Assembly Bill 1910 – the “Golf Endangerment Act” – pits the policy, money, and administrative powers of the State of California against public golf courses. This is the same as Assembly Bill 672, which died in committee last January. The bill picks on exactly those golfers – African Americans and other racial minorities, women, seniors, and schoolchildren – that National Golf Foundation says are golf’s fastest-growing groups and most dependent on affordable and accessible public courses.
A Tale of the 1948 Richmond Open, Bill Spiller and Ted Rhodes,
Western States Golf Association, Bay Area Golf Club, Sharp Park,
Joe Louis, Charlie Sifford, Stanley Mosk, Tiger Woods,
and the end of the PGA’s “Caucasians Only” Rule.
After speeding through the California State Assembly Housing and Local Government committees on January 12, Assembly Bill 672 – to provide State Taxpayer funds for cities to convert their public golf courses to housing developments – officially died on January 31, after the financial watchdog Assembly Appropriations Committee on January 20 put a “hold in committee” on the fiscally and legally uncertain bill.
California Assembly Bill 672 is a radical anti-golf measure that would put a $50 Million bounty of public funds on California’s municipal golf courses to entice cities to replace golf with high-density housing. An earlier version died in committee but it's risen from the grave. Help us put a stake through the heart of this unfair, polarizing legislation! Save the only available venues for millions of students, retirees, and socially and ethnically diverse men and women of all ages, incomes, and abilities who play the muni courses.
We give thanks for the historic public courses and municipal gems in our City and for our San Francisco Public Golf Alliance members who contribute financial and moral support to our many years-long fight to preserve public golf in San Francisco. In particular the on-going effort to restore San Francisco's muni "diamond in the rough" at Sharp Park.
In a time of extraordinary challenge for municipalities and muni golf, our co-founder Bo Links maps out a path forward to support municipal golf and explains why it's important to the future of the game.
Bo Links, co-founder of the San Francisco Public Golf Alliance, is winner of the 2021 Lido Prize for golf architecture design, awarded by the Alister MacKenzie Society and Golf Digest Magazine.
A review of Tom Coyne's search for "The Great American Golf Course". His new book "A Course Called America" is an entertaining travelogue of American golf towns and courses, bits of golf history and sociology, and includes a round at Sharp Park on a rainy weekday afternoon in the first week of December 2019.
Assembly Bill 672 Threatens California Golf – in particular Public Golf. The Southern California Golf Association calls AB672 “the most damaging piece of golf legislation to be filed in a generation”. We need your help.
UPDATE: Sanity prevails. California Assembly Bill 672 failed to clear the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee for consideration in the 2021 legislative year.
Our main annual fundraiser, the Alister MacKenzie Tournament to Save Sharp Park, was cancelled this year due to the Coronavirus. Because our fights for public golf and to preserve Sharp Park require money, we are announcing our first-ever year-end fundraising campaign. Our Board and a few generous supporters have agreed to match the first $20 thousand in donations. If you can, please step up again for the Cause, and Donate.
All Souls Day is a fitting time to remember one of Golf’s Great Souls: Grant Spaeth, a San Francisco Public Golf Alliance charter member and former USGA President, who died July 28, 2020 at his home in Los Altos. He was 88 years old.
