Warm-Up #1: Presidio Golf Course

FYI - this blog needs to contain some non-golf related topics to keep up your interest level. I expect to come across many interesting items in our travels across the USA. Maybe you trivia buffs can tell me what famous person used to live in this house? If not, the hints below may help.

Julie thought I should start off the New Year by playing golf - - - and I always listen to my wife. So, I played golf at the Presidio Golf Course in San Francisco as a practice round for the upcoming week. Lying at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, this 1,491 acre national park was in continuous use as a military post from 1776 until 1994. A $7 taxi ride from Jill & Matt’s apartment delivered me to the Presidio golf shop. 

Hint #1

Does this picture help???

Getting back to the golf. . . 

Round: Warm Up #1

Location: San Francisco, CA
Date: 1 Jan, tee off at 10:30 AM 

Conditions: sunny skies, 7 mph winds, 54 degrees

Yardage: 6,422
Lost balls: 2

Score: 89 on a par 72 

(Note to self, 10 over par after 15 holes, 7 over par on the last 3 holes - - - must keep some Snicker candy bars close so my concentration & energy do not drop off!)  

I did not wear any sunblock and actually came home slightly sunburned. In a city known for fog rolling in from the bay, who would guess that I would be playing a round of golf under bright sunny skies?

Hint #2

The former owner was a musician with a cult-like following of devoted fans. The house was located in this famous neighborhood in San Francisco.

I was paired up with Vince for my round of golf. He was a black man who ran the security operations for Intercontinental Hotels in the Bay area. One of his previous jobs was working in the security detail for the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. He and one associate were assigned responsibility for the preparations for a visit by President Clinton and Vice-President Gore on the same day to the games. His current job caused several interruptions to his round of golf to answer work calls. One such call involved a hotel guest who wanted to check into the hotel with their loaded gun. It was nice to know the only choice they were given was to surrender the weapon to hotel security or find a different hotel. We can all sleep safe!

A good golf course finds a way to provide unique challenges to those who come to play it. The Presidio was no exception. This was the first time I played a 175-yard par 3 to a blind green. A tree in a valley between the tee box and the green blocked the entire view of the green. The flag was barely above the tree top.

View from #13 green back to the tee box

Trivia Answer 

Jerry Gracia. In the early 1960s, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter were all hanging out at 710 Ashbury Street and Garcia was playing in a number of bands. One of them, “Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions” also included Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. In 1965, the band transformed into the “Warlocks”. However, there was another group in the Bay Area with the same name, so, at the end of 1965, the “Warlocks” rechristened themselves the “Grateful Dead”, the name (used in many folk tales) being found in a dictionary. One, possibly apocryphal, version is that Garcia, sitting in the front room at 710 Asbury, randomly opened an Oxford English Dictionary and put his finger on the entry Grateful Dead, "a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial." lived in the house at 710 Ashbury during the heyday of the hippie era.

The Height/Ashbury district is a 10 minute walk through Golden Gate Park from Jill & Matt’s apartment. The district is populated by vintage clothing stores and young people sporting dreadlocks. 

One last view. . . after Jill picked me up from the golf course we stopped to capture the following picture of Alcatraz from an overlook within the Presidio grounds.