The Riviera Riddle: Why Golf’s Greatest Players Keep Coming Up Short in Los Angeles

I’ve spent the better part of four decades watching the world’s best golfers navigate championship courses, and I’ve learned that some venues just don’t cooperate with greatness. But Riviera Country Club? That place is in a category all its own—a beautiful, brutally honest test that has humbled legends and crowned unlikely champions in equal measure.

This week’s Genesis Invitational marks the 100-year anniversary of tournament golf at this iconic Pacific Palisades layout, and the numbers tell a fascinating story. Since the tournament began in 1924, Riviera has been won by Bubba Watson three times, with Phil Mickelson, Fred Couples, Lanny Wadkins, and Tom Watson each claiming two victories. But here’s the kicker that keeps me up at night: Jack Nicklaus never won here. Tiger Woods never won here. And the current generation’s best—Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy—aren’t exactly knocking down the door either.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a golf course with an identity crisis.

A Course That Defies Logic

What strikes me most about Riviera isn’t just that it’s difficult—plenty of courses are difficult. It’s that it seems specifically engineered to counter what makes the very best players great. The course has a slight bias toward length off the tee, which you’d think would favor the longest hitters. Instead, we’ve seen Mickelson, a left-hander with a unique swing, thrive there. The greens demand precision, yet they also punish you for being too aggressive. It’s almost as if the course was designed by someone trying to prove that raw talent and power aren’t enough.

Jordan Spieth, who genuinely loves this place, captured something important about Riviera that I think gets overlooked. In his words:

“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.”

Having caddied in the ’90s and covered dozens of tours events since, I can tell you that most elite courses reward brilliance in one or two areas. A player can bomb it and make up for a slightly offline approach shot. Or they can be slightly longer off the tee but make up for it with surgically precise iron play. Riviera doesn’t allow that trade-off. It wants everything, all the time.

The Mystery of Two GOATs

The more I think about it, the more Nicklaus and Woods’s struggles at Riviera feel like one of golf’s great unsolved mysteries. Both men were dominant at Augusta National, where the demands are similarly exacting. Both won regularly at Torrey Pines and Pebble Beach—courses that also feature the tricky Poa Annua greens that Riviera uses. Both could work the ball left-to-right when needed.

In 12 Genesis Invitational starts (plus two PGA Championship appearances) at Riviera, Nicklaus finished second twice but never won. Woods fared slightly better with a couple of runner-up finishes across 16 attempts, but never claimed the title. When pressed on the subject in 1994, the Bear offered a simple shrug: “I’ve had some pretty good rounds here but never four that were good enough to win.”

Woods, decades later, struck a similar note of resignation: “I know the golf course. I also know I haven’t a lot of success here.”

“I know the golf course. I also know I haven’t a lot of success here.”

That admission from two of the greatest minds the game has ever seen? That tells you something profound about Riviera’s complexity.

The Lefty Connection

Here’s where it gets interesting. Three of the course’s multiple winners—Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, and two-time Masters champion Mike Weir—are all left-handed. As Spieth noted in 2021, Bubba’s success has everything to do with “the shotmaking ability that he has and it just brings the feel out in his game.”

I think there’s more to it than just handedness, though. Lefties historically learn to shape the ball differently, work with different visual cues, and approach course management from a unique angle. At a place like Riviera that demands versatility and creative shot-making, that alternative perspective might actually be an advantage.

What About Today’s Titans?

Scottie Scheffler, despite his recent dominance across the professional landscape, has never finished better than seventh at Riviera and has never seriously contended for the lead. McIlroy has done marginally better with a fourth-place finish in 2019 and a fifth-place showing in 2020, but even he’s fading in recent years.

I don’t think this signals a fundamental flaw in either player’s game. What I see is a golf course that continues to do what it’s done for a century: demand respect, require versatility, and punish complacency. In an era where distance and consistency have become the dominant metrics of tour success, Riviera remains a throwback—a course that values feel, creativity, and shot-shaping over raw power.

That’s not a weakness of the course. That’s its greatest strength.