The Courses · Original venue · qualifying host
Lincoln Park Golf Course
The birthplace of the City — a par 68 on the bluffs above the Golden Gate that plays far bigger than its card.
Lincoln Park is the oldest course the City of San Francisco owns, and the ground it sits on is older still. The bluff at the city's northwest corner was Golden Gate Cemetery — the municipal burial ground for the poor, for immigrants, for sailors — until golfers laid out three holes across it in 1902. The city named the land Lincoln Park in 1909, and by 1917 a full eighteen wrapped the headlands. That same year, the first San Francisco City Championship was played here. It has been played every year since.
The course was built in stages by several hands — Tom Bendelow, Jack Neville and Herbert Fowler among them, with longtime city superintendent Jack Fleming reworking it in the 1960s — and in 1924 the Palace of the Legion of Honor rose inside its boundaries, a Beaux-Arts memorial to California's war dead that now watches over the 18th green.
On the card, Lincoln is a par 68 that barely clears 5,400 yards. On the ground, it is one of golf's great misdirections: fairways pinched by cypress, greens the size of area rugs, sidehill lies on nearly every approach, and an ocean wind that turns short irons into long ones. Three major champions — Ken Venturi, George Archer and Johnny Miller, with Bob Rosburg alongside them — learned the game on these holes.
“At the 17th tee, the vista of the Golden Gate Bridge provides an unforgettable memory, no matter one's score.”
San Francisco Public Golf Alliance
The story
How Lincoln Park became Lincoln Park
- 1868
Golden Gate Cemetery
The city opens its municipal burial ground on the headlands — a potter's field and the resting place of San Francisco's immigrant communities.
- 1902
Three holes on the bluff
Local enthusiasts lay out three holes over the closed cemetery — the beginning of the oldest city-owned course in San Francisco.
- 1917
Eighteen holes, one championship
The full course is complete, and the first San Francisco City Championship is contested at Lincoln Park. The event has never missed a year since.
- 1924
A palace among the fairways
Alma Spreckels' Palace of the Legion of Honor opens on Armistice Day inside the park — a memorial to California's WWI dead, standing sentinel over the closing holes.
- 1960s
Fleming's hand
Jack Fleming — Alister MacKenzie's former construction foreman and the city's golf superintendent — reworks the course into its modern form.
- 2022
Hallowed ground, honored
San Francisco designates the historic City Cemetery site a city landmark, honoring the tens of thousands still interred beneath the park while preserving the golf course above.
- Today
Where the City still begins
Lincoln Park co-hosts stroke-play qualifying each March — 18 holes here, 18 at Harding — and hosts the San Francisco Junior Championship.
On the card
The holes that decide things
Ten of Lincoln's par 4s measure under 350 yards, and not one of them is a pushover. The defense is terrain, trees and wind — and the reward, at the far corner of the routing, is the finest view in municipal golf.
Downhill, downwind, downhistory
The longest hole on the course tumbles downhill past cypress and one of the old cemetery monuments — a birdie chance if the wind cooperates, which it rarely does.
The postcard
The closest point on the course to the Pacific, playing along the cliffs with the Golden Gate Bridge filling the horizon dead ahead. Take the picture before you play the hole — it demands your full attention.
Beneath the Legion
The closing hole finishes in the shadow of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, its fairway crossing ground that once held the old potter's field.
Hallowed ground
The course above the city's first cemetery
Lincoln Park's fairways cover Golden Gate Cemetery, where tens of thousands of 19th-century San Franciscans — many of them immigrants — were laid to rest and largely never moved. The course carries that history openly.
Near the 1st green
The Kong Chow altar
A Chinese funerary altar from the cemetery era still stands beside the opening hole — a monument to the burial ground of San Francisco's early Chinese community.
Near the 15th green
The Seamen's obelisk
The Ladies' Seamen's Friend Society obelisk, raised for sailors who died far from home, remains in play more than 150 years on.
The practice green
Archer's green
Lincoln's practice green is dedicated to George Archer, the 1969 Masters champion who learned the game here — one of three major winners the course raised.
Local knowledge
Playing Lincoln Park
- Wind and fog off the Pacific are constants — the course plays well past its 5,416 yards, and afternoon rounds can turn cold fast.
- Small, circular greens with little bunkering: the test is hitting them at all from uneven lies, not escaping sand.
- Hilly but genuinely walkable — most regulars carry. The Lands End coastal trails border the property.
- City-run green fees are among the best deals in Bay Area golf, with resident, senior, junior and twilight rates through SF Rec & Park.
Visit
300 34th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94121
(415) 221-9911
- Owned and operated by San Francisco Recreation & Parks
- Neighbors the Legion of Honor museum and the Lands End trailheads
The City plays here
Walk it in March
Every spring the championship comes back to Lincoln Park. Qualify, and these holes are yours.