A story about what happens to Shandin Hills, San Bernardino’s city-owned, exclusively public golf course, if the management company were to walk away. This is a fictional story. The names are made up. The plan is real.
The Wake-Up Call
Dear City of San Bernardino,
We heard you’re worried. Word around town is that one question keeps coming up at City Hall. What happens to Shandin Hills if the management company walks away?
Who unlocks the gate at dawn? Who answers the phone? Who keeps the greens alive through the next heat wave like we had in September? Who makes sure the bills get paid?
Take a breath. Do not fret. We got you!
We are the San Bernardino Community Golf Project. We are a coalition of community groups, local businesses, golf industry professionals, and neighbors who want to keep this course open and rebuild it into something that could fill whole city with pride.
This is not a bid and it is not a proposal. It’s a plan to help, if the City ever needs it.
And here is the part that should help you sleep tonight. The pillars that hold a golf course up were never really the logo on the contract. They are people. Most of the ones you need are already here, and the rest are a phone call away.
A note before we start: in the tradition of the best fictional storytellers, every name below is invented. Each character is a blend of real people from the Project’s network. None of them is one person. All of them are true.
Act 1: The Staff
We begin at the starter’s counter.
A woman we’ll call Carmen has worked that counter long enough to know which regulars want the 6:40 a.m. tee time and which ones will be ten minutes late for their time regardless of what time of day they start. She knows a retired machinist we’ll call Mr. Okada has bad knees, so he leaves his cart in the parking lot after his round. Nobody says a word. Someone just quietly brings it back to the cart barn once he leaves. She knows the Saturday foursome that has played together since the Reagan years, and the story behind every one of their arguments.
When the tee sheet double-books, Carmen fixes it before anyone notices. When a golfer walks in hot, she’s the one who listens. Nobody wrote that into her job description. She does it because these are her people.
Take a walk through the tunnel and out to the fourteenth hole before sunrise.
A crew member we’ll call Chuy is standing on a dry patch with a hose in his hand. A valve upstream is acting up again, so he’s watering that spot by hand. He isn’t complaining. He’s just making it work, the way he has a hundred times before.
That’s what it takes to hold this place together. Quiet people doing quiet work so golfers keep coming back. You won’t find it on a balance sheet. Take it away, and the whole thing wobbles.
The equity nobody counts
Now let’s talk about the part of this business no spreadsheet captures.
On a weekday afternoon across town, a coach we’ll call Coach Dee is laying out plastic clubs on a middle school blacktop. A row of 12-year-olds are about to swing a club for the first time.
The program she helps run started years ago with 20 students at two elementary schools. Today, thousands of San Bernardino kids have learned the game through it. There are 7,000 to 8,000 student visits a year, at school sites throughout the city and on Sundays at Shandin.
A high schooler we’ll call Jaylen started in fourth grade. Now he coaches the younger kids. He plays golf with a six-club set, not the standard 14. Fewer clubs, fewer decisions. And he has a swing that’s starting to turn heads.
That is the real equity of Shandin Hills. The regulars Carmen knows by name. The trust of thousands of families. A pipeline of new golfers that grows every school year.
You can’t buy it. You can’t fake it. And it doesn’t leave when a contract ends.
The Old Guard
There are people who loved this course who aren’t here right now. Not because they stopped caring. Because life, and greener grass, pulled them somewhere else.
A superintendent we’ll call Lucas maintained the grounds in the years people still talk about glowingly. Greens that rolled true. Tee boxes you were proud to stand on. He knew where every irrigation line ran because he walked most of them with a shovel. Lucas has joined the Project. He’s ready to walk the course again with the crew and share everything he knows the moment he’s needed.
A men’s club captain we’ll call Big Mike moved his group to a course in another city a couple of seasons ago. They still drive past Shandin on the 215 freeway. Every time, somebody in the car says, “Remember when.” Big Mike’s message has always been simple: fix the greens, and we come home.
A women’s club organizer we’ll call Denise kept a Tuesday league going at Shandin for years. Circumstances caused the league to scatter. But her contact list didn’t. She says a few dozen women are only one group text away.
And then there are the people who never came to the course to play golf at all, but remember it fondly.
A mother we’ll call Mrs. Thomas threw her daughter’s birthday party on these grounds. A photo from that day is still on her refrigerator: a pink dress, a lawn full of family, a gazebo, the San Bernardino Mountains behind them.
A couple we’ll call the Ortegas said their vows here more than twenty years ago. Sixteen years later, their daughter had her quinceañera on the same lawn. A grandfather we’ll call Mr. Wilson has celebrated his birthday with a beer at Shandin for more years than he can remember. He’s eighty-some years old.
