Knollwood Country Club

Aliso Canyon gas leak and communities are categorized as the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety’s Methane Zone and require Methane Testing.  Buildings within the Methane Zone are required to Implement Methane Mitigation Design in all new construction projects. Knollwood Country Club is located in Granada Hills, California, just 25 miles north of downtown LA. Home to the first oil well in the San Fernando Valley. Oil drills were an aid to establish Granada Hills in the early 1900s.  In the 1920s, agriculture helped continue the city’s advancement by growing and distributing fruits and nuts.  In current events, the town had a significant impact by the Aliso Canyon gas leak.

Knollwood Country Club Estates and History

Knollwood Country Club came to be in the 1950s. It’s intent was to be a community of high-end homes for the upper class.  Frequented by celebrities and public figures, the golf course had the ambition of establishing itself as a top-notch private club.  Ultimately the plans did not come to fruition.  The current Knollwood Country Club Estates carries its history by presenting a mixture of home values throughout the community. The golf course maintains its beauty and class. Now it is an LA County-owned Golf course, where management is by American Golf.

Golf Facilities at Knollwood

Knollwood Country Club has a two-tier parking lot large enough for hundreds of cars.  If you’re lucky enough to get an upper-tier parking spot, you can avoid the 30-step staircase from the bottom tier.  Unfortunately, upper-tier parking is scarce. The golf course will not  allow you to bring your golf cart to your car. Thus one is stuck with dragging their golf bag up Mount Everest.  Hauling your load up that staircase is a great warm-up, though!

The Knollwood Country Club pro shop was difficult to locate amongst several buildings, including the kitchen, green keepers’ storage, golf cart storage, and a small venue for parties. Once inside the pro shop, checking in with the friendly staff is a breeze. The pro shop has a decent selection of bags, shoes, gloves, and other golf accessories.  Someone has to turn on the golf shop’s AC; it gets stuffy in there! The kitchen is like an old-style cafeteria blended with a small-town diner. The food menu changes frequently and is a birdie for golf course food. The current menu consists of sliders and a spicy chicken sandwich. The gentleman in the kitchen recommend the sliders. Which feature a name after a player who recently got a hole-in-one on the course.

The two-level driving range is 75 yards wide and 230 yards long, with about 40 mats

Two extensive practices of putting greens separate the pro shop and the entrance to the second level of the driving range.  Due to the high elevation of the top-level mats, you can find signs posted restricting the use of your clubs to only irons. The poor-quality Mats were in terrible shape, with massive tears through them from frequent and elongated use.  The ball retriever machine is only operational on the first floor, so get ready for some exercise if you want to hit off the top-tier mats.

Playing Golf at Knollwood – Pace of Play

The Knollwood Country Club course plays long and is reasonably forgiving. Most holes have hillsides on each side of the fairway, allowing for optimal forgiveness. You’ll frequently find slices landing on the top of the hillside and slowly trickling down onto the rough fairway.

A lot of the rough consists of bark, like hitting a far fairway bunker shot. You’ll feel the power of your swing getting suction out of the wild at Knollwood.

The pace of play at the course was okay, finishing the round at about 4 hours and 30 minutes. In the past, Knollwood was infamous for its 5-somes and slow play, but thankfully they recently changed their club rules and allowed a foursome maximum. This may have something to do with Covid-19, but regardless, it is a better approach for the course; let’s hope it stays!

The Knollwood Country Club course is between the Granada Hills residential community. The homes on the back nine are noticeably higher-end homes, so careful with your slice; you’d hate to break a window!