The nine-hole golf course in McLaren Park in San Francisco launched an Indiegogo campaign last month to fund the disc golf course, which met its $10,000 goal in 2.5 hours, due in large part to 25 donors who each gave $500.
Faced with ever-growing water bills and a shrinking population of golfers, Gleneagles Golf Course at McLaren Park in San Francisco is turning to alternative forms of golf to stay afloat and funding it through a crowdfunding campaign, the San Francisco-based Hoodline reported.
The nine-hole course installed a footgolf course in 2015. Now, it will also be home to the city’s second disc golf course, Hoodline reported.
Disc golf fans have been working for more than 20 years to get a free public course in McLaren Park, to no avail. Instead, Sean Jack, tournament director for the San Francisco Disc Golf Club, launched an Indiegogo campaign last month for the course at Gleneagles, which met its $10,000 goal in just 2.5 hours. The speedy fundraising was due in large part to 25 donors who each gave $500, the campaign’s highest tier, Hoodline reported.
Since Gleneagles is privately operated, the course won’t be free to play. Players at Gleneagles will pay $21 for 18 holes on weekdays or $24.50 on weekends, Hoodline reported.
Tom Hsieh, Gleneagle’s proprietor, lives near the disc golf course in Golden Gate Park, and has often noticed long lines of players waiting for a turn to tee off. But even he was “very surprised” by the level of interest in a paid course on the opposite side of the city, Hoodline reported.
Hsieh compares the growing popularity of these alternative forms of golf to the rise of snowboarding in the 1980s. While there may be some skepticism from golf purists, the newer varietals make use of a lot of the game’s infrastructure, Hoodline reported.
Hsieh hopes that the new offering will help to draw new, younger players to the struggling course that he has managed since 2004, which the New York Times has described as a “scruffy cousin” of the more famous Gleneagles Golf Course in Scotland, Hoodline reported.
Gleneagle’s lease was in the news in 2014, when Hsieh threatened to shut down the course after the SF Public Utilities Commission decided to raise water prices by 50%. Hsieh eventually signed a nine-year lease extension, Hoodline reported.
“At this time, the Department is open to the vendor’s efforts to maximize the usage of the golf course,” said Parks and Recreation spokesperson Joey Kahn.
As for the new course’s debut, Hsieh said he hopes to have “some kind of offering by late spring.”
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