News & Events

San Francisco’s Blind Spot – Extraordinary Muni Golf

Mar 18, 2026by - San Francisco Public Golf Alliance

Tom Hsieh has a great idea.

First, for any not familiar with Tom, some background. Tom is a first generation American, San Francisco native, and proprietor of the Gleneagles Golf Course in McLaren Park. Operating the course has been a labor of love for Tom since he assumed the lease for the muni in 2004. Without his commitment, the course would have been shuttered decades ago.

What is Tom’s great idea? Josh Sens reports on it in Golf Magazine - “The Bandon Dunes of muni golf? A course operator sees that in San Francisco’s future”:

“For all of its popularity these days, golf still suffers from public blindspots. Remove those blinders, Hsieh says, and it’s clear that San Francisco, a 7-by-7-mile city, is sitting on invaluable recreational assets that go widely under-appreciated.

Under the Parks and Recreation Department are six public layouts. Over the past three decades, Hsieh notes, San Francisco voters have approved roughly a billion dollars in bond measures for parks. Not a dollar of that money, he says, has been earmarked for golf.

Hsieh hasn’t formally pitched the idea to city leaders, but he’d like to see San Francisco lean into what it already has and market itself as Golf City USA, a destination with premium public-access golf as a draw. Tourists already flock to the city. Why not give them another reason? Think of it, Hsieh suggests, as a kind of Bandon Dunes for Muni Golf, except in the middle of one of the world’s great urban hubs.”

That would require a robust investment to improve course conditions and amenities. But Hsieh sees proof of concept at Harding Park and the Golden Gate Park Par-3 course, both of which have gone through renovations that helped propel them to national attention. The lesson is plain, Hsieh believes. Put TLC into courses, and the golfers will come.”

San Francisco lives on the tourist and convention trade. The money that visitors bring into The City is the reason we have outstanding cuisine, museum, music, art, entertainment and attractions that make San Francisco such a special place. Yet the City government ignores and seems almost embarrassed by a unique recreational asset that has the potential to attract tens of thousands of golfers every year and millions of dollars in revenue from all over the world.

Consider the extraordinary public golf The City offers:

Lincoln Park with spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and The City.
Sharp Park - Alister MacKenzies historic landmark public seaside links.
TPC Harding Park hosts marquee professional events like the Presidents Cup, PGA Championship, World Golf Championship, and LPGA International Crown.
Presidio Golf Course – A National Historic Landmark that has welcomed Presidents and Generals over its long history as a military base course.
Gleneagles, Fleming, and the recently renovated Golden Gate are among the best 9 hole courses in the country.

The City government may be oblivious to these beautiful, challenging, and historically important golf courses but golfers and the golfing press are not.

Fried Egg Golf recently featured SF Munis with a Bay Area golfing road trip.
Josh Sens toured our munis for Golf Magazine and shows why “San Francisco muni’s endure.”
GolfPass' Kira Dixon has “Much love for the municipal golf courses of San Francisco”

Incidentally, there is an argument to be made that the Gleneagles GC hosts the best clubhouse bar in the Bay Area and possibly the world. At least that’s how Josh Sens answers the question “What are the best clubhouse bars?” Matt Schoolfield arrives at a similar conclusion in his exhaustive analysis of “A Dive Bar with a Golf Course Attached.”

Promoting San Francisco as a muni golf destination is a great idea, the right idea, but not necessarily an original idea.

100 years ago the City promoted its municipal golf courses as a prime attraction to visitors. A 1933 ad from the Saturday Evening post hyped The City courses in terms that might even embarrass Silicon Valley startup marketeers:

“Out on the very tip of the peninsula of San Francisco, right above the Golden Gate, there is a golf course. Playing there for the first time, you will have difficulty in keeping your mind on the game. Up three holes you top the crest of the hill, crowned by the classic Palace of the Legion of Honor. And suddenly there bursts upon you the wide sweep of the blue Pacific…

Well, a long look, a deep breath of the sea-tanged air, and back to the pleasant business of smacking a golf ball down the green fairways. Each tee is a new glorietta with a new view of ocean, Golden Gate, or city. And as you reach the final holes, the town, spreading tier on tier, up over the hills, seems fabulous and magical in the rosy glow of the ending day. Later, ruddy with the tonic of San Francisco's out-of-doors and with the spray of the sea seemingly still in your nostrils, you are ready for a typical San Francisco evening."

Perhaps our current SF leadership could learn a thing or two from the past.

For more on Tom Hsieh’s great idea and his Gleneagles labor of love, check out his conversation with Josh Sens on the Destination Golf podcast.