Links Magazine | The Best Of Golf

the naked truth
I had lost the services of my navigator by the time I reached San Francisco. So Lawrence Donegan, golf writer of England’s Guardian, joined me at Harding Park, the city’s premier muni.

Lawrence had just moved back to the area after living in his native Scotland for several years. During his previous posting in the Bay Area, he had played Harding often and spoke glowingly of the course, proudly pointing out that his finest round ever had been a 76 in the San Francisco City Championship. Funny how munis tug at the heart and instill a sense of nostalgia the way no private club can.

Whether it’s Dan Jenkins recalling cross-country gangsomes at Goat Hills in Fort Worth, Texas, Lee Trevino developing all the shots at Dallas’ Tenison Park, or Rick Reilly finding inspiration at Ponkapoag outside Boston for the fictional Ponkaquogue in his novel Missing Links, munis have provided plenty to golf’s grand oeuvre.

But munis, even those as refined as Harding Park, aren’t without quirks, and a friend had warned me about poor service and slow play. Teeing off at 7:30 a.m., we had no problems with either. The starter was friendly; on the 6th hole, a marshal came by to ask us whether one of us had dropped a headcover on the previous hole, pointing to a black object through the trees. In fact, the furry mass had been a dead skunk, which is what we told him. Laughing, he went off to investigate.

San Francisco similarly has first-rate parks and beaches. After the round, I visited windy Baker Beach at the Presidio. It was surprising to happen upon a photo shoot—a woman in a bathing suit posing on the rocks with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

I soon learned that at certain times of the year, she would have been overdressed. Bold residents use a portion of the coast as a nude beach. Didn’t Mark Twain observe that the coldest winter he had spent was a summer in San Francisco? But a park employee said September and October were warm, and the nudists often build shelters among the rocks.

Later, I checked weather.com, and found that the average high temperature in September is 71 degrees—still seems pretty cold to be walking around in the buff. On the walk back to my car, it started raining. Although there were passengers in the car parked next to mine, I eschewed modesty and changed into dry clothes. Given what else goes on at this beach, I figured the odds of being charged with indecent exposure were slim.

Having evaded arrest, I went to the SoMa (South of Market) neighborhood and one of my favorite eateries, a small French bistro called Fringale. Besides the food, what I like about the place is that it has the friendliest French waiters—neither oxymoron nor backhanded compliment. They are funny and genuinely helpful.

Chef Tripp Mauldin asked about the trip (no pun intended), and said that a chef friend had been hired at Pelican Hill. Small world.