Of all the fine golf cities (Pinehurst, NC, Bandon, OR, Bethpage, NY, etc.) in these United States, I’d take San Francisco. You’ve got elite, major championship hosting venues like Olympic and Harding, other acclaimed, stratified-by-religious-denomination private clubs, photogenic Lincoln, some fun par 3 tracks in Golden Gate, Fleming and Olympic’s Cliffs Course and other fine offerings within the city. But my favorite of them all is Alister Mackenzie’s Sharp Park. That track embodies almost everything I love about San Francisco.
Ok, sure, Sharp Park technically resides in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco and home to the prettiest Taco Bell imaginable. But since a San Francisco city resident golf card covers greens fees at Sharp Park, I’m counting it.
The first three holes (original Mackenzie designs) might seem like underwhelming sausage links at first blush. Their short, uncomplicated layouts can be played with less than driver off the tee. That’s why it’s a perfect San Francisco opener! Sharp Park’s opening stretch offers the time, space and seaside air to assist your hangover recovery. Having just spent the night at bars such as the Tempest or Zeitgeist or breweries such as Woods or Cellarmaker, you’re gonna need to stop wobbling, hydrate and get the blood flowing again. Those bars, like Sharp Park, are big on scruff and charm. I’ll take fist fights at the Tempest and giant rats at Zeitgeist over places with clientele constrained by the lazy, conventional, status-obsessed, monetary definitions of success. Give me the beautiful vegetation of Sharp’s cypress trees or the Tempest’s brussel sprouts over whatever they have in the Marina.
With your katzenjammer in retreat, prepare for the walk underneath Interstate One to the next tee. San Francisco is a walking town, as this quarter mile trek reminds you. Whether up and down those majestic streets or wandering through any of its beautiful parks, San Francisco is best enjoyed on foot. Take a minute to appreciate Pedro Point before you duck under the One and into a canvas of a different artist.
Bay Area golf legend Jack Flemming designed holes four through seven. A shorter par five with clever, defensive trees followed by a par three choked by foliage and a pair of demanding, switchback par fours. This arboreous cocoon and physical remove emphasize the fact that an outsider designed this stretch. Much of what makes San Francisco great originated in these kinds of visiting minds. The immigrants that came through Angel Island gave places like the Mission, North Beach, Chinatown and Japantown culture and panache. Thousands flocked to the city during the 60’s drawn by the music, CIA supplied drugs and general grooviness. Heck, my relationship to the area will always be as an outsider. San Francisco was shaped by transplants creating culture and art amongst the foliage.
Back on the west side of the One, welcome to the worst hole on the golf course. Shortly after the completion of Mackenzie’s Sharp Park, several holes eroded including a signature par three that fell into the Pacific Ocean. This new “excuse me” eighth hole was thus required to fill out the routing. It’s bland and boring and easy to par. But fortunately, it’s over quickly. It’s a $4 Fernet shot of a hole. Throw it back and enjoy that minty burn.
I like to think of the next stretch as an environment for growth. Avoiding the trees surrounding the ninth guides your drive right to left, a helpful visual for me. Next hole, you are asked a question in the z direction. Can you get your ball over the trees to best set up your approach? The eleventh combines these lessons by insisting on a tee ball that gets airborne before falling left. My time in San Francisco was full of community fueled growth. I didn’t always rise to the occasion and hit plenty of metaphors into trees and onto streets, but those beautiful, troublemaking friends pushed me to be more curious, thoughtful and compassionate.
The danger of the twelfth hole lies beyond the senses. A straightforward-looking par three played towards the sea wall installed to prevent erosion (read to keep all remaining golf holes above sea level) masks a danger stemming from that very body of water. Imperceptible at ground level, the onshore breeze wreaks havoc on golf balls that rise above the sea wall. San Francisco history is full of these kinds of dangers hiding in plain sight. Appalling government disregard for human life exhibited in Operation Sea Spray and Operation Midnight Climax (shoutout George Hunter White, what a jerk) led to Ken Keasy, Jerry Garcia, and the hippie counterculture who celebrated being alive. But then the hippie identity obscured actions taken by the bureaucratic, dollar-as-true-north machinery to clear a thriving Filipino community in Manilatown in order to erect the glitzy financial district (all during even the Summer of Love no less). Any conclusions about San Francisco being hippies or tech or queer or finance or whatever says more about the observer than the city. Seek not answers, but more questions. And in the interim, hope your obscured worldview doesn’t get you blown off the planet.
The next three holes wrap around a marsh land that used to be an artichoke farm. This surprising reminder of San Francisco’s agricultural past also features classic examples of Mackenzie’s “Lido hole” (Sharp Park is the only original Alister Mackenzie design to feature multiple “ideal two-shot holes”). While imagining his opus (the since lost Lido Golf Club in Long Island), C.B. Macdonald held a design contest. Mackenzie’s winning “Lido hole” entry launched his prolific golf course design career. Historical significance aside, the marshland this stretch of holes wrap around highlights the struggle for responsible stewardship. Some environmentalists would like to see the course decommissioned in order to save the California red-legged frog. While others argue that accessible green space is critical for exercise and creating community. Bound to this pale blue dot for the foreseeable future, this stretch embodies the ongoing challenge of how best to preserve and cherish our home.
The sixteenth and seventeenth have always felt like a couplet to me. Despite their similar lengths and snuggling fairways, the 180 degree opposing orientation casts the wind in a starring role. Sixteen requires two stout shots into a prevailing headwind, where the seventeenth green can be accessed with a well struck drive and a favorable gust. Other quirks that I enjoy about this couplet are the fact that my mushroom (psilocybin) dealer used to live in the neighborhood right behind the sixteenth tee and seventeenth green. Also, that sixteenth tee marker erroneously lists the farthest back tees as being a shorter overall yardage than up tees. I’m not sure if those two facts are connected, but I like to think so.
And what better way to finish than a benign par five. A final chance to get one back and finish with a birdie before retiring to a comfortable dump of a nineteenth hole. Enjoy a beer listening to old men telling older jokes. I have a respect for places that stubbornly continue to exist in their flawed, scruffy, complicated brilliance. Communal spaces that shirk the burden of profit maximization to allow for play and surrender. The wonky burrs that refuse to be smoothed. Thank you Sharp Park.
Essays by Cameron 