early 1960s.
Additionally, both course have been renovated by Todd Eckenrode, who revamped Green Hills in 2009 and Sharon Heights, finishing in 2024.
While MacKenzie is nearly a household name among golf fans, Fleming should be right up there with him as he helped MacKenzie with many projects, including Green Hills, Sharp Park in Pacifica and Pasatiempo in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Fleming was the lead designer for the Golden Gate Park Golf Course, Lake Chabot Golf Course in the Oakland hills, Almaden Golf & Country Club in San Jose, along with Gleneagles International Golf Course and the nine-hole Fleming Course at what is now TPC Harding Park, both in San Francisco.
Between 1950 and 1967, Fleming designed 36 courses, mostly in Northern California, half of which were nine-hole course.
Nathan Mollat has been covering high school sports in San Mateo County for the San Mateo Daily Journal since 2001. He can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com.
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