Golf Magazine USA – September 2019

102 GOLF.COM / S e p t ember 2019

Travel / Away Game

overhaul (which included a renovation of
the facility’s sibling nine-hole layout, the
Fleming Course) was still a polarizing project.
It was paid for with a $16 million bond, and
not everyone was thrilled with the public
outlay, or the resulting bump in greens fees.
Never mind that even now, city residents pay
a relatively paltry $75 on weekends (it’s $188
if you’re from out of town). Local politicians
heard the grumbling, and in the wake of
Harding’s redo, they went back to treating
golf as the political hot potato it has always
been. These may be flush times, but the city’s
courses aren’t exactly flooded by wellsprings
of support.
And yet they soldier on, some in a kind
of suspended animation. Take Gleneagles,
a nine-hole layout tucked into the folds of
South San Francisco that has teetered for
years between life and death. In this city, if
you’re trying to establish your muni street-

cred, this is the course you should name-drop

first. Designed by Jack Fleming, a looming

figure in San Francisco golf (his local credits

include not just both Harding courses but

also the Golden Gate Park Golf Course,

a sneaky-great par-3 track in the sprawling

park of the same name), Gleneagles has a

scruffy bearing that belies its bloodlines.

It opened in 1962, and wasted little time

making its reputation as a place for serious

sticks and sharks. Big-money games were

legion, which was part of the attraction for

Lee Trevino, who looped Gleneagles in his

prime and lost the battle with it. As the San

Francisco Chronicle later reported. “[Trevino]

fired a 71, and then, after he got to know the

course a little, he fired a 73.”

Gleneagles’ quirks sure can confound you,

with tilted fairways set into the hillsides and

befuddling winds whipping off the bay. But

the difficulties of playing the course pale Pa

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