Jack Hirsch/Golf
Starting at Merion Golf Club, the site of the US Open past and future and the most famous and historic of all golf clubs in the Philadelphia area, it won’t take long to find another site of Philly Golf history. But it may take your imagination.
In fact, you can walk a short distance from Merion’s 12th green, hop on a train and take a 12-minute ride along Cobbs Creek, down City Avenue, on the border between suburban and city, to the site of the waterway’s namesake golf course. turn.
As for your imagination? You may need to because Cobbs Creek Golf Course is not much like a golf course these days.
You can see the clearings of trees, the outlines of greens and fairways, the high tees. Even the flag stick remains standing on a clover-covered green that used to sit next to the clubhouse. now? Only an old house and a temporary building office remained.
To the untrained eye, it would be easy to mistake the sprawling 340-acre property for a lightly maintained park. Yet here in the shadow of the Philadelphia skyline, the city where he’s raised competitively only a handful of times, Tiger Woods is building only his second TGR Education Lab and expanding the scope of his TGR Foundation.
Philadelphia School
In Philadelphia, private clubs rule. Elite blue-blooded private clubs such as major league hosts Merion, Aeronomic, Philadelphia Country Club and Philadelphia Cricket Club are dotted in the surrounding suburbs. Even host to the 1958 PGA Championship Llanarch sits less than three miles from Cobbs Creek.
But public courses at the tournament level? These are few and far between. This is what made Cobbs out of the ordinary.
Officially, Hugh Wilson, designer of Merion’s legendary eastern course, is credited with designing the old Cobbs Creek course, which opened for play in 1916. But in fact, all six of the legendary “Philadelphia School” of golf course architecture – AW Tillinghast, George C. Thomas contributed Jr., William Flynn, George Crump, and William Fownes in planning.
When it opened, it was one of the few courses that welcomed all comers, regardless of background or gender. The course reached its peak in the 1950s when it hosted the Philadelphia Daily News Open on the PGA Tour for two years. Seaford and some other black golfers in the area were able to play in those events, despite the provision for only Caucasians on the tour.
But then, as Copes Creek Foundation COO Enrique Hervada explained, the course fell from glory.
“They had a round event here and then after that it kind of went into a slow decline, like a lot of old municipal golf courses,” Hervada said. “The city owns it. It has been run by different management companies over the years. Some would put money in it, and most wouldn’t put any money in it. They never cut down any trees and they never did the basic maintenance you need to do to maintain a golf course.”
People who played golf from the 1980s to modern times could say he had “good bones” but the conditioning just wasn’t there.
“You can hardly get a tee into the ground,” said Hervada.
Charlie Seaford Connection
With Woods making very few appearances in Philadelphia over the years, you might be wondering what the connection is between the 15-time major winner and the “City of Brothers Love.”
It’s really not that much of a stretch. Cobbs Creek was where Charlie Seaford learned to play golf after moving from North Carolina to Philadelphia in 1939.
22 years later, Sifford became the first black golfer ever to gain membership on the PGA Tour in 1961. He later became the first black golfer to win on the PGA Tour in 1967.
Woods has named Sifford his champion and the TGR Foundation tournament, the Genesis Invitational, awards the Charlies Sifford Memorial dispensation to players who represent the advancement of diversity in golf.
Without Cobbs Creek, Sifford might never have discovered his love for the game.
Cobbs Creek Foundation and TGR
Starting in the early 2010s, whispers began to restore the path to golden era glory. They only got louder when the clubhouse was lost in a fire in 2016 and the city’s lease to a private contractor to operate the golf course expired in 2019, forcing the course to close. The course has been reclaimed in nature and has even become a site for illegal dumping.
Soon after, the non-profit Cobbs Creek Foundation was formed. The group went to the City of Philadelphia and requested a new lease to restore and operate the golf course. They have been granted a 70 year lease in 2022 with two 30 year options.
The plan begins with a complete restoration of the area’s creek first to help mitigate the property’s historic flood problems, which Hervada says is located at one of the lowest points in West Philadelphia.
Then, construction could begin on the restoration of the Olde 18-hole course and the 9-hole Karakung course led by Philadelphia natives and esteemed architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. There will also be a multi-level driving range and education centre.
The Cobbs Creek Foundation is raising about $100 million for the project through individual donors and public funds.
In March, it was officially announced that the Cobbs Creek Foundation and the TGR Foundation would partner to build the second TGR Education Lab on the site. TGR Design will also create a short course next to the Learning Lab, similar to Pebble Beach’s The Hay.
“I am excited to be working with the Cobbs Creek Foundation and the community of Philadelphia on this special project that combines my passions with golf and supporting youth through education,” Woods said in the announcement. “Through campus, we will provide meaningful educational opportunities for local youth while expanding access to the game I love.”
Hervada said the Cobbs Creek Foundation began thinking about what programs they wanted to have at the education center when talks began with TGR.
“We reached out to TGR and it turned out they were interested in expansion and they were interested in the Northeast and Charlie Seaford’s connection was really great,” he said. “They really wanted to be in an urban setting, have access to a golf course, well located in the Northeast, and we kind of checked the boxes for them.”
The hope is for the TGR driving range, short course and teaching lab to be completed and open in the fall of 2024, Hervada said, with the 27-hole restoration in 2025 or 2026.
There are even dreams of an 18-hole composite course that will once again attract the PGA Tour to the facility.
“There are a lot of targets that we need to achieve before we can talk about a PGA Tour event. But the golf course is designed to host a PGA Tour event,” Hervada said. “I think the city of Philadelphia has crazy golf fans and would be very supportive if we had a regular PGA Tour stop here.”
The course greens fee hasn’t been set yet, but Hervada stressed that it will be affordable, just as ever. Programming for children chosen to be a part of the TGR Foundation will be completely free. Herevada also said there’s hope that Greater Philadelphia’s First Division—of which this writer is a proud alumnus—will have a presence at the facility.
“This is a public golf course. So everyone is welcome.” It costs nothing to be a member. Just come and you can play.”