Riviera’s Curse: Why Golf’s Greatest Players Keep Coming Up Short
I’ve been covering this tour for 35 years, and I’ve learned that golf courses have personalities. Some reward power and precision. Others demand a particular type of golf intelligence—a feel that either clicks or it doesn’t. Riviera Country Club, perched above the Pacific in Pacific Palisades, is one of those enigmatic venues that seems to possess an almost willful defiance toward greatness.
This week’s Genesis Invitational marks the 60th running of this prestigious event at Riviera since its inception exactly 100 years ago as the Los Angeles Open. And as I’ve studied the historical record, something remarkable—and frankly, baffling—has jumped out at me: the two greatest golfers of all time have never won here. Not once. Jack Nicklaus played 14 times without a victory. Tiger Woods has tried 16 times with identical results.
What strikes me most is that this isn’t about two players having a bad week. This is about a pattern so pronounced it demands explanation.
The Lefty Advantage
After combing through decades of results and talking to players about the nuances of Riviera’s setup, I think I’ve stumbled onto something. Look at the winners: Bubba Watson with three victories, Phil Mickelson with two, Mike Weir with one at the Masters connection. What do they have in common? They’re all left-handed.
The article notes the obvious challenges—Riviera favors longer hitters, demands elite approach work to quirky-shaped greens, and rewards that left-to-right shape off the tee. But here’s what I think matters most: the course seems built for shotmaking creativity, and lefties appear to have an intuitive advantage with how this particular routing plays.
Mickelson and Watson haven’t just won at Riviera; they’ve become multiple-time winners at Augusta National too. That’s not coincidence. Both courses demand similar virtues—precision, creativity, an ability to work the ball into tucked pins. In my three decades around the tour, I’ve noticed that players who master one of these layouts often understand the other almost instinctively.
Yet Nicklaus and Woods—two players who dominated Augusta in their primes—remained winless here. Both were exceptional faders of the ball. Both were supremely intelligent golfers. Both proved themselves at other Poa Annua grass venues like Torrey Pines and Pebble Beach. The mystery deepens.
When Greatness Meets Its Match
I’ll be honest: having caddied for Tom Lehman back in the ’90s, I learned that sometimes a player’s strengths can become liabilities at a particular course. Lehman was an extraordinarily consistent ball-striker, yet certain layouts seemed to punish his predictability.
Listen to what Jordan Spieth said about Riviera’s demands:
“It’s one of those rare weeks where you just can’t get away with firing at flag sticks. Precision is so key, but being smart and recognizing when even being precise still won’t work out. There’s not much rough, but it does take the spin off enough so you can’t get into pins. So you just have to be so disciplined.”
That’s the real challenge here. Riviera doesn’t punish aggression through traditional rough. It punishes it through setup subtlety—greens that reject even well-struck shots, Poa Annua surfaces that demand extraordinary speed control, and angles that suggest going after pins is a fool’s errand.
Spieth himself has played Riviera 12 times with only one top-10 finish. He loves the course intellectually. He understands it. But Riviera doesn’t care about understanding—it cares about execution.
Today’s Titans Face the Same Riddle
Here’s where it gets interesting for this week’s event. Scottie Scheffler has never finished better than seventh at Riviera and has never come close to contending. Rory McIlroy has managed a fourth-place finish in 2019 and a fifth in 2020, but has faded in recent attempts.
Are we watching the next chapter of this Riviera curse unfold? Or will Scheffler and McIlroy solve what Nicklaus and Woods could not?
In my experience, when you see a pattern this persistent across different eras of dominance, it suggests something structural about the venue itself—not just about individual players. Riviera seems to require a specific combination of skills and temperament that doesn’t always correlate with overall greatness. Spieth articulated this perfectly:
“It just requires all parts of the game and a variety of ball-striking. And then once you’re on the greens, you’ve got to have great speed control. It’s an all-around fantastic golf course that you don’t get away with poor shots at all.”
The irony is that Riviera should theoretically favor the best players on earth. Instead, it’s become a course where Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson, and others have proven themselves more than the all-time greats. That’s not a knock on any of these champions—they’ve earned their laurels. It’s simply an acknowledgment that golf doesn’t always reward the obvious favorites.
The Week Ahead
As we head into this Genesis Invitational, I’ll be watching to see if Scheffler or McIlroy can break through. But I’m also mindful that Riviera has humbled titans before. This week, we’ll learn whether today’s finest players have figured out what Jack and Tiger could not—or whether Riviera’s mysterious preferences remain gloriously unexplained.
