City Plans Golf Center for Youths

Urban youths could train for a country club future under a Los Angeles city government plan to reopen Griffith Park’s nine-hole Coolidge golf course as a learning center targeting at-risk, inner-city residents ages 7 to 17.

The Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department is looking for sponsors to build the $1-million facility and operate classes, clinics and camps for at least 500 children in its first year. Running the center would cost about $200,000 a year.

The city will formally begin to solicit grants for the facility next week. Officials plan to contact golf companies and foundations, hoping to capitalize on the Tiger Woods phenomenon and the growing sense that inner-city youths are more interested in golf than ever before.

“Suddenly, golf is not just a game for the geriatric set,” said Craig Kessler, who heads the city government’s golf advisory board and sits on the United States Golf Assn.’s public golf committee.

“You’re seeing an explosion,” Kessler added. He said many junior golf programs, which have been growing steadily for the last two or three years, are suddenly “bulging at the seams.”

About 500 youngsters are enrolled in golf programs at the city’s 13 public courses and two recreation centers. But parks officials want to create a facility dedicated to beginners, and hope to draw a more diverse crowd by reaching out through all 160 of the city’s community recreation centers rather than the golf courses, which tend to attract a middle- and upper-class clientele.

“The golf community recognizes that they may be perceived as an elitist sport, and they really want to reach out to kids,” said Mary Braunworth of the Recreation and Parks Department.

“It teaches kids tremendous discipline. It emphasizes concentration,” she added. “It’s one of those sports that you can play for your entire life, something you’ll enjoy until you can barely walk anymore.”

The proposed facility would occupy 10 acres near Los Feliz Boulevard and Riverside Drive and would include a new 175-yard driving range and putting and chipping greens complete with sand traps.

The new facilities would replace a pitch-and-putt course, first opened in 1947, that has become overgrown with weeds and covered with graffiti since it was shuttered in 1981.

Recreation and Parks Commission President Steve Soboroff said that in addition to helping children, the facility would ease the burden on the other city courses by removing slow beginners from the links. While kids would be the focus, the center would also offer lessons to senior citizens and other new golfers, officials said.

Sources said the city has already contacted the U.S. Golf Assn., Nike and the Tiger Woods Foundation, and will also shop the proposal to other natural candidates, such as Jack Nicklaus’ foundation and golf management companies.

Woods’ agent, Hughes Norton of the Cleveland-based management firm IMG, said his client is focusing on his own clinics for inner-city youths and is not looking to get involved in municipal projects.

“We’ve heard from so many people and I think the stock answer is that Tiger has his own foundation and he just can’t extend himself to every good cause,” Norton said. “I know he’s pleased things are happening in the communities, but he’s got his hands full.”

Times staff writer Thomas Bonk contributed to this story.