Harding Park Hosts A Major, Just Not The One That Matters

After a grossly overpriced and lackluster renovation of (TPC) Harding Park, you'd think there would be a way the course still host more of the historic (100 years old) San Francisco City Championship.

But as noted amateur Randy Haag points out on his blog (thanks reader Kevin), only the semis and finals are played there because of the need to protect revenues.

The BAD news is the City has not been held at Harding Park for many years now (accept for the semi and final matches). My hats off the the SF Tournament committee, these guys fight hard to preserve the legacy of this amazing event, but in the end, the City of San Francisco really doesn’t care. They still want to charge a full weekend rate green fee for each round played (my understanding is thats approx $140 a round). The SF City is the ONLY event I play in that after your qualify for match play your reward is you start paying green fees for each match you play in, so if you go to the Finals you could end up spending almost $1,000 to play in the event.

I am quite befuddled, upset, and a little crazy about this, and have watched this incredible event lose stature over the past 40 years from its media coverage to the City just not caring that the event is played at its real historic home Harding Park. Our beautiful City, is more concerned about missed revenue ops, and what the PGA can pay to have events like the WGC Match Play Championship, the Presidents Cup, and the PGA Championship. For now they are in….and the historic City is out.

And yet we'll hear what a civic accomplishment this was as Harding hosts future events. But for $26 million, the residents should at least be able to play all rounds of their legendary event played at the centerpiece of San Francisco city golf.