by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
In my church, the burial service starts with the words “I am the resurrection ...” and that’s what we believe. In golf, no one believes in resurrection after burial.
We have another casualty: Baymeadows is dead.
The Southside golf course is still there and you can wander the fairways but there are no carts, no flags, no tee markers, no mowers. It someday will either remain a dead golf course or have 1,200 condos and 200 low-priced homes.
A big building company named D.R. Horton bought the 150 acres from Fore Golf and closed the course. The Jacksonville mayor and City Council, responding (somewhat belatedly) to an uproar from area residents, say they can’t do it.
Lawyers are sharpening their blades. Whoever wins, it won’t be the golfers.
Duval County and Jacksonville, which are one and the same, likes to style itself as a golf mecca of sorts. The high-end boom in Ponte Vedra and the arrival of the PGA Tour headquarters there certainly give credibility to that - even though all that is in St. Johns County, everyone there identifies with Jacksonville because it’s next door and St. Augustine isn’t, so the city probably gets more credit than it should, but that’s OK.
Golf’s history here is a long as any in Florida because Jacksonville once was truly the state’s gateway. Everything started here - literally - because this was the first place you came through. It became the state’s commercial center and with that came the need for the Northeastern game of golf.
Jacksonville’s golf history has its other side, too. Our graveyard has many tenants, some by natural and understandable causes, some not.
RIP: St. Johns
Golf Club
Jacksonville developed around the river and the recreation was there, too.
The St. Johns layout was along the river along what is now Talleyrand Ave., about where the docks are now. Almost nothing is known about it, other than it existed. It couldn’t last, of course. The commerce of that era was dependent on the river and there was no room for a golf course.
RIP: Atlantic
Beach Golf Club
It is hard to believe today that Jacksonville once was a resort city. It truly was and Atlantic Beach was a destination, particularly the grand hotel on the ocean.
Guests needed more than the surf and sand so the hotel had a nine-hole built, designed by famed architect A.W. Tillinghast.
Alas for the beaches ... the rest of Florida was developed and tourists followed the sun further south. The course became housing, the hotel went that way, too.
RIP: Fort George Golf Club
The ultra-wealthy also vacationed here but not with the hoi polloi that went to the beaches. The secluded island of Fort George, on the county’s northern edge, was a great hideaway for those who didn’t quite have the huge fortunes and were able to build on Millionaire’s Row on Jekyll Island in Georgia.
A fancy clubhouse was built. Donald Ross was brought in to do a nine-hole layout. It was a private place for people who wanted privacy.
But the lure of South Florida was too much. There were enclaves there, too, and the sun was warmer. The rich moved on and Fort George became a residential area.
The city took it over and it was a good idea for a while. Nine more holes were added and it was a public course with reasonable prices.
Eventually, the residents decided they didn’t want a bunch of townies coming out and cluttering up their island so they lobbied the state to declare it a protected area and close the course.
They won.
RIP: Florida Country Club
Ross, because of his railroad benefactor Henry Flagler, was a giant presence in the 1920s. He designed seven courses in the county, six of which were built. It was the start of Flagler’s rail line that Ross would follow to build courses all the way to Miami.
Jacksonville’s growth meant wealth and the wealthy locals wanted clubs of their own. An island on the city’s western edge - Ortega - was the residence of choice for many and they developed a country club with a Ross course to the inland and clubhouses on the river, even a clubhouse for rifle shooting.
The club, according to lore, became too oriented toward the male members. While women’s lib was still years in the future, wives still had influence and they pushed for a more inclusive club where they could take the kiddies to swim and the like.
Timuquana was started just two miles away, also with a Ross course. The Depression came and went, and with it went Florida Country Club. You can still see one of the ponds as you drive along Ortega Blvd., along with the homes that sit on what once were tees, fairways and greens.
RIP: Jacksonville Municipal, later known as Brentwood.
Golf in Jacksonville must always have been a game that fitted everyone. The elitism of the game in the Northeast didn’t transcend here and the city’s municipal course was the center of action, even when country clubs had been built.
If you drive along I-95 on the north side of the city, you’ll pass a sign directing you to Golfair Blvd. That’s where the course stood, a Ross design of middling quality.
The 60’s were marked with racial battles and Brentwood became a battleground. It was a white man’s course surrounded by black man’s housing, and that didn’t mix. The city sold it cheap to a politically-connected developer, who quickly got a good price to sell it to the School Board.
RIP: Lincoln Golf and Country Club.
The black population had grown sizeable in the 1920’s and one of that community’s leaders, insurance company founder A.L. Lewis, decided a country club would be a good investment.
He had property on the city’s Northwest side, not far from U.S. 1, and built Lincoln Golf and Country Club, a facility that included a big clubhouse and tennis courts.
It became the social center for the wealthy blacks and the recreational center for the middle class. When heavyweight champ Joe Louis visited, he played golf there because blacks weren’t allowed on any other club.
After World War II, when the soldiers returned, it became the city’s first integrated golf club ...whites were admitted as members.