They are all part of the Project now, or one call away. Keepers of the memories. All are ready to step back in.
Act 2: The Day After
Let’s imagine. Yes, it’s speculative. But every piece of it comes from a plan that has been brewing for a while.
It’s a Tuesday. The management agreement has ended.
A City staffer we’ll call the Deputy pulls into the parking lot at 5:45 a.m. She has braced herself for a crisis. A locked gate. A dark pro shop. Angry golfers.
The lights are on. The coffee is brewed. Carmen is at the starter’s counter.
The first tee time of the day was booked a week ago. It goes off on time. So does every tee time after, except for the group who are always 10 minutes late. Every booking made before the handoff is honored.
On the counter, the Deputy finds the handoff plan. It’s organized under five plain words:
- People: who does what, and what they need to do it.
- Permits: every license and permit kept in force.
- Money: where it comes in, where it goes, and who can see it.
- Systems: the tee sheet, the register, the phones, the website.
- Assets: every mower, cart, and key, accounted for.
Then she remembers something she had known all along. The worry made her forget.
The City was never empty-handed. The City owns the course. The City already funds any operating shortfall through the operating account. The service contracts already come back to the City when the agreement ends. The City keeps its audit rights.
The money, the contracts, and the oversight were in the City’s hands the whole time. All the City needed was a team ready to start the day after, just in case. That team was already here. That team was ready. That team has what it takes to run the place. The golfers have their coffee and Carmen’s standing at the counter ready to go.
By nine o’clock, the Deputy is on the patio with her second cup, watching a foursome tee off and wondering why she lost so much sleep.
Room to breathe
The first week, something shifts. It’s hard to name, but everyone feels it.
A sprinkler head breaks on the sixth hole. Chuy calls it in. Lucas stops by to help track down the line. It’s fixed by lunch.
No ticket in a queue. No waiting. The decision gets made in minutes by people who can see the problem from where they’re standing.
Carmen has been saying for a year that a better twilight rate would help fill the empty late afternoons. On Wednesday she says it again. By Friday it’s on the board. Carmen feels heard. Golfers get a deep discount for the last two hours of daylight. That’s what happens when the people closest to the work get to help decide what gets done.
The math starts mathin’
As the weeks roll on, more and more suggestions roll in. And the golf course always gets paid first.
The promise to the City was simple: Shandin Hills will stay open and it will not cost more to run. Every dollar saved will go back into the grounds, into the water, into the greens, and into the golfers’ experience.
Carmen’s twilight pricing suggestion made a difference. Afternoon traffic has increased significantly because of the attractive pricing. Grow the tee sheet, grow the revenue. You get the picture. Carmen’s not alone.
Chuy suggested that the City doesn’t need to own all of the maintenance equipment. Why not lease it when needed? Now, if something is missing, the Project network lines up lease deals with local equipment providers. Less overhead costs, more revenue. More revenue… here we go again.
None of it is flashy. All of it adds up.
The grass, a golf course has to be a golf course
The greens come first, because golfers judge a course by its greens.
Shandin’s greens are Poa annua, a fussy grass that rewards attention. So the crew mows them often, with walk-behind push mowers, with sharp blades. The blades have to be sharpened all the time. That’s what Poa needs to keep the seedheads down and the roll smooth. The superintendent watches conditions day by day and immediately treats only what needs treating.
Next comes the water. The tired valves get replaced, but Chuy keeps the hose going. That’s what Poa greens like.
The fairways? Everyone is honest about them. They won’t bounce back overnight. But they will get better as the weather warms. The plan says so. The golfers are waiting patiently now because they see the greens improve week by week. The trust is returning. The complaints are down.
The town shows up
The Saturday after the handoff, Denise sends one group text.
Forty-one women show up with gloves and buckets of divot mix. The fairways will not repair themselves.
The next Sunday morning it’s Big Mike’s crew. A local shop drops off breakfast burritos. A hardware store sends paint. Results: newly painted tee markers. Parents from Coach Dee’s program bring their kids to learn how to rake a bunker the right way.
Lucas walks the course with anyone who will listen, pointing out where the old drainage runs and telling stories about the best greens he ever grew.
The City had feared it would be left holding the bag.
It turns out the bag was full of people.
Act 3: The Promise to Everyone Who Left
This part is for all of you who left, the golfers who stopped coming. The league that moved across the county. The family that booked its party somewhere else this year.
We saw why you left. We don’t blame you.
