Why our favorite places are rarely fancy
Places that make home feel like home
“Every golfer—no matter how wealthy or successful—ought to have a favorite muni they return to from time to time, if only to reconnect with the soul of the game.”
Episode 1017 (linked below) isn’t like any episode of No Laying Up’s podcast, it’s different. Buried between golf tournament recaps and player interviews, lays this thoughtful reflection on a simple municipal golf course in Baltimore, MD. However, under the surface, it’s not about golf at all, it’s about the people and the places that make up a cities soul; places that wouldn’t fit in anywhere else but feel so distinctly right in place where they are.
We all know places like the Baltimore Municipal golf course. This may very well be a muni from your hometown, but it could be anything. From a restaurant where the waitress knows you by name and locals order the same thing every morning, to a city pool you hung out at as a kid. These places are what turn areas into communities. They’re usually not the nicest places but that is part of the allure. Something so regular is what makes these places special; their ability to mold into the routines of people around them, becoming a center point to a communities daily life.
One spot immediately jumps to mind—a golf course. Hancock Golf Course, a scruffy nine-hole track founded in 1899, is the oldest golf course in Texas and sits right in the heart of Austin. To put it bluntly, it’s kind of a shitty old course. It lacks a proper clubhouse where locals hang out, but the neighborhood has certainly worn the place in. It serves everything from youth golf camps that look like something I would’ve been drug to as a kid to retirees who are well past their prime, using it more-so as a walk with friends. Shared by dog walkers, picnic-goers, and golfers of every age, gender, and race. It is a multi-use space that not only has been there for over a century, but feels like it too.
Of course it has it’s own cast of quirky characters which make it special, for example:
The superintendent, who I’m half convinced worked there for free, was out there every morning standing in the creek in rain boots, pulling out foul golf balls.
50-to-60-somethings, mens basketball team, who played pickup games on the lopsided community center’s court on weekdays between 6-7am.
The retired neighborhood morning walkers, who loved to stop and watch you tee off on one of many holes that was placed along the road (and who would always tell you “nice shot”, no matter how poorly you hit it).
I hold that place close to my heart. It's where I truly learned to play golf and where I spent nearly every morning during my final three months of unemployment in Austin, before moving to New York. If I had just one round of golf left to play, I'd probably choose that old course—ideally around 7am, on a too-hot Texas summer morning.
Hancock Golf Course, along with many other well worn institutions, in or outside the world of golf, has a fate that is hanging in the balance. It may be shut down, and turned into public parkland. The same I’ve seen happen to a favorite hole in the wall restaurant, turned into condos. While places like these may be so easily overlooked, to the community members who cherish them, its what makes home feel like home.
“The names of 17 regulars share one chipped-orange bench overlooking the 10th tee… The richest men end up with their own bench, but I’d rather share a bench in the afterlife with the people who watched my duffs and did a shot of Fireball when I made birdie.”
fn. Today, more than a century after it first opened in 1899, Hancock Golf Course is at the center of a civic debate. Community members and advocacy groups have called for the nine-hole course to be converted into public parkland, while others argue for preserving it as a historic, multi-use golf space. Its future now sits in the hands of city officials, public hearings, and—ultimately—Austin voters.
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I quite enjoyed this - I hope my writing on golf reflects this same appreciation for the soul of the game.
cheers,
LM