Suburbs

My Daily Memphian teammates on the sports staff allowed me to delve into the past recently resulting in a look at golf courses missing in the Memphis metro area.

While not directly a suburban story, there were ties to the outlying areas both past and present. Because of land availability clubs like Windyke and Ridgeway located in the “suburbs” when they chose their current locations. Other tracts were outside the city when they were built, but eventually were absorbed by annexation or development overwhelming their location.

When Ridgeway moved from the north side of Poplar near the current Interstate 240 to the Houston Levee area, the new site wasn’t even in a suburb. Just sat between the then-borders of Germantown and Collierville.

The owner of the former Cherokee golf course on Lamar took the money when he sold to developers and opened Windyke on Winchester, which at the time was way outside the city.

I only included Ridgeway and Colonial country clubs in the list because of their former locations, and how the property has changed since they abandoned those sites. I still marvel at how the Memphis Open pro golf stop in Memphis was wedged into that block in East Memphis surrounded by Colonial, Park, Perkins and Southern.

Otherwise it was public courses.

One of the things you discover when you go back in time is many people are not old enough to recall things from 50 years ago or longer. Swimming pools at Gaisman Park or the Fairgrounds. Rainbow and Clearpool as you drove out Lamar. And the wading pools that were the centerpieces of some parks with a seal on a pedestal and water spraying from the ball on its nose.

Missing are attractions that featured amusement park rides like the Old Mill at the Fairgrounds or the train at the Memphis Zoo. Airstrips at various locations from Arlington to Mud Island, the latter finally closing because the the “new” Interstate 40 bridge messed with the necessary approach and takeoff requirements.

As for the golf courses, many were public layouts I played in the past that are only memories now.

Davy Crockett in Frayser.

Briargate in DeSoto County.

T.O. Fuller off Mitchell Road west of Third Street.

McKellar south of Memphis International Airport.

The Brooks Road lighted course, where a nighttime round to the backwaters of Nonconnah Creek on its northern edge could cause some nervousness about what creatures were lurking in the soup.

I would hack around most of the tracts, dumping chip shots, spraying drives and kicking the ball out of dirt bunkers with an almost non-existent layer of sand covering only a small percentage of the trap. I played under my “local rules”:

If you could pivot and pick up your ball and put it back in the original spot, you didn’t count a stroke.

And you sure didn’t count a stroke if you dribbled it into a water hazard or lost it while slicing a drive deep into the woods. You already lost the cost of the golf ball. It seemed cruel to add a stroke to the financial misery.

My clubs have been untouched in the attic for quite some time now. The driver was a wood Tom Shaw model, and he won the 1969 Doral Open. The J&B Scotch bottle-shaped putter was handed down to my son.

Still, for those who played a round of golf towards the end of the last century or so, it is nice to recall the good times even if the links are long gone. - Suburbs editor Clay Bailey

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