It was four summers ago that I teed it up at the Chardonnay Golf Club in Napa. I had received a call a few days earlier from former Lower Lake High School football coach Bill Cox who wanted me to join him for a day on the links. Chardonnay is an upscale public course that has hosted PGA Tour Q School as well as a handful of U.S. Open qualifiers. The caveat to our trip was that Bill had gift certificates so that we could play for free.
The gift certificates had been a present to Cox from his daughter for a birthday some three years prior. He had thrown them in a desk drawer and decided he had better make use of them sooner than later. We go to the Chardonnay pro shop that morning and handed the gift certificates, valued at $125, to the pro manning the counter. The young professional looked at the certificates, handed one back to Bill, and turned the other on its back side. He took $90 off the certificate and returned it with a $35 credit remaining on it.
In 2005, a round of golf at the highly regarded Chardonnay Golf Club cost $125. It was a 36-hole complex. Today it is an 18-hole complex. Ten of its holes were sold to a new neighboring course named Eagle Vines. The other eight holes have been plowed under and wine grapes are now being grown where golfers once roamed the fairways and greens. Green fees are as low as $27.
The Great Recession is now in its fifth year and the game of golf has taken a major hit. When times get tough, people know they still must pay the mortgage, the electric bill and put food on the table. They don”t necessarily have to eat out, see a movie, or, for that matter, tee it up at a local golfing establishment.
I”m part of a traveling golf group of Lake County locals. During the past 12 months we have taken advantage of the fact that during tough economic times, it”s a buyer”s market for golfers who want to play. Our journeys have taken us to some pretty top-notch courses for noticeably cut-rate prices.
The formerly private Auburn Valley Country Club with its pristine setting and cleverly redesigned greens that were rebuilt by Mike DeVries cost us $25 with a cart included. Because I booked the group, they gave me a gift certificate for a free round of golf. Plumas Lake, a top-notch public course in Marysville, charged us $30 to play and it just so happened we were there on one of those Monday national holidays. Dark Horse in Auburn, ranked among the top 25 courses in California by Golf Week magazine, charged our group $39 for green fees. Wildhorse in Davis let us tee it up for $29.
The beautiful Teal Bend Golf Course in Sacramento adjacent to the airport charged us $35. Most recently, the idyllic Wildhawk Golf Course in south Sacrament had a Friday green fee special of $24 and gave $5 discounts to the members or our group who are peace officers.
Although a number of our group walk the course, others do take carts. There was never an extra charge for motorized carts. It was simply part of the deal.
Yet while courses are fighting it out for the limited golf dollars that are available, other courses are suffering to the point that they have closed their doors. The visually dramatic Southridge Golf Course that meandered through the Sutter Buttes has been closed for a couple of years. What were once fairways now looks like pasture land. The El Dorado Hills Country Club alongside Highway 50 looks just as disheveled as Southridge although you can still barely make out where the sand bunkers once were.
Sad to say, a similar experience has now made its way to the oldest golf course in Lake County. The Rob Roy Golf Course on Cobb Mountain, formerly Hobergs Golf Club, is closing its doors later this month, news that was reported recently on the front page of the Record-Bee. The Record-Bee story was not a shocker as the closing of Rob Roy has been a topic all spring and summer long in 19th-hole establishments throughout the county.
The closing of Rob Roy is a sad story for a number of reasons. Rob Roy is a golfer friendly course, the type of golfing establishment where a beginning 10-year-old linkster can tee it up with his dad and mom and grandpa and enjoy the day on the links without losing one dozen golf balls or shooting 200. We”ve had a tendency recently to build too many punitive, difficult golf courses, the end result being that the game is running off novice, senior and women golfers. Rob Roy was the kind of golf course that appealed to all levels of golfers.
The owners, Colleen and John Lindstrom, have done more to connect the world of golf with local charities than any other golf course operators in the history of Lake County golf. Their charitable foundation has raised a quarter-million dollars during the past decade. Rob Roy also has one of the top-notch restaurants in Lake County. The closing of Rob Roy will greatly impact those charities that relied upon their random acts of kindness as well as impact the economy and the social scene on Cobb Mountain.
Finally, the place has history and tradition. It was the course where George Twitchell, Pepe Pepoon, the affable Les Russo, and current PGA professional Bob McDonald ran the pro shop. It”s where George Hoberg Jr. won 22 club championships and recorded 20 holes-in-one. It”s where the gifted lefty, Ron Keneally, roamed the fairways, blasted drives, and shot less than 30 for nine holes almost every time he played. It”s also where I had my last great round of golf, a 6-under-par 60 in last year”s Cobb Cup Matches, only to be soundly beaten by the uber-talented Brad Pendleton, who threw a 10-under-par 56 at me. How”s that for a memory?
Economic conditions during the past five years have had a great impact upon the world of golf, from the vineyards of the Napa Valley to the foothills of the Sierras. With the impending closing of Rob Roy Golf Course, the economic downturn in golf has now hit Lake County. Maybe Rob Roy will be able to reopen some day, but for the time being it is a sad turn of events that impacts golfers, the local economy, the job market, and some very well-intentioned people.
