Next week, the Genesis Invitational tees off at The Riviera Country Club for its 100th playing. That number deserves a moment. One hundred editions of the same tournament, stretching back to 1926 — before the Masters existed, before the PGA Tour was even formally organized, before television, before graphite shafts, before launch monitors. This event has been a constant through nearly every era of professional golf.
And yet, if you asked most casual fans to name the sport's most historically significant tournaments, the Genesis Invitational probably wouldn't crack their top five. It should.
Born the Same Year as Riviera Itself
The tournament and the course share a birth year. In 1926, The Riviera Country Club opened its doors in Pacific Palisades, and the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce launched the inaugural LA Open at nearby Los Angeles Country Club with a $10,000 purse — the richest in professional golf at the time. For context, the U.S. Open purse that year was $2,145.
That prize money wasn't just generous. It signaled something: Los Angeles was serious about golf, and it was willing to put up the cash to prove it. The West Coast had been a sideshow in American golf. The LA Open changed that almost overnight.
The tournament bounced between venues for decades before permanently settling at Riviera in 1973, where it has stayed ever since. That six-decade residency has created one of the deepest course-tournament relationships in all of golf.
The Holes That Define Riviera
George C. Thomas Jr. designed Riviera, and his work holds up a century later with almost no major alterations. That's the highest compliment you can pay a golf architect.
The 6th hole is the most photographed par 3 on the PGA Tour for good reason: there's a bunker in the middle of the green. Not guarding the green. In it. If you're on the wrong side, you have to decide whether to putt around the sand or chip over it. It's a design choice that would get laughed out of most modern architecture meetings, and it's brilliant.
The 10th hole is widely considered one of the finest short par 4s in the world. Jack Nicklaus said it offered more strategic options than any other short par 4 he knew. You can lay up, play left for the best angle, or bomb driver and go for the green. Thomas gives you choices and then makes you live with them.
The 4th hole is the one Ben Hogan called "the greatest par 3 in America." The natural barranca — a ravine that cuts through the property — comes into play here, adding a visual intimidation factor that persists even among the best players in the world.
These aren't gimmick holes. They're strategic puzzles that reward thinking and shotmaking over raw power. Riviera isn't the longest course on tour, but it consistently produces leaderboards filled with the best players in the world. That's the Thomas design philosophy at work.
Hogan's Alley
The nickname "Hogan's Alley" didn't come from a single win. It came from dominance. Between January 1947 and June 1948, Ben Hogan won three times at Riviera: the 1947 LA Open by three strokes, the 1948 LA Open by four strokes, and the 1948 U.S. Open — his first major championship. Three wins in 18 months on the same course. Jimmy Demaret hung the nickname on Riviera, and it stuck permanently.
What makes Hogan's connection to Riviera so fitting is that the course rewards exactly the kind of golf he played: precise, strategic, demanding accuracy over distance. You can't overpower Riviera. You have to think your way around it. That was Hogan's entire philosophy distilled into 18 holes.
Firsts That Changed the Game
The Genesis Invitational's history isn't just about great golf. It's about moments that moved the sport forward in ways that mattered beyond the scorecard.
In 1929, the LA Open became the first golf tournament broadcast on radio. That's easy to gloss over now, but bringing golf into people's homes for the first time was revolutionary. It transformed the sport from something you had to physically attend into something millions could follow.
In 1938, Babe Didrikson Zaharias competed in the LA Open — the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event. She didn't just show up as a curiosity. She made the cut.
In 1948, Bill Spiller and Ted Rhodes became the first African Americans to play in a non-USGA, PGA Tour event at the LA Open. That moment, which happened a year after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, was a crack in golf's wall of exclusion.
And then there's Charlie Sifford. In 1969, Sifford — the first African American member of the PGA Tour — won the LA Open for his second tour victory. The tournament now honors him annually through the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption, a spot in the field given to a player who embodies Sifford's pioneering spirit. That exemption has become one of the most meaningful traditions in professional golf.
Tiger's Origin Story Starts Here
In 1992, a 16-year-old amateur named Tiger Woods played his first PGA Tour event at the LA Open. He didn't contend — he was in high school — but the appearance planted a seed that would reshape the sport forever. Tiger's connection to the tournament deepened over the decades, and in 2020 he became the tournament host, lending his foundation's name and mission to the event.
It's fitting that Tiger's first tour experience happened at the same event where Sifford broke through. There's a through-line of progress at the Genesis Invitational that connects across generations.
Meanwhile, Jack Nicklaus earned his first professional paycheck at this tournament in 1962: exactly $33.33. Every legend has a starting point, and for the Golden Bear, it was here.
25 Hall of Famers and Counting
The winner's list reads like a history of professional golf. Lloyd Mangrum and Macdonald Smith each won four times. Hogan won three. Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Adam Scott, and Dustin Johnson have all hoisted the trophy. Twenty-five champions are World Golf Hall of Fame members. Twenty have come from outside the United States, a testament to the tournament's global stature long before "international fields" became a marketing buzzword.
Recent champions have been no less impressive. Hideki Matsuyama closed with a 62 in 2024 to set the tournament record for lowest final round. Ludvig Åberg won in 2025 — albeit at Torrey Pines, after wildfires forced a temporary relocation from Riviera.
What to Watch Next Week
The 2026 edition features a return to Riviera after last year's displacement, and the centennial celebrations include commissioned artwork by artist Jonas Never depicting a century's worth of champions, hosts, and moments.
But the real celebration will happen on the course itself. Riviera doesn't need bunting and banners to feel special. The eucalyptus-lined fairways, the barranca, the bunker in the middle of the 6th green — these are features that have tested golfers for 100 years and will test them for 100 more.
One hundred playings of a single tournament is remarkable. But what makes the Genesis Invitational's centennial truly worth marking isn't the number. It's what happened during those hundred editions: barriers broken, legends born, a course that refused to become obsolete, and a tournament that quietly shaped professional golf into what it is today.
That's not a bad century of work.
