In reporting my stories on the restoration of a trio of municipal golf courses in this week’s issue of GGP, I came across a rather interesting juxtaposition.
There were all these tales about communities rallying to provide something good and meaningful for people through golf – and how the game as it is being reimagined in these spots provides them with a fun and first-rate place to play as well as a chance for youngsters to learn life lessons through mentoring programs while maybe earning some money caddying.
During that process, I also came to appreciate how these projects are largely funded by private citizens.
Consider The Park in West Palm Beach, Florida, which cost $55 million to redo. More than half those funds came from 30 individuals, each of whom kicked in $1 million. Many of them happily assisted in the overall fund-raising effort as well.
Even architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner got into the act, forgoing their design fees as a sort of in-kind donation.
They did the same thing at Cobbs Creek, where they have been renovating the historic track in West Philadelphia that for many years was the home course of World Golf Hall of Famer Charlie Sifford.
Other contributors to that rather expansive endeavor, which will cost $180 million when all is said and done, include Tiger Woods, who provided $4 million through his foundation for the construction of a TGR Learning Lab, and Jordan Spieth, whose foundation gave $250,000 for the putting green that was built outside of that building.
These are great deeds, and none of them would be accomplished without the people who keep stroking the big checks.
Now, contrast these actions with those of several big-city mayors in America who seem to delight in denigrating their wealthiest constituents for being successful while also proposing a vast array of new ways to tax them for that transgression.
And forget about those politicos ever taking steps to better manage their municipalities’ already well-funded operations.
As I analogize these moves, I cannot help but think that rather than vilifying the well-heeled and big-hearted, it would be better to praise the 1 percenters who care and recognize how much they contribute to the greater good as well as the great game of golf.
In writing about what has been done in West Palm Beach, Ran Morrissett, who is the founder of Golf Club Atlas, the acclaimed online forum on course architecture, and one of the keenest observers of the golf development scene, has opined: “If there’s a better story in American golf this century than the creation of The Park, I don’t know it.”
He could also be speaking of Cobbs Creek and other such revampings in recent years, like The Evans at Canal Shores outside Chicago, the Bobby Jones Golf Course in Atlanta and The Patch in Augusta, Georgia.
John Steinbreder
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