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So Steve Stricker won the Northern Trust Open in Los Angeles today, and good for the 42-year-old who told PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem that he was so excited about the new season he couldn’t wait for it to start.

The only thing missing from Stricker’s record is a major championship, and he’s been playing so well that maybe he’ll grab his first this year. He won three times last year and his win today moved him past Phil Mickelson and into second place in the World Ranking, behind Tiger Woods.

Still, Stricker’s play alone wasn’t the star of the show in star- studded L.A. And no matter who wins the coming week’s AT&T National Pro-Am up the coast on the Monterey Peninsula, that player won’t be the star. For this week and next, anyway, the golf courses are the show.

That’s right, the courses. The Riviera Country Club is one of the grand old courses in the game, and is there a more interesting hole than the 315-yard, par-four 10th hole where golfers who try the green can make anything from an eagle to a double bogey if they miss and leave themselves an awkward angle to the long, narrow green? Now that’s a golf hole.

No wonder the Riv, as the course is called, has been a favourite stop for most PGA Tour players since the tournament started in 1926. Ben Hogan won it three times. Sam Snead won it a couple of times. Arnold Palmer won three times. Mike Weir missed the cut this time but he won in 2003 and 2004. The Riv was also the venue for the 1983 and 1995 PGA Championships. It’s a major PGA Tour course that also hosts majors.

What a shame that the PGA Tour doesn’t visit more classic courses like Riviera. But golf-watchers can look forward to the upcoming week, when the Pebble Beach Golf Links will be the main attraction. It’s not the only course used during the AT&T, but the tournament will finish there next Sunday.

By the way, the U.S. Open will be played at Pebble Beach in June.

Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open the last time it was played there, in 2000, when his margin of victory—if that’s what it can be called, was

15 shots. Will Woods still have much of a game should he play at Pebble in June, as he’s expected to? It’s impossible to know and stupid to try to predict.

As for Pebble, what a course, what with its awesome scenery, lying above Carmel Bay. But it’s also got one superb hole after another.

Jack Nicklaus said he would rather hit balls down the cliff and across a corner of the ocean to the eighth green on the 418-yard par-four hole that sits well below the golfer’s feet than play just about any hole anywhere. It’s his favourite shot in golf.

Then, of course, there’s the par-five 18th hole that winds around the bay, curving right to left. It looked like Burnaby, B.C.’s Jim Nelford was set to win the tournament in 1985 when Hale Irwin, the only player who could catch him, drove into the rocks left of the fairway. But Irwin’s ball ricocheted back into the fairway. Irwin birdied the hole and won in a playoff.

Classic stories, classic courses. This two-week run on the west coast is as good as it gets on the PGA Tour. And good here is a synonym for great, a word that’s applied all too easily to courses and so often loses its meaning.

But not these two weeks, not at the Riv and not at Pebble.