When it comes to municipal golf courses it seems everyone has an opinion.
Some think they should be turned into elaborate vegetable gardens. Members of the Wednesday ladies league think these courses should stay exactly as they are, thank you very much. The progressive social group feels that maybe the best bet is turning them into subsidized housing. The organizations that run the sport in Canada are sure they are the gateway to a new generation of golfers.
Politicians, for the most part, nod politely or turn their cameras off during the online public consultations and hope the whole thing disappears.
And that, my friends, is the problem of municipal golf in a nutshell.
Last week, the city of Toronto held a public consultation about its five municipal golf courses following the release of a commissioned report undertaken by an urban planning firm. The goal of the meeting, apparently, was to solicit opinion on the future of these courses from a group of concerned Torontonians. The online discussion went on for a few hours, with passionate pleas being met by blank screens of most city leaders, and some interest from a handful of politicians.
The issue of what should be done with Toronto’s city courses is just a microcosm of what’s happening with municipal golf across Canada. The courses, largely, have been neglected for decades, and used as cash cows, milked for every penny, with the funds diverted to pay for other city services. Over time, the courses, with no money for improvements, started to show their age, just about the same time demand for golf retreated, leaving city politicians to wonder aloud why citizens were paying taxes to support blue bloods playing an elitist game.
The online discussion went on for a few hours, with passionate pleas being met by blank screens of most city leaders, and some interest from a handful of politicians.
Yes, there are a lot of things wrong with that notion. Municipal golf in Canada – particularly in Toronto – has never been about affluent people playing an exclusive game. It is about people getting on the subway with their clubs over their shoulders, dropping a ball in the rack at Don Valley Golf Course, just south of Highway 401, and hoping to get a game for a relatively reasonable cost. That said, in time it got more expensive – Don Valley now costs slightly more than $80 on the weekend – and there has been a decline in conditions and services received.
But it is at these sorts of city-run courses, by and large, that many urbanites get their introduction to the game. Sure, they may gravitate away and onto grander facilities later, but humble municipal courses like Humber Valley and Dentonia Park are the kinds of places where people fall in love with golf. That’s their importance.
The perceived problem facing Toronto in the past few years is that declining rounds at city-run courses led to financial shortfalls. No longer did the courses pay their way and fund other projects. Instead, they began costing the city money, as was the case in many municipalities across Canada. Toronto set out to find “whether each space is being used to its full public potential.” It appears many city officials had reached their conclusion before they asked any questions.
All of which made the Toronto public online consultation about municipal golf intriguing. Largely, the voices heard were pro-golf. Yes, the women’s league that plays Wednesday at Dentonia Park, a 2,000-yard course sandwiched between some high rises and run-down storefronts on the edge of Toronto’s eastern borough, was vocal about not wanting any change. Industry voices – Canadian Golf Hall of Famers Bob Weeks and Lorne Rubenstein – spoke of their childhood connection to the city’s municipal facilities that drew them into a lifetime connection with the game. Politicians asked some questions and then shut off their video cameras to decide what to put to an upcoming council vote.
Truthfully, it is likely that very little will happen. Golf in cities like Toronto has been saved by the influx of play during the pandemic which has flooded municipal courses, just as it has pretty much everywhere else. That also means money has flowed in a way not seen since the heady of days when Tiger Woods was luring new people to the game. Talk of millions in earnings for the first time in years has limited some of the outcry about making changes to golf in the city.
That’s too bad. Toronto’s courses need $10 million in improvements, according to a municipal report, and there’s a great opportunity here to make the facilities a vital part of their surroundings.
Take, for instance, Dentonia. The city proposed a master plan that calls for cutting the course back to nine holes. There’s pushback to the idea, but what about making the facility more connected with its community? Imagine a nine-hole, par-3 course that’s affordable and fun, created by a real golf designer, where bunkers actually have sand in them and greens don’t resemble a nearby front lawn. Take the other parts of the property and create the city’s only driving range, with a short-game area and community putting green freely open to all.
And instead of trying to limit the connection with the surrounding urban landscape, embrace it. Bring people in from the towers and show them the enjoyment they can get from the game. I might see this with rose-coloured glasses but look at what happened in Florida when Winter Park, a suburb of Orlando, reinvested in its nine-hole course. That facility now brings in more than $1 million in annual revenue and is leading a trend in which cities see golf as an important part of their overall recreation package.
Will Toronto view it that way? We can only hope so. Cities are brought to life through their parks, baseball diamonds, soccer pitches, urban gardens, and yes, their golf courses, a place where someone hops off the subway on a July afternoon on his or her way home from work and whacks a ball around with a buddy for a couple of hours.
Can they be better? Yes. Can their properties be better utilized year-round? Of course.
But they should never go away.
Top: Don Valley Golf Course
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