I thought I knew Riviera

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I have been in and around golf all my life. This grand game has taken me to seven countries and all over these United States. I have enjoyed playing on, writing about, and broadcasting from some of the most storied courses on earth. From the great St. Andrews to spectacular Shinnecock Hills to the amazing Augusta National, where I turned professional and started my first golf job many years ago. I offer this background to put in perspective my first trip to Riviera Country Club.

Until he got there, our blogger thought he knew all he needed to about Riviera. (Condon/PGA TOUR)

Many know about Hogan's Alley, the Bogart Tree and the famous history of all the great movies that have been filmed on the classic layout, including the Ben Hogan story "Follow the Sun" starring Glenn Ford. Many also know about the golf course and what makes it great: Narrow, tree-lined fairways, rolling and subtly-breaking elevated greens with strategic runoff areas, deep green-side bunkers with rolling mounds, and long par-4 tests which not only require precision, but brute length as well.

Having watched golf from Riviera all my life, I thought I knew the course as well. But now that I have actually been to the course to cover the Northern Trust Open for XM Satellite Radio, I can tell you I did not know Riviera.

I had no idea about the incredible beauty that abounds all over the course.

The giant Eucalyptus trees that line many of the fairways are truly monstrous. I made this comment to a long-time resident of the area, who replied: "You should have seen the really big ones that were killed by the blight a few years ago."

You mean they were bigger than the enormous sentries that stand guard over this course now? Unbelievable.

The trees on the golf course now have huge branches, sometimes supported by eight-inch steel pipe beams that act as stilts under the branch. The aroma from all the Eucalyptus is hard to describe, but I am convinced it has made my labored breathing easier. From a distance the giant, white-barked beasts -- with their only foliage on the upper-most branches -- combine to resemble a bone yard, awaiting more deposits below in the valley by the par-3 sixth hole.

The golf course sits under the majestic clubhouse, in a canyon that meanders throughout the local hillsides. There are mansions held up over the property by retaining walls, and in some places it appears these homes actually defy gravity -- much like a prodigious John Daly drive -- providing the homeowners with a bird's eye view of the golf action below.

There are so many beautiful flowers and rock walls, each hole provides a new adventure in landscaping. Flocks of tropical birds that I would expect to see much closer to the equator than Pacific Palisades, Calif., provide a spectacular soundtrack. Not only are all these birds loud in song and chirp, their feathers represent every hue on the color spectrum and flash above you at impossible angles.

It truly is a uniquely beautiful place.