If you close your eyes and picture Northern California golf, the first images are likely of waves dancing around Stillwater Cove at Pebble Beach or stoic Monterey Cypress trees framing a foggy dogleg at Olympic Club. But George Kelley envisioned something totally different back in 2012 when his team at Greenway Golf beat out several national management groups for a 25-year lease at city-owned Corica Park Golf Course on the east side of the San Francisco Bay in Alameda, Calif.
“I had played professionally for a few years in Australia,” Kelley explained. “And I always thought the fast and firm turf conditions were far superior to what we had here. Curiously, there has never really been anyone in this area who followed the design of those Sandbelt golf courses. So we thought this opportunity was the perfect fit for that.”
The result of this daring plan has been a wild success story. Corica Park’s recently renovated South Course is a masterclass in challenging yet fair public golf, an Aussie-inspired venue where the 70,000 rounds played annually have drawn more rave reviews than golf balls lost. Like Royal Melbourne, Metropolitan or other Australian classics, you will find large greens near 8,500 square feet on average, more than 100 carefully placed bunkers and inviting fairways. High-handicappers can take advantage of firm conditions to run their ball onto the green, while better players have to think on nearly every tee ball.
Greens at a municipal course are typically cut longer to combat the many rounds of golf, but these are quite the opposite — with a root system that reaches down eight inches, the South Course greens are cut low enough to run around 11.5 on the Stimpmeter every day.
“The reputation has already gone across the state and across the country,” chief designer Rees Jones said. “It’s distinctive, it’s something we’ve never seen in California before. And it’s strategic. It’s not really penal around the greens, but you have to maneuver your shots around the bunkers and around the trees. You have to think your way around.”
How Corica Park reached this new life is a meandering, serendipitous story, one that should inspire other facilities across the country to take copious notes.
In Act I of this play, Corica Park became immensely popular from its onset. William Park Bell designed the original 18-hole course back in 1927, which would later be known as the Earl Fry North Course. Before the Golden Gate Bridge had been built, Corica Park became a destination reachable by ferry — that inspired a long-standing tournament commonly referred to as “The Commuters.”
Given the success of the North Course, the city had Bell’s son, William Francis Bell, design a South Course in 1957. The second layout was never considered on par with the original North Course mainly because much of it had been built at or below sea level, meaning it would often become waterlogged in the winter.
The South Course reopened in June 2018 and has received consistent compliments for being playable and interesting at the same time. Like engineering a course while not going well over budget, the design aspect is a fine line to walk.
Regardless, Corica Park continued to thrive. After adding a par-3 course, the facility reached 45 holes and was receiving levels of play that put it among the busiest in the United States. In 1999 and 2000, Corica Park hosted a seemingly impossible 240,000 rounds of golf. Only Torrey Pines had more rounds of golf within the state of California at the time.
Act II of the story was a perfect storm of management failure. The city was taking care of the facility and made the decision not to put a significant amount of money back into course maintenance. The driving range became Astroturf and the greens of the three courses were badly beaten.
“They were just syphoning off all of the money into the general fund thinking this is just a goose that keeps laying the golden egg,” Kelley said. “They thought they had a really good deal.”
It couldn’t last. Between the Bay Area’s failing infrastructure, struggles in golf participation and the financial market crash in 2008, the city realized the goose had grown weary. Perhaps even worse, research showed original construction of the courses was sub-par in terms of irrigation and drainage. The city didn’t have the knowledge, money or expertise to fix the problem or operate the property going forward.
Act III starts with the city’s realization that it would have to partner with a private company willing and capable of investing in golf. The city received offers from recognizable management companies such as Troon and Billy Casper, but ultimately settled on a local group that won the city over by promising a more personal touch.
Kelley, the CEO of Greenway Golf, had played professionally for three years before getting into San Francisco real estate during the 1980s and 1990s. He found a niche, becoming one of the first commercial real estate brokers selling golf courses. He eventually happened upon an opportunity to own a course himself, and Kelley opened Stevinson Ranch Golf Club in 1995 out in the San Joaquin Valley a couple of hours east of the Bay Area.
The course developed nicely and became well-admired by those traveling out into the country for the chance to play. However, the challenges associated with Stevinson Ranch — a drought that left the course with no water and a remote location were the two hardest ones — were overwhelming enough to prompt a permanent shutdown in 2015.
While that project came to a sad end, Kelley met two important people along the way who would form the core of Greenway Golf. The first was Ken Campbell, the general manager of Stevinson Ranch who was brought into the company for his facility-operation skills. The second was Marc Logan, an Australian superintendent who impressed Kelley with his bentgrass knowledge.
“I remember lying in bed one night and thinking about how he had this program that not a lot of superintendents knew about,” Kelley remembers. “I called him the next day and asked if he wanted to go into business with me.”
Prior to Campbell joining, Greenway Golf started in 2001 as a consulting company. When that didn’t work the way Kelley and Logan hoped it would, they shifted to being an outsourced maintenance provider in 2005. That evolved into hiring Campbell to be the chief operating officer so they could become a management company that took on more traditional deals.
Lo and behold, the City of Alameda was convinced that the type of work Greenway Golf did at Stevinson Ranch was exactly what Corica Park needed. Kelley and his team were charged with renovating the driving range, par-3 course and the South Course. The contract only called for the North Course to be given new drainage, cart paths and bunkers. However, it was quickly deemed that a total overhaul would be needed to fix construction errors on both courses.
The path to making the South Course a beautiful “San Francisco Sandbelt” course would not have worked without making it a designated landfill. The level of the course had to be raised significantly to fix the drainage issues, so 120,000 truckloads of dirt from construction sites around the Bay Area — there are no shortage of those — lifted the entire property.
“I didn’t realize dirt was a big business, but we were actually able to get paid for taking dirt from construction sites,” Kelley said.
That fortunate deal, combined with Kelley and Logan being licensed general contractors who didn’t have to rely on other contractors, meant that the expensive endeavor of building 45 new holes was relatively reasonable.
The South Course reopened in June 2018 and has received consistent compliments for being playable and interesting at the same time. Like engineering a course while not going well over budget, the design aspect is a fine line to walk.
“People find that it’s very much within their capabilities,” Jones said. “That’s why this is going to be so popular. There will be people playing here every day.”
The practice range and par-3 course have been returned to natural grass. The North Course is currently being renovated and will serve as a distinct counterpart to the South Course as it will be considerably shorter with fewer than 25 bunkers. There won’t be any rough on the course — it will be Santa Ana grass wall-to-wall.
And that problem Kelley faced at Stevinson Ranch where a drought doomed his property? It doesn’t figure to be an issue at Corica Park. The new construction has made sure that rainfall is harvested and applied to the course. On an average year of rainfall, about 20 to 22 inches in the Bay Area, there won’t be a need for a supplemental water supply.
All of it adds up to something meaningful beyond the rounds play at Corica Park.
“We’ve been very fortunate and the response has been terrific,” Kelley said. “When we are finished with this construction, we are going to be the model for municipal golf course renovation in the U.S.”