You wanted greens that rolled true. A tee sheet that ran on schedule. Somebody behind the counter who says your name. You deserved all of it.
Here is our promise. Not a slogan. A priority list.
- Greens first. Steady mowing, sharp blades, and a superintendent watching them every day. You’ll feel the difference in your putting stroke before you see it anywhere else.
- Fix the water. The valves get replaced, so all the grass gets what it needs, and the Poa greens keep getting the hose.
- Your tee time means something. Bookings are honored. Pace of play is watched. The first group goes off on time. And you’ll be greeted like you belong, because you do.
- Outdoor event options. You want to host your party at Shandin? No problem. We live in Southern California. The weather usually cooperates. We have plenty of outdoor space and can come up with creative ways for you to host your parties. We even have a gazebo.
- Fair prices while we rebuild. Discounted rates during the renovation, so you aren’t paying full price for a course that is still getting better. A permanent discount for San Bernardino residents. Junior rates, twilight rates, intro-to-golf rates too.
- Straight talk. Golfer town halls on the course, where you tell us what’s wrong and we tell you what’s next. Regular reports on what changed. When the fairways are still brown, we’ll say so and make it right.
To Big Mike’s group and Denise’s Tuesday league: your tee times are waiting.
A classroom with eighteen holes
Remember Jaylen? Now picture him three years from today.
Shandin Hills isn’t only where he plays. It’s where he learned that golf is an industry, with real jobs and real careers for him if he wants.
He has coached. His high school doesn’t have a golf team. But they have an EXL golf franchise and he’s the GM. The team’s marketing, player development, and public relations director all report to him. He has walked the course with Lucas many times and learned why one green drains and another doesn’t. Carmen taught him how to calm a frustrated customer when he’s working the starter’s counter. Coach Dee taught him how to help a younger student find their fun in golf.
He’s the envy of many of San Bernardino’s young, developing golfers. They want to be like him. The more time they spend at the golf course, the better. Shandin is a golf career pathway hub. Jaylen and his pals get exposure to turf science, teaching, hospitality, event work, and the business of running a golf course, and they don’t even know it. They’re just having fun.
The party that turned into a round
The old banquet room is coming down. A local investor we’ll call Mr. Hale came to one of the Project’s community events. He saw the course. He saw the kids in the practice area and putting green. And he saw the families and decided to help give them somewhere to celebrate, just in case the Southern California weather decided not to cooperate. He went to the City with an idea. He pays to build a brand-new restaurant and banquet hall. Mr. Hale gets to run the restaurant. The City and the golf course get a new banquet facility without footing the bill. While the work goes on, celebrations continue outside, under the trees, and over at the gazebo where Mrs. Thomas had the birthday party.
The Ortegas, Mr. Wilson and his birthday beer, and everyone is outside for now. They don’t mind it. They understand why. At a wedding reception one Saturday, an uncle we’ll call Tío Beto wanders away from the cocktail tent. He has never held a golf club in his life. He ends up at the putting green.
Jaylen is there, helping with an intro-to-golf clinic that ran long. No one wants to leave. Jaylen hands Tío Beto a putter. He shows him how to hold the club and how to putt the ball. He knows that first-time golfers always hit their putts too hard. He has a trick to help students learn how to hit their putts soft. He knows that he can teach it to adults too if they listen. Tío Beto rolls in a ten-footer and lets out a yell the whole party hears. He listened.
Two weeks later Tío Beto is back for the next intro-to-golf clinic. He brings his wife. Golf is nothing like he thought it was. By spring, they play twilight nine on Thursdays. The price is right thanks to Carmen and they get to borrow clubs supplied by the Project because no one should have to pay for clubs until they know how to find the fun at the golf course.
That’s how it works. The walls people built in their heads start coming down, one putt at a time. Golf isn’t for people like us. It costs too much. I wouldn’t know what to do. Each one falls the first time someone hands you a club and says, “Here, try this.”
Grow the tee sheet, grow the revenue. Grow the revenue, grow the course’s bottom line. Grow the bottom line, improve the golf course. Improve the golf course, grow the tee sheet.
Over time, the course grows in two ways at once. More rounds from the golfers who come home. And new golfers, made right here, from birthday parties and weddings and Sunday sessions with the kids. They come because this is San Bernardino’s golf course. Exclusively public. Exclusively theirs.
Not just restored. Better than the glory days.
So, dear City
Do not fret.
If the day comes, if they walk away, we’ll be at the counter before dawn. The coffee will be on. The first tee time will go off on time.
Shandin Hills will not need to close.
Sincerely,
The San Bernardino Community Golf Project
Change. Think. Golf.
