It's A Wrap: The Links At Petco Park, 1600 Rounds Later

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Monday night at Petco Park concluded with over 1600 rounds having been played inside the Padres home stadium. What turned out as a semi-publicity stunt/goodwill effort to share Petco with golfing baseball fans turned into something much larger. ESPN sent Kenny Mayne for a post-MNF feature, local newscasts around the United States showed footage and Golf Channel covered the madness.

What happened here that so intrigued people?

For starters, baseball stadium architecture has always shared similarities with golf architecture in reflecting tastes of the era in which they were built. In the last twenty years, fans have come to see baseball parks as statements about regional architecture. When the ballparks are so good that they become places of civic pride, they take on another level of interest.

Turns out that golfers, already armed with a critical eye, have quietly dreamed of hitting a shot from home plate over the center field wall just to confirm how short the distance is. For good measure, eight more holes meant five days of sold out golf at $50 for each round, with several thousand relegated to a waiting list.

It was surreal to be hitting shots inside a stadium and it all turned out to be shockingly safe. (A tent covered the home plate tee for safety). Every element of the experience was meticulously planned by the Padres, while Callaway handled all of the golf details. There isn't a thing I'd change except maybe the water hazards and even those provided a few laughs.

As for other parks in the future, the obvious dream locales include Fenway, Yankee Stadium, AT&T Park, Dodger Stadium and Wrigley. But this is no small undertaking and the buzz surrounding it may never match what just took place. But if you saw the clips of golfers inside their home park, the joys of this form of Stadium Golf were so great that any promotional value is bound to be superceded by golfer demand. Oh, and it's a nice way to sell a few season seats while reinforing the magic of two great American pastimes: golf and baseball.

My video report after playing the links:

If you're a millennial, this is the Skratch look at the course's creation, minus a mention of co-architect Johnny Rodriguez.

And just to show that there are no new ideas, Gary Player's group tweeted this epic shot of a stadium golf setting from 30 years ago. Take that Johnny!

 And Kenny Mayne just had to dive into one of the ponds.

 

Mayne's ESPN feature as only he can tell a story.