 Alister MacKenzie Tourney ‘23 – Friends in High Places  Sunday, November 12 was bright and warm at the landmark Sharp Park Golf Course. Clear skies. Little wind. Shirtsleeves weather. Like a Late Fall Day in San Diego or Santa Monica. The beautiful weather was a good omen for the Ninth Annual Alister MacKenzie Tournament to Save Sharp Park, back from a 3-year Covid break and enjoyed by a full field of young men and women — a new generation of Alister MacKenzie fans.  Sharp Park Golf Club President Bob Downing called the course conditions the best he has ever seen — thanks to an understaffed-but-hard-working greens crew. The Golf Auction was the strongest ever, featuring Top-100 courses from Coast to Coast: Winged Foot, Baltusrol. Camargo, Canterbury, and Somerset Hills on the East to Monterey Peninsula, Spyglass, and Olympic Club’s Lakeside on the West. At a post-golf lunch in the Clubhouse, architects Jay Blasi and Peter Flory shared their vision for a Sharp Park restoration. Flory is a Chicago-based historic golf restoration specialist, who consulted with Tom Doak on the recent restoration of Charles Blair Macdonald’s fabled Lido Golf Club on a Wisconsin sandlot. Blasi recently finished his work to restore the 9-hole Golden Gate Park short course at the west end of Golden Gate Park. But at Sharp Park on November 12, the conversation kept returning to The Weather. And the most frequent comment to tournament organizers was an incredulous: “How did you get such great weather at this time of year?” We have a theory: ALISTER MacKENZIE HAS FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES. Golf is a game on many levels, including recreation, companionship, and competition. Another level is metaphysical, even spiritual. The great architects – and MacKenzie is one of history’s greatest – built shrines where a structured walk in Nature becomes a labyrinth for contemplation and connection with Universal Forces. The late USGA President Sandy Tatum spoke of this when he famously called Cypress Point “the Sistine Chapel of Golf”. Sharp Park – built by MacKenzie right after he finished Cypress Point and just before he started work at Augusta National – is such a golf shrine. And Sharp is public and affordable. And the golfers are the shrine’s stewards. We hope you will enjoy a few pics from the event as much as we enjoyed playing on this glorious day. Check out more pics on the LINK HERE.  The purpose and challenge of the non-profit San Francisco Public Golf Alliance is to advocate and defend public golf and MacKenzie’s shrine at Sharp Park, to see to its proper care and maintenance, to honor MacKenzie’s vision and preserve as much as possible his original design. And we thank and welcome and need your support, your money, and your participation in this ongoing effort. In particular a special thanks to the hospitable staffs of the Sharp Park Golf Course and Restaurant and tournament volunteers from our co-hosts, the Sharp Park Men’s and Sharp Park Business Women’s Golf Clubs, and the generosity and support of key Sponsors and benefactors, some of whose logos appear below. We will gather again for the 10th Alister MacKenzie Tournament in early Summer 2024, and all are invited. Let us know if you want to join the fun. San Francisco Public Golf Alliance 826 Stanyan Street, San Francisco, CA. 94117 info@sfpublicgolf.org |
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