American golf has spent fifty years chasing exclusivity. The destination resorts. The private clubs with initiation fees that read like mortgage balances. The rankings that reward exclusivity and call it greatness. Meanwhile, the courses that built the game — the Tom Bendelow layouts, the Tillinghast munis, the Olmsted parkland nine-holers — are fighting for their lives in city budget meetings.
This isn't a nostalgia piece. It's an argument: that the oldest public courses in America matter more now than they did when they opened. Because they are the most democratic form of golf we have.
And they are not safe.
Louisville: The Course That Refused to Die
Cherokee Golf Course shouldn't still exist.
It was built in 1900 against the explicit wishes of the firm that designed the park it sits in. Frederick Law Olmsted had given Louisville 409 acres of rolling democratic green space nine years earlier — a place where any citizen could experience nature regardless of station. When the city proposed converting 52 acres to golf, the Olmsted Firm wrote letters. They argued. They urged the Board of Park Commissioners to reconsider.
The city built it anyway.
Tom Bendelow — the Scotsman who became the Johnny Appleseed of American golf, designing over 600 courses for working people — laid out the original 9-hole routing. 2,803 yards from the tips. Par 35. Compact enough to walk in under two hours. It won't test a scratch player. It was never meant to.
In 2019, Mayor Greg Fischer put six of Louisville's ten municipal courses on the chopping block. Cherokee, Charlie Vettiner, Crescent Hill, Bobby Nichols, Iroquois, Sun Valley — half the city's public golf inventory, marked for death. The Olmsted Parks Conservancy saw an opening they'd been waiting for since 1900: convert Cherokee back to parkland. Paddleboats on Willow Pond. Wildflower meadows. A restaurant in the clubhouse. A public survey showed 74% support.
Then, in 2023, the Trinity High School golf team showed up. Head coach Pat Heitz brought his team to Cherokee for several days. Priming. Painting. Cleaning. Planting flowers. "When they talked about closing this down a year ago, it made no sense," Heitz said. "You see old people, young people, grandkids."
The resolution was withdrawn. Cherokee survived. By a margin that nobody involved can quite explain.
Across town, Seneca Golf Course holds a different kind of history. A.W. Tillinghast — Winged Foot, Baltusrol, Bethpage Black — designed it in 1937. And in 1958, a 22-year-old South African named Gary Player shot 274 to win the Kentucky Derby Open by three strokes. It was his first PGA Tour victory. He would go on to win nine majors. But the first win — the one that told him he belonged — happened at a public course in Louisville, Kentucky.
These are not interchangeable assets on a spreadsheet. They are cultural infrastructure.
New York: Four Boroughs, One Idea
The New York golf conversation follows a familiar script. Winged Foot. Shinnecock. Bethpage Black. National Golf Links. The conversation that happens in wood-paneled rooms, where the word "public" means something different than it does everywhere else.
But there's another circuit. Four boroughs, four courses, built across 67 years by four different architects — and every single one is still taking tee times.
Dyker Beach, Brooklyn — 1897. Before there was a Dyker Heights with Christmas lights and brownstones, there was a marsh. The Olmsted firm sketched a vision for "the only seaside park in Greater New York." A private club called Dyker Meadow played nine holes on the filled marshland until the course went public in 1935. It's parkland golf with harbor breezes — tree-lined, straightforward, the kind of course where you can walk 18 after work and still make dinner. The clubhouse was renovated in 2008 and now doubles as one of Brooklyn's most popular wedding venues. That's the muni double life: championship golf by day, open bar by night.
Forest Park, Queens — 1901. Tom Bendelow again. Carved into the Harbor Hill Moraine — the ridge of glacial debris left by the Wisconsin Glacier 20,000 years ago. Expanded to 18 holes by 1905. Then the 20th century happened to it. Woodhaven Boulevard widened. Jackie Robinson Parkway cut through. The first four holes relocated. The course remodeled, then remodeled again. Stephen Kay gave it a full redesign in 1995 for the park's centennial. Through all of it — expressway construction, budget crises, decades of NYC Parks neglect — Forest Park kept taking tee times. These courses don't get to close for renovation. They absorb the damage and keep going.