Lewis’s son didn’t share his enthusiasm. When the founder passed away, the land was sold to a construction company and today it’s a housing development.
Ity wouldn’t be needed today because blacks can play anywhere they wish. And Joe Louis’ son is a member of Timuquana.
RIP: Beauclerc Country Club.
Jacksonville’s Jewish population felt discrimination here, too. They could play the public courses, of course, but the country clubs had the unwritten rule. Any applicant was closely screened and religious preference was, in this case, a cause for rejection.
Beauclerc was built about a mile south of San Jose, one of the clubs that had an all-Gentile membership. It was a short but tricky layout, roughly comparable to today’s Hyde Park, and its big clubhouse was a social center. And yes, if you want to haul out a stereotype, the food was terrific.
There even were two Gentile members, the sons-in-law of a prominent member - they jokingly were known as “Token One” and “Token Two.”
In the early 1970’s, times were not good and country clubs began to lose members. They looked to a new clientele which was ready to join. The Jews, like anyone else, would prefer to belong to a neighborhood club, rather than drive to Beauclerc. Jews were admitted to the Timuquanas and Ponte Vedras and most dropped their Beauclerc memberships.
Even though it was in the center of the Jewish community - there are three synagogues today within two miles - the club couldn’t make it. Several members bought it and sold the course to a developer. The clubhouse sat vacant for a while but today is remodeled into the Jewish Community Alliance, a place to socialize, play tennis and work out.
It doesn’t need a golf course, either - San Jose, a mile away, admits Jews.
RIP: Fairways Executive and DuClay.
Some things aren’t meant to be and these were certainly that. Fairways was a short course in Arlington; DuClay was a short course on the Westside. Neither were much; neither were very well accepted.
Both were a bit ahead of their time because their neighborhoods were destined to swallow them up, and they did.
RIP: University
In the 1960’s, a developer named Lester Sanders saw that the Arlington section was going to be popular with the access provided by the Mathews Bridge and he developed University Park. There was some dreaming, too - he and his wife loved golf so they built an 18-hole course in the middle of their homesites.
It was short but it wasn’t easy. Most greens were sharply elevated, so much that only a very good shot would hold. The fairways were tight. It opened to the river, so frequently there was a strong wind.
It was a private club from the start and the new residents joined. It thrived for a decade or so, but the neighborhood changed and the golfers drifted off to the better Hidden Hills. Sanders sold it to an Amelia Island investor who changed the name to Blue Cypress but left the course pretty much as it was. He, and it, were doomed to fail, and they did.
The city bought the land for a park. There were several efforts to resurrect the course but the owner of the new Mill Cove course up the road pulled political strings to keep that from happening.
Finally, W.D. Coppedge sold Mill Cove and the road was open, and brothers Byron and Everett Comstock pulled together enough money to get city approval and build a nine-hole course, which they still call Blue Cypress.
If you played the old course, you might recognize a turn here or a tree there, but it’s hardly the same.
RIP: Baymeadows
Deerwood was the start of modern golf in Jacksonville. A family of dairy farmers with a grand vision took a big piece of property, shipped the cows elsewhere and opened a gated community with a modern golf course in 1960.
It was, back then, nowhere. But it filled a need, a place to build a big home inside a safe environment with all the necessities (there even was a convenience store on the property.) It quickly was a success, and this didn’t get past the clever eye of the Fletchers, who were bright, young and restless brothers who saw the future of development in what was becoming one of the nation’s best places to live.
They acquired a piece of land about a mile away at what was to become Florida’s busiest intersection: I-95 and what’s now Baymeadows Road. They hired Desmond Muirhead, a flamboyant Englishman, to design the course around a master-planned community. Famed golfer Gene Sarazen was hired as a “consultant.”
They got a magnificent layout through swampy land - it couldn’t be built in today’s environmental-friendly society - and opened it as a private club. It was the site of U.S. Open qualifiers. It handled the Monday qualifier when the Greater Jacksonville Open was played at Deerwood. By anyone’s reckoning, it was one of the city’s premiere courses.
It soon had an 750 members. There weren’t enough courses at the time and most of these people had a commonality: they aspired to a better environment but couldn’t afford (or, in the case of the blacks and Jews couldn’t join) the country clubs.
Society changed. So did developers. Where once people were excluded, they became included. Where once housing was one a “tract” philosophy, people now wanted amenities and golf courses were de rigueur in the new upscale communities.
Baymeadows couldn’t make it as a private club. It went “semi-private” and more condos were added to keep the balance sheet balancing. Where once it was an idyllic spot with marvelous holes, it now became little more than a tight course crammed in between ever-invading condos and apartment.
The decline was steady. McCumber Golf was successful managing it for a while, but the absentee owners thought they could replicate the work of local managers and took it back, and the decline continued.
Its last operator was Fore Golf, a Miami-based company that couldn’t make it work, either. The property went up for sale and Horton stepped in.
“We had to do what was best for our shareholders,” said a spokesman for Fore Golf.