Swope Memorial Golf Course
Kansas City, Mo.
Date Played: Nov. 15, 2020
Greens Fee: $32 to walk 18
The Midwest’s Front Door,
or the South’s Back Door?
As far as states go, I’ve never quite known what to do about Missouri’s southernness.
A childhood friend attended the University of Missouri after he graduated from our high school; his freshman-year roommate was a Yankee, and they spent the year arguing over whether Missouri was part of the South. They barbecue pork, for one thing. Mizzou is now part of the Southeastern Conference, too — albeit in the SEC East Division (with the likes of Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia), so perhaps that evidence’s credibility is strained. Between 1904 and 2004, winning presidential candidates carried Missouri in every election but one; over the past 20 years, though, the state has been less a bellwether and has gone Republican six straight times — which seems very southern. On the other hand, it neighbors Iowa, for God’s sake — not exactly a borderland.
On a course rife with clever bunkering, Swope’s fifth hole stands out: the trio of pot bunkers outside the dogleg must be challenged to offer the best view of the green.
If Missouri is at least partially southern, then Kansas City — an unlikely home to three A.W. Tillinghast designs — might be the connective tissue between the South and what lies beyond. The drive northward up Interstate 49 winds through the Ozark Mountains, leaving them behind only perhaps two hours south; still hilly, but undoubtedly less highland than Fayetteville and Fort Smith — or even Joplin and Branson, for that matter. And during the Great Migration of the early 1900s, ten of thousands of southern Blacks flocked to Kansas City; it’s hard to argue that people leaving the South would choose a destination still in the South. To a child of the South, there is something familiar about Kansas City — but it’s not home.
Take for instance Swope Memorial Golf Course, with a pedigree nearly unmatched by any Deep South municipal course. The Tillinghast design winds over, around, and through Kansas City’s hills, reminiscent of Bethpage Black (which opened two years after Swope) in its routing and bunkering. At less than 6,300 yards from its back tees, Swope lacks Bethpage’s enormity; but with more creative greens and far more manageable rough, Swope enjoys a playfulness that Bethpage sadly has rejected. Swope hosted professional events in the mid-1900s — the PGA Tour’s inaugural Kansas City Open Invitational in 1949, and the United Golf Association’s Negro National Open (won by Charlie Sifford) in 1953. And with a preposterously low greens fee ($32 to walk 18 holes — at a Tillinghast!), Swope might be the country’s quintessential municipal golf experience.
Perhaps that’s the best evidence of all that Kansas City is outside the South.
. . .
Three of Swope’s four par-5s measure 504 yards or less, so solid drives will leave some players with a chance at getting home in two. Still, for most players, even the “short” par-5s — like the ninth, which measures 477 yards from its back tees (465 yards from the whites) — remain three-shot holes.
Suffice it to say that 2020 has not been a tremendous year for travel. But you can’t let something as trivial as a pandemic get in the way of a walking tour of Landmand Golf Club’s construction in northeastern Nebraska. When that invitation landed in my lap, I threw three days’ worth of clothes and a fistful of disposable facemasks in an overnight bag. You can, however, let something as trivial as a pandemic keep you off airplanes; so the overnight bag went in the back of a rental car, and I went on my way.
Kansas City is a little more than halfway along the 14-hour drive from my hometown of Jackson to Landmand’s site in Homer, Nebraska. I didn’t have to make it to Kansas City on the first day of the trip — but if I did, then I’d wake up the next morning to a surprising selection of public golf options. At Memphis, I turned northeast toward Jonesboro and, beyond, toward Springfield. The grey monotony of the Arkansas Delta slowly rolled past; around the time I crossed over the Missouri state line, the land began rolling — hilly at first, then something more than hills but (despite the label) less than mountains; the first connective tissue, perhaps. Somewhere north of a well placed Starbucks in a Springfield Hy-Vee, the horizon flattened, and the sun dipped below it. I woke up the next morning in a spartan Holiday Inn Express, less than a 10-minute drive from Swope.
Both the place’s land and its name come from Thomas H. Swope, a local real estate mogul and possible murder victim who donated more than 1,300 acres in 1896 to be used as a public park. The place first opened to public golf in 1917 (membership cost $2; “Of course it is not necessary to join the club,” the Kansas City Star wrote that April, “but if you don’t join then you’ll have no license to howl very loud if the course isn’t up to the standard you believe it should be.”), but Tillinghast didn’t arrive until 1934. At the time, Kansas City had ideas toward developing Swope Park into a multi-course facility, a la Bethpage State Park in New York, and Tillinghast’s design took on the name “Swope No. 1.” More than eight decades later, it’s still 1 of 1.
The 6,300 yards that Tillinghast baked into Swope undoubtedly play shorter today than they did when the course opened nearly 90 years ago. But its bizarre yardages create awkward yardages that still challenge, even in the Twenty-First Century — like at the drivable third hole, where either a drive or pitch that runs through the green will find a bunker from which the green runs away.
That’s not to suggest that it leaves one wanting.
When I pulled up alongside Swope’s modest clubhouse, the only thing for which I was left wanting was heat. Fall had arrived decidedly in northwest Missouri; temperatures had crept above 40 degrees and the morning’s frost had melted off beneath the cold, cloudless sky, but both just barely. I resolved to walk, and after handing over my greens fee and piping my first drive, I was off.
