Friendly Hills Swan Song!

by Doug
(Acton, Massachusetts)

Friendly Hills Country Club is a beautiful private member-owned golf club in Whittier, California and is home to a sad, but entertaining story of a True Swan Song.

This story came to me second hand from some member friends of mine who shared the story during my only round on invitation to their course.

There is a pond that sits just off the back of the clubhouse overlooked from the clubhouse above. The first tee sits in the middle of that pond and heads out and over down the right side while the 18th brings you home down the other side to a green bordered by that famous pond, as you can see in the pictures included.

As the story goes ... there was a beautiful swan who lived on that pond and the membership of the club had a desire to pair that swan with a mate. They raised $10,000 from member donations to purchase a male swan to pair with their resident female, but the romance never blossomed. The male became dominant and rejected the female which then had to be relocated to another pond on the back nine.

Not long after relocating the female, she was sadly attacked and killed by a coyote roaming the property. But what make matters worse and really gives this story its poetically twisted ending is that about a week after that tragic event on the back nine pond, the new $10,000 dominant male was killed by an errant approach shot to the 18th green that came bladed in on a hooking line drive that caught him squarely in the throat almost taking his head clean off.