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Dreams coming true at Harding
Brian Murphy, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, November 3, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.

Stand on the second tee at Harding Park, and you get a small idea of what Dorothy must have felt landing in Oz; or what moviegoers felt when the Technicolor hues painted the screen in "Gone With the Wind."

There, before you, is seemingly impossible verdant canvas, ryegrass fairways coming to life -- Harding Park, grassed as it's never been grassed.

Yes, serious issues await Harding Park: Setting a greens fees scale. Finding a Director of Golf for the city of San Francisco. Making sure that this budding jewel will get its proper maintenance and TLC, financially and with the right use of manpower.

But walking Harding Park last week, it's hard to deny the power of its potential. The party line from those close to the project: Bring an extra pair of socks if you come out, because Harding will knock your socks off.

It's not all grassed yet. It's not even all seeded yet. Project supervisor Les Claytor says the whole thing should be seeded in two weeks, behind schedule, but not drastically so.

Holes 2 through 7, and 11 through 13, are grassed, tough, and they provide a stunning preview of what's to come. Gone are the patches of brown, the dead grass, the kikuya. In are fairways almost embarrassingly lush. Perhaps the most memorable spot is Harding's second shot into the 13th green. This crest has taken on new life with the green moved back and left, closer to the 14th tee, with trees behind it cleared out -- affording a clear view to the Olympic Club's fairways and its Spanish-style clubhouse. If there's a better second shot in the city, we can't think of it yet.

Mostly, what Harding's development reveals is a golf course close to the vision enunciated by Chris Gray, the course architect from the PGA Tour who is overseeing the $16 million redesign. Gray said back in the spring that his goal was to make Harding a changed course, but through changes that almost no one would notice.

Through the judicious use of subtle elevation changes over the formerly flat fairways on the front nine, and through an even more judicious use of an underrated quality -- restraint -- Gray appears well on his way to accomplishing this. If credit is to go Gray's way, it has to be mostly for recognizing the inherent beauty of Harding's original layout. He is simply buffing, polishing, sprucing, making better drainage and lengthening the track that provides naturally good shot value on its own. Think of Gray as Dr. Henry Higgins, and Harding Park as Eliza Doolittle.

You have to get to 12, in fact, before any dramatic change takes place. The green has been moved to the right, to make way for a 13th tee that has been moved back. That green, and No. 13 green -- moved to make way for the 14th tee -- are the only overtly visible changes.

Another notable development: Gray found room for the PGA Tour players who will play Harding (Tour tees measure at 7,202 yards) without ruining the course for the average hack (cough, cough). The new blue tees will measure 7, 011 -- formerly 6,743 -- while the new white tees will measure 6,508 yards -- formerly 6,471.

There is, also, the wallop of No. 18, which will play from the blues as a 463-yard par-4 over Lake Merced -- a finishing hole to put hair on your chest, or cause you to see white shortly before you pass out.

The project hasn't been without trouble. That non-union labor is being used rankles in a pro-labor town like San Francisco, and nettlesome questions about greens fees and management need to be answered before next summer's opening.

Still, Sandy Tatum, the former USGA president and San Francisco lawyer who seemingly won't rest until this project is finished, gushed about the transformation finally taking place. Tatum rarely shies from hyperbole, and he hasn't here.

"This has the potential to be one of the truly great, public or private, golf courses in the world," he said. "I think it's that good. Obviously, it goes right alongside Olympic, San Francisco, Lake Merced.

"In my judgment, it's at least as good, or maybe better, because of the additional factor of flavor. All the shot values are there, but the additional fact is the aesthetics, and they play a real role."

WHITHER THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP?: News earlier last month that the PGA Tour had reached a multiyear deal with Coca-Cola to hold the Tour Championship at Atlanta's East Lake raised eyebrows out West, where the Tour has a signed agreement to bring the Tour Championship to Harding Park every three years, starting in 2006.

The city has a written agreement with the Tour to host the Tour Championship, so that's that. If the Tour wants to offer a different tournament -- perhaps the American Express Championships, an elite, international-field event -- the city and Harding Park could benefit in different ways, and would listen.

Also on the table is the very strong possibility of a new PGA Tour event, a Labor Day weekend event that will benefit the Tiger Woods Foundation, making its way to Harding Park, perhaps in 2005. Word is, Tiger's camp would love to host it at Harding, and the Tour would love a West Coast presence at that point in the season. That tournament, dripping with the prestige of being associated with the world's No. 1, could be offered as a substitute if the Tour wants East Lake to host the Tour Championship.

Stay tuned.

E-mail Brian Murphy at bmurphy@sfchronicle.com.