By the time I found my ball, Swope had showed its hand. Tillinghast’s routing runs over different portions of the site’s hills — sometimes over the tops, sometimes along the sides — to create different problems in a setting that easily could gotten monotonous. And at the first hole, that meant laying the fairway along the side of a hill so that it cambers down toward the base. Landing your tee shot in the fairway isn’t enough; to hold the fairway, a drive’s shot shape and placement face little room for error. Tillinghast’s design revisits that pattern several times.
Swope isn’t heavily bunkered, but it makes it hazards count. At the first, with the ball lying below your feet, a long, ragged sand trap runs to the right of the green — just where the hanging lie is likeliest to bring it into play. Time may have rendered Swope’s yardage a novelty of yesteryear, but the design still punches well above its weight.
Tillinghast’s remarkable Q&A with a local newspaper in 1934. “The million-dollar clubhouse and the 30-cent course is out. It was a case of ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’” Tillinghast said. “Now semi-public courses are coming in and coming in fast. Persons who like golf for the game’s sake want simplicity when they go out to the country to play — an adequate clubhouse, showers and everything. A big clubhouse doesn’t necessarily mean a great course.” Kansas City Star, Jan. 30, 1934.
Of course, I was too stubborn to accept that. As soon as I saw the scorecard, I headed for the blue tees with a sudden burst of self-importance — ignoring the fact that they carried a slope rating a bit out of my weight class. After hanging on for dear life to make bogey on the first two holes, I began glancing longingly at my beloved white tees — but the third hole (267 yards from the back tees, 226 yards from the whites) is the shortest par-4 on the course; so I rejected discretion for the lesser part of valor. A great drivable par-4 uses short yardage to deceive golfers into overlooking hazards both short and long — that is, to punish a player who overestimates his power off the tee, and again for an inexact approach shot. By that measure, No. 3 is a great drivable par-4: my tee shot faded when it should’ve drawn, and landed in a small bunker; the delicate shot that followed wasn’t delicate enough and came to rest in the long, ragged sand trap that separate the first and third greens (a very cool design feature, when you’re not in it). Swope’s greens complexes aren’t unduly small, but they’re sewn together tightly; there is none of Bethpage’s sprawl, and the greens have far more movement. A double bogey later, I relegated myself to the white tees.
To be clear, I’m aware that Bethpage Black’s Tillinghast credentials are disputed. Swope’s fifth hole might have something to say about that. The leftward sweeping par-5 (451 yards from the back tees, 429 yards from the whites) begins with a tee shot downhill into a valley flanked on the right side by sand traps, then back uphill to a green guarded at front left by bunkering; it’s reachable in two shots, but the safer play is to a bailout area on the green’s right. Sound familiar? (Note: faithful reader Zane Ellis points out that the pot bunkers in the fifth fairway aren’t original to the design; if they are reflective of Bethpage Black at all, then it is as an homage only.) Likewise, the green-to-tee connection between Swope’s eighth and ninth — where a par-3 leads to a 90-degree leftward turn, toward a fairway where a long drive must challenge fairway bunkers — feels reminiscent of the transition between Bethpage Black’s eighth and ninth. More than the routing’s individual components, though, there is an authenticity to Swope — a scruffiness that decorates a golf course whose design requires careful thought to navigate. If Bethpage Black ever had it, then it lost it in the late 1990s. Swope will never host a U.S. Open, but it hasn’t lost its soul, either. That matters.
Bethpage Black and Swope opened within two years of one another. If the former is indeed Tillinghast’s work, then it stands to reason that he would’ve had some of the same design ideas rolling around in his head at both sites. Swope does nothing to cast doubt on that. Bethpage Black’s authenticity is lost to the ages, but Kansas City has doubled down on Swope’s. It might be the closest thing left to Tillinghast’s late-career vision of great public golf.
Swope’s greens, like the par-3 16th, sit neatly on the ground but still are far livelier than Bethpage Black’s putting surfaces.
Bethpage Black is undeniably a great golf course — but no matter how much you like it, it’s not lovable. Swope is. The short par-4 15th hole (349 yards from the back tees, 287 yards from the whites) and the tiny par-3 16th (134 yards from the back, 116 yards from the whites) offer welcome respites from design’s most difficult moments, at just the moment you need it most — the final stretch. No such sanctuary awaits players in any corner of Bethpage Black. Some people might find that captivating. But it’s not charming.
At golf courses both lovable and ludicrous, though, human frailty is never far away. On the tee at the 18th hole (404 yards from the back, 365 yards from the white tees), I needed bogey to shoot a career-best score. After piping my drive into the fairway, though, I fanned a 6-iron right of the green, then bladed a pitch over the green into one of Tillinghast’s greenside bunkers — and then skulled the bunker shot over the green into the other greenside bunker. I walked off with a double. Swope might not be as demanding as Bethpage Black, but sometimes a golfer brings difficulty on his own.
. . .
Walking off the 18th green back toward the parking lot, I passed in front of a group of older players whom I’d seen a couple of holes in front of me all day. I’ve played enough golf in the South to know what sorts of conversations to expect from groups like that. And from a distance, the only word I could make out at first was “Biden.” Then I got close enough to realize that they were talking about COVID: the statewide infection rate was on the rise, and the old men wondered whether rural hospitals could keep up with surging admissions. A vaccine was on the horizon, one man noted; “If Biden says it’s safe, then I’ll take it,” another said.
At the end of the day, then, it doesn’t matter whether Missouri is part of the South. From Long Island to Louisiana, we are all in this together — not unlike the Great Depression in which Bethpage Black and Swope were born. We share the same fears in 2020’s final weeks, and the same hopes for 2021. Swope emerged from a time of fear. So will we all.
. . .
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