“It was a great day,” said Pacifica resident, Sharp Park Women’s Club member, and tournament organizer Lisa Villasenor. “It was like a birthday party for a dear old friend: you throw a party to show your love and to celebrate their life.”
The May 19 event commemorated Sharp Park’s opening in Spring, 1932, and was hosted by the Pacifica Historical Society, Pacifica Chamber of Commerce, Sharp Park Men’s and Women’s Golf Clubs, and the San Francisco Public Golf Alliance, whose Honorary Chairman, 1964 U.S. Open winner Ken Venturi, calls Sharp Park “Alister MacKenzie’s great gift to the American public golfer.”
The National Trust for Historic Preservation designates May as National Preservation Month. Sharp Park is officially declared an “historical resource” by both San Francisco and Pacifica, and by a Resolution of the California Legislature, dated May 19, 2012 and authored by Assemblyman Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) and State Senator Dr. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco). That Resolution “encourage[s] the residents of San Francisco and San Mateo counties to participate in efforts to preserve the historic Sharp Park Golf Course.”
The 80th Anniversary Tournament was a fundraiser for the golfers’ fight to preserve the historic course. In recent years, Sharp Park has been under attack from environmental activists, who in February, 2011 brought suit in Federal Court in San Francisco to close the course, claiming that golf kills endangered frogs and snakes. In April, 2012, Federal Judge Susan Illston denied the environmentalists’ motion for summary judgment, and instead issued an order staying the litigation, pending completion of a study and Biological Opinion from the Federal Fish & Wildlife Agency’s Sacramento Office. That report is due by mid-September, 2012.
(For a copy of the California State Assembly Resolution, see: http://www.sfpublicgolf.com/LiteratureRetrieve.aspx?ID=105880.)
