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Willow Lakes at PAFB
This is the first of the “Courses Lost” posts, which I share, and invite others to share, memories of courses that have closed. Willow Lakes Golf Course opened in the Fall of 1968 on Pope Air Force base but it was not until the following October, upon my return from Mildenhall RAF, England to start my discharge from service process, that I played the course. As it was, the USAF allocated 30 to 45 days for an airman to complete the procedure, so there was a lot of “hurry up and wait” downtime while waiting for one office to send my records to another one involved in the process. Therefore,…
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Golf Courses never more
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More than a Name Change
Ordinarily in the “Golf Ghosts section you would find post about companies, products and courses that are no longer around. However, periodically, there is an attempt to rescued the brand. Park Mammoth is such a case. As I stated in another post, I discovered Park Mammoth Golf Course in the late summer of 1970. At that time it was part of a Best Western resort which included tennis courts, a putt-putt course, horseback riding, private cave, and a miniature train that would take you “to and from” the lodge to various points around the complex including the golf course. A collage of Norman Rockwell scenes in real life; that was…
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Willow Lakes at PAFB
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Golf Courses never more
In the late 1980s, golf was surging, and the National Golf Foundation, NGF, encouraged the industry to build a course a day for 10 years. Over a 20-year period up until the early 2000s, more than 4,000 new golf courses were built. Currently, there are more golf courses in the United States than anywhere else, over 14,000 totaling approximately 2 million acres of green space. However, that being said, the number of golfers and rounds played began to decline in the 2000s. Courses began closing in the Great Recession and the trend accelerated so fast that more than 400 courses went defunct in 2016 and 2017, according to the NGF.…
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Willow Lakes at PAFB
