Somewhere beneath the towers of the Westside, where the city presses in from every direction and the land may be worth more than almost anyone can imagine, there is a fold of canyons and barrancas that has been given over, improbably, to golf. Los Angeles Country Club North does not merely occupy this ground. It does full justice to it, hole after hole, as though the property had been waiting all along for someone to understand it. The club's story began in 1897 as the Los Angeles Golf Club, a restless institution that moved three times before settling in 1911 on its site beside Beverly Hills. There Joe Sartori and Ed Tufts, joined by Norman Macbeth and Charles Orr, laid out the first course on the new Wilshire ground. Herbert Fowler refashioned it in 1921. Then, in 1927, George C. Thomas Jr. and his right-hand man, William Bell, re-routed it with excellent effect, setting its hills, ridges, swales and valleys into a near-flawless design. In the new millennium Gil Hanse was entrusted with restoring the course to its former glory, and the restoration was a stellar one. What strikes you first is variety. Few eighteen-hole walks change character so often. The par threes are exceptionally strong, long and exacting. The 7th, at almost 240 yards, is perhaps the toughest of them, a hole where only a perfect tee shot finds the sanctuary of the green. The 9th is perhaps the signature, with the clubhouse as its backdrop. Yet many members will quietly steer you toward the 11th, where the skyline of downtown Los Angeles fills the distance. Even the flattest shots here are full of personality. The approaches into the 1st, 12th, 15th and 18th greens are the gentlest of the round, and somehow among the best, because no two of those greens behave alike. The 1st falls away at grade, subtle and lovely. The 12th, fronted by bunkers, spreads its wild wings front right and front left. The 15th, a short par three, curls into a fishhook with a devastating hump in its middle. And the 18th, with its back-right bowl and its repelling left side, emphasizes where the player stands in the fairway, a fairway that ran wide in the years before the U.S. Open. The finish is where Thomas's genius feels almost like sleight of hand. The 16th, 17th and 18th carry you off the high plateau where most of the back nine lives, down into the gorge the front nine travels through, and back up to the highland near the first hole and the clubhouse. The first time through, you are mystified as to how he made it work. The North also keeps its ghosts in plain sight. Robert Muir Graves's second green still sits above and to the right of the restored one. And Fowler's original par-3 17th, a 110-yard pitch to a postage-stamp green benched into a canyon wall, is still maintained, a small and charming survivor. There are two courses here, the North and the South, and anyone lucky enough to get a game with time for only one round would do well to persuade a friendly member toward the North. It is challenging and tough but fair, and it holds your interest all the way round. For most of its life it was a rarely seen masterpiece, until 2023 brought the U.S. Open and stepped it into the public spotlight. The odd imposing tower block peers over the trees, a reminder of the city outside. Inside, among the barrancas, it is a little piece of heaven.