My formative years were spent in urban settings. I grew up in Chicago and spent the first 18 years of my life on the rough and tumble South Side. During the next four years I attended Marquette University located just west of downtown Milwaukee. For the next five years I lived in San Francisco, residing for a time at Turk and Masonic on the northwest corner of the University of San Francisco campus and then later in the Sunset District at 43rd and Taraval near Harding Park and the San Francisco Zoo.
Yet the majority of my life has been spent in Lake County, some 30 years to be exact. Lake County was a very different place when I first came here in 1980. There were no traffic lights. Pears were a big part of the local economy. McDonald”s was just opening up, the first of the fast food restaurants atop Hamburger Hill in Lakeport. You could get six television channels through your antennae from an entity called LCTV.
Lake County remains my home base, and yet I”ve seen a lot of the world during the summer months. While I have visited family members in places such as Chicago, Grand Rapids and New York City, I have also taken dozens of golf vacations in a quest to play great golf at great golf courses.
My journeys have taken me to traditional vacation spots such as Palm Springs, Myrtle Beach, the Monterey Peninsula and even to the birthplace of golf, St. Andrew”s in Scotland. Yet I have also been on some very memorable journeys to places that most would find hard to locate, even with the assistance of MapQuest.
One of my all-time fun trips was to Alabama. Now mind you, I really can”t think of any good reason for anyone to visit Alabama in June in light of the heat, humidity and frequent thunderstorms. Yet I went there 11 years ago and stayed in places such as Greenville, Dothan, Gadsden and Opelika. Of course, I wasn”t going to Dothan for the culture or the ambiance. I was there to play the Highland Oaks complex, part of the 11-site Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.
I”ve also been to Haven, Wisconsin, located in the middle of nowhere between Milwaukee and Green Bay. Haven is the home of Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run, 72 holes of Pete Dye at his best. Whistling Straits hosts the PGA Championship this summer and is the site of a future Ryder Cup. Another remote locale that I can”t get enough of is Bandon, Oregon. I love Tom Doak”s Pacific Dunes, think highly of Bandon Dunes, and need to go back to tee it up at Bandon Trails and the newly opened Old Macdonald. On top of that, I hear Bandon has a pretty solid municipal course near the ocean as well as a new course south of town called Bandon Crossings.
Trust me, I”ve only been to Haven and Greenville and Bandon for the golf although I have eaten in their restaurants, slept in their hotels, put gas in my car and partaken in the minimal night life. Oh, and I”ve also tipped their cart boys, hired their caddies and had a brat and a cold one while overlooking the 18th green alongside Lake Michigan.
Which brings us back to Lake County. One doesn”t need to read the Press Democrat”s Feb. 8 front-page article “Lake County: A Community in Crisis” to know that we live in an area where the recession has hit hard. Really hard. With one in five unemployed, with a heavy foreclosure rate, with the closing of area businesses, most notably Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa, we”re in for some tough years ahead. It”s distressing to read Professor David Gallo”s assessment that “Lake County is one of those places that is in big trouble. I don”t really see what is going to bring them back.”
This coming Tuesday, the Lake County Board of Supervisors has the Cristallago project on its afternoon agenda. A planned community for north Lakeport, Cristallago has included a signature Jack Nicklaus course as an integral part of the development. I have visited the site in the past and remain convinced that it has all the makings of a great golf course, one that will encourage people to want to visit Lake County to play it. Add to that the possibility of an 18-hole Lakeport municipal golf course designed by someone such as Mike Devries or Kyle Phillips, a Tom Weiskopf course at Langtry Farms, a course at Provinsalia, and the established courses in Lake County that feature beautiful settings, fine tests of golf, and world-renown architects such as Billy Bell and Jack Fleming, and you have all the makings of a Lake County Golf Trail similar to the Carson Valley 9.
One of the better things about the people at Cristallago and the other courses is that they are spending or want to spend their own money to do all of this. It isn”t like using taxpayer dollars to build a baseball stadium or an economic redevelopment area. Just like Bandon where Mike Keiser”s corporate fortune was used to build the 72-hole complex, this is outside money that will provide jobs to build the planned community as well as the golf course and will require a local labor force to maintain it.
Of course, why wouldn”t the Record-Bee golf columnist, who also happens to be the longtime coach of the Kelseyville High School golf team and the co-founder of the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit, be a big proponent of bringing more golf to our county? I would gain from the fact that Cristallago would let my high school golfers play there. They”d probably let me host a big invitational tourney and run a junior event there. On top of that, I”m the tournament director of the 2013 North Coast Section Championships and I”d love to have it played on Lake County soil for the first time.
Yet when all is said and done, it is not about the golf. It is about Lake County and its economy. If people want to come here to build golf courses and operate them, and the end result enhances our struggling economy, then I”m all for it. We could also take a lesson from Bandon and Haven and have caddies, a good way for high school kids to work in the summer and be around a positive environment.
I hope Professor Gallo turns out to be wrong in his assessment, but it still means our leaders must set the tone for positive economic growth. After all, is there a Plan B? Do we really want to get out of this mess by building a prison or two?