Marine Park, Brooklyn — 1964. Robert Trent Jones Sr. didn't build many municipal courses. When he did, he built them like he meant it. A true links-style layout on reclaimed tidal flats at the southern tip of Brooklyn, stretching past 7,000 yards from the tips. The breeze comes off Jamaica Bay with opinions. Club selection shifts by two or three clubs depending on direction. On a clear day you can see the Manhattan skyline from the back nine. It's been called "Brooklyn's best kept secret" so many times the phrase has lost meaning — but the numbers back it up: 4.3 stars across 650+ reviews, year-round play, and it costs about the same as a decent dinner.
Silver Lake, Staten Island — 1929. Take the ferry. Bring your clubs. They call it "The Working Man's Country Club" and the nickname fits. The pro shop is a trailer. There are only two par 5s on the entire layout. The geese outnumber the grounds crew. This is not a course designed for tournament play. It's designed for the guy who gets off his shift at 4:00 PM and wants to walk nine before dark. The kind of course where nobody cares what you're wearing and nobody's impressed by your handicap. That's not a knock — it's the point.
The Counter-Argument: The Park, West Palm Beach
If Cherokee is the muni that survived against the odds, The Park is what happens when a city bets on public golf instead of against it.
The original West Palm Beach Golf Course opened in 1947. By the 2010s, it was dying — declining conditions, declining rounds, the same math that almost killed Cherokee. But instead of closure, West Palm Beach raised $55 million and hired Gil Hanse.
Hanse didn't just renovate. He rebuilt. The course reopened in 2023 and immediately entered the national conversation. It hosted an NCAA regional. It got ranked. It proved something that should have been obvious: public golf can be great golf.
The success at The Park — and at Winter Park 9, and at Charleston Muni, and everywhere the National Links Trust is working in DC — doesn't just demonstrate that munis can be restored. It demonstrates that the alternative to closure isn't managed decline. It's investment.
For every Cherokee fighting to stay open on a shoestring, there is a Park waiting to happen — if the city decides the course is worth more as a course than as paddleboats and wildflowers.
Why They Matter More Now
When a muni closes, it almost never comes back. The land gets repurposed. The community that formed around it dissolves. The barrier to entry — already high in a sport that rewards wealth — gets higher.
These courses matter for reasons that don't show up on a balance sheet:
Access. A round at Cherokee costs less than a movie ticket for two. A family of four can play after 4:30 PM for $20. Dyker Beach is $40 on a weekday. Marine Park is the same. This is golf in America that doesn't require a country club membership, a corporate outing invitation, or an initiation fee with commas in it.
History. Gary Player won his first Tour event at Seneca. Tom Bendelow's fingerprints are on courses from Queens to Louisville — over 600 of them, designed for working people who wanted to play. Tillinghast designed Winged Foot and Baltusrol. He also designed Seneca and Shawnee — two public courses in Louisville, both still standing. The Golden Age architects didn't just build for the elite. They built public courses that were championship-caliber.
What we lose. When munis close, the game retreats further into private clubs. The sport gets smaller, whiter, wealthier. Every course that closes narrows the funnel. Every course that stays open widens it.
Restoration is possible. The Park. Charleston Muni. Winter Park 9. National Links Trust at East Potomac. These aren't hypotheticals. They're proof that public golf can be restored, not just closed — that the choice isn't between a dilapidated course and no course at all.
What's Worth Watching
National Links Trust — East Potomac, Langston, Rock Creek Park. Proving the public golf restoration model at scale in Washington, DC.
Charleston Muni — the restoration case study. Proof that investing in munis works, and the model every threatened course should be citing in its defense.
The Park — Gil Hanse's proof of concept. A muni that competes with private clubs on design without competing on price. The future of public golf, if we choose it.
Cherokee — still not safe. The Olmsted Conservancy hasn't given up. Every budget cycle brings the same conversation back.
The Louisville Six — Crescent Hill, Bobby Nichols, Charlie Vettiner, Iroquois, Sun Valley, Cherokee. All survived 2019. All still vulnerable.
These courses were built for the city. Not for television. Not for rankings. Not for the kind of golf that requires a letter of introduction. They were built for people who wanted to play.
When one of them closes, the game gets smaller. When one of them gets restored, the game gets bigger. There's nothing complicated about which direction we should be moving.