Riviera is an annual stop on the PGA Tour.
Patrick Koenig
People go to great lengths to get on Riviera Country Club, but this method does not come recommended.
At around 1 p.m. on Friday, a small plane made an emergency landing at the prestigious private club in Santa Monica Calif., buzzing low over the course and bouncing to a halt in a wild scene captured on cell phone video.
According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, there were no injuries to anyone on the ground or to any of the three people on the plane, KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles reported.
A Riviera representative told Golf.com by phone that the club could not comment on the matter.
In the video of the incident, which quickly went viral, a man’s voice is heard calling out in surprise from the course as a phone camera focuses on the near distance. Moments later, a single-engine Cessna comes into view, winging low up the the 1st fairway and bouncing on the turf just left of the 2nd green before swerving to a stop by the 10th tee as startled golfers look on.
A high-end members-only club and three-time major championship host, Riviera is well-known to golf fans as host of the Genesis Invitational, an annual Tiger Woods-hosted event that is part of the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing. This year, the Genesis was forced to relocate to Torrey Pines in San Diego after devastating wild fires swept through Los Angeles in January. The blazes, which left 30 people dead and reduced entire neighborhoods to ruins, burned up to the edge of Riviera but did not damage the course.
Few details about the emergency landing were immediately available on Friday afternoon, but flight-tracking information posted on flightradar24.com show that a Cessa with the same tail number as the plane in the video was scheduled to land at around the same time as the incident at nearby Santa Monica Airport.
The incident will be investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.
