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With the polished glow of a “reimagined” golf course, San Juan Oaks Golf Club is ready for its close-up.
On June 24, the public can see the renovated course and clubhouse as dozens of top golfers play in the U.S. Amateur Championship qualifying rounds. The club was chosen as one of 45 qualifying sites for the upcoming U.S. Amateur Championship to be held in August at The Olympic Club in San Francisco.
San Juan Oaks General Manager Manny Freitas said hosting a U.S. Golfing Association-sanctioned event like the U.S. Amateur qualifying following a major upgrade effort is a great way to raise the club’s profile and a return to the days when it hosted other high-profile events.
“We’re honored to welcome the USGA and the U.S. Amateur to San Juan Oaks,” Freitas said. “This is a proud moment for our entire team and a testament to the tremendous work that has gone into elevating this course. Our team has put a lot of thought into updating the course to test every aspect of a player’s game. With firm, fast greens, San Juan Oaks is designed to challenge top amateurs while still offering a fair and rewarding experience.”
Freitas said hosting a U.S. Amateuer qualifying for the first time “brings some prestigiousness with it,” and gives San Juan Oaks an opportunity to put its best foot forward.
“These are some of the top players in the area and guess what they do, they play a lot of golf and they tell people, ‘we played at San Juan Oaks and that place is awesome.’ And there’s other players who say, ‘hey, San Juan Oaks was a U.S. Amateur qualifier, I’ve got to go check that place out.’ So you’re tying yourself to huge organizations in the golf business, the USGA is probably the biggest name in golf aside from the PGA so if you put your name next to organizations like that, it just elevates your property.”
Freitas said that wouldn’t have been possible without a complete and much-anticipated makeover of the 7,071-yard golf course and clubhouse located west of Hollister off Union Road near Hwy 156.
Since San Juan Oaks opened in 1996, it’s hosted a whole range of events, from the Ganter Open which hosted original course designer Fred Couples playing with golf legends Craig Stadler, John Daly and John Cook, as well as PGA Tour qualifying, the Fry’s.com tournament at Cordevalle qualifying, USGA Public Links qualifying, and the West Coast Conference championship tournament, and others.
But Freitas said as the course aged and accumulated deferred maintenance, the events gradually disappeared.
In stepped developer Third Millennium Partners, which purchased San Juan Oaks—the golf course, clubhouse and the long-delayed housing project—and gave Freitas and his brother, Mark, the course superintendent, the go-ahead to conduct the kind of full renovation they had been dreaming about for years.
The brothers, who grew up across Hwy 156 from San Juan Oaks and have worked at the club since it opened, had a checklist of changes and upgrades they wanted to make and brought in famed golf course architect Gene Bates, who had designed the original course. Freitas said Bates generally agreed with the brothers’ plans, and with a few ideas from then owners thrown in, the work began.
As a result, San Juan Oaks was closed for two and a half years, but work was completed last year the Freitas brothers had “checked off nearly every box” on the list of improvements they envisioned.
Among the most obvious changes was the switching of the nines, making the original back nine holes (Nos. 10-18) the front nine, and vice-versa. That made the new front nine a climb into the hills, culminating in the No. 8 tee box offering a breathtaking view of San Juan Valley and a precipitous and challenging drop to the green.
Perhaps the most modern upgrade is the addition of Wi-Fi, which Freitas said he believes makes San Juan Oaks the first golf club in the nation to offer free Wi-Fi service on the course.
In addition, the renovation included a new irrigation system and regrassing the entire course; cutting the number of bunkers by more than half; adding new tee boxes in some places; adding a few ponds; clearing sight lines by cutting back trees and underbrush; and improving cart paths and bridges.
“We focused on pace of play,” Freitas said. “We didn’t want to sacrifice the integrity of the course, we wanted to improve it. We wanted to make it easier for the regular player while keeping the integrity for the lower-handicap player.”
The result, according to Freitas, was a successful restoration of San Juan Oaks to its original intent, as a high-end, championship course.
Now, the club is set to host its first high-profile event in the U.S. Amateur qualifying, which will draw 84 amateur golfers to the course, along with friends and family.
“This is a big deal for some of these players,” Freitas said. “A lot of them are younger, college or high school, maybe an amateur player trying to get to the next level.”
And, he said, Northern California Golf Association chief operating officer Ryan Gregg was so impressed by the golf club’s upgrades that he has already expressed an interest in returning next year.
The event starts at 8 a.m. with groups of three in a split tee start at Nos. 1 and 10, and is free and open to the public.
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