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Hobos on the Course?


BeerPerHole

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Curious if anybody else experiences homeless on their courses. We have a large muni course/complex that has a lot of homeless activities surrounding it. They wonder through. They have a pretty good tent city along one of the fairways - you can see them through the trees. The other night there was one watching my son and I practicing on the range, just watching. He opened up and asked if he could hit a couple with my 8-iron. Had a very good swing, this guy. I bought him a beer and chatted. He'd freeze to death where he was before in Tahoe so came down the hill. I think drugs had destroyed his life, he lost custody of his son and was expressing how nice it was that I take my boy out there and play golf with him (kinda sad...). We joined a CC about a year ago. Very nice place - gated, trees, etc. Well, my buddy found a little camp tucked in next to one of our greens yesterday. So, they're moving into a private course, now. Homeless population has exploded here in Cali over the past year - stats indicating a 50% increase, approx.

 

So, have you had homeless people and/or camps on your courses? I gotta ask...

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Well, my husband and I found a dead homeless guy on our course yesterday. Does that count?

 

Played yesterday afternoon and above the bunker on the first par three, something was lying in the grass. I thought someone had left a jacket behind and walked up to grab it, and it was a man. Called 911, obviously, but he’d been dead for some time.

 

Not a typical experience, thankfully, but the course did just install new locks to keep people out of the bathrooms.

 

My guess is that the OP is talking about Haggin Oaks in Sacramento. I’ve seen play stopped there many times because members of the local homeless community are on the course and there have been physical threats.

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Finding a dead person has got to be unnerving.

 

Closest I came to homeless people on a course occurred back in the 80’s. Working the late shift, I was called out to the 5th green by a report of a fire. Found two young women setting up camp and had started a campfire just off the 5th green, just on the edge of a bush. They were hitchhiking across Canada and thought this was a good place to camp. I explained that this wasn’t good and they could expect visitors around 6am (Saturday). They moved off the property and set up camp a little ways away.

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No but we don't have a lot of homeless people here near golf courses, or in general. Not an easy place to live outside given the climate.

 

I did hit a ball into the woods once and run into a hiker/hunter type guy (think like Tommie Lee Jones in "hunted") , I was just glad he didn't kill me with a homemade knife.

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> @MtlJeff said:

> No but we don't have a lot of homeless people here near golf courses, or in general. Not an easy place to live outside given the climate.

>

> I did hit a ball into the woods once and run into a hiker/hunter type guy (think like Tommie Lee Jones in "hunted") , I was just glad he didn't kill me with a homemade knife.

 

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> @golfgirlrobin said:

> Well, my husband and I found a dead homeless guy on our course yesterday. Does that count?

>

> Played yesterday afternoon and above the bunker on the first par three, something was lying in the grass. I thought someone had left a jacket behind and walked up to grab it, and it was a man. Called 911, obviously, but he’d been dead for some time.

>

> Not a typical experience, thankfully, but the course did just install new locks to keep people out of the bathrooms.

>

> My guess is that the OP is talking about Haggin Oaks in Sacramento. I’ve seen play stopped there many times because members of the local homeless community are on the course and there have been physical threats.

 

Good lord! Sorry to hear that. PM me about where that happened. You might be right about the course I'm talking about...just maybe.

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WOW Seriously! that never occured to me. I guess that is because 99% of our courses here have neighborhoods and houses all around them

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I grew up playing at an Air Force Base. There were actually landing lights blinking (always told never look at them) on our 5th hole so obviously the course was situated very near the runway, hangars, planes landing taking off all the time etc.. Lots of open field except for the golf course itself.

 

Anyway, one morning probably back around 1984ish we had a very early tee time. When we walked off the 3rd green we noticed a junker type car parked amongst the weeds off the beaten path probably 100 yards or so away from us. As timing would have it just as we were making our way to the 4th tee the occupants emerged naked. A man and a woman stood up looking around stretching and then turned to us (must have heard us walking on path.. metal spikes ya know) and immediately got back in the car embarrassed and or laughing possibly. They looked ragged as heck I remember. Probably been drinking drugging etc.. all night. LOL.. Was just so funny as they started up the car proceeding to ramble across the uneven field, the car being no 4X4. The night before they probably thought it was a cool spot with planes landing so close albeit loud as heck.

 

 

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Last year in central Iowa, we had a homeless person murder a college golfer on the course.

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> @golfgirlrobin said:

> Well, my husband and I found a dead homeless guy on our course yesterday. Does that count?

>

> Played yesterday afternoon and above the bunker on the first par three, something was lying in the grass. I thought someone had left a jacket behind and walked up to grab it, and it was a man. Called 911, obviously, but he’d been dead for some time.

>

> Not a typical experience, thankfully, but the course did just install new locks to keep people out of the bathrooms.

>

> My guess is that the OP is talking about Haggin Oaks in Sacramento. I’ve seen play stopped there many times because members of the local homeless community are on the course and there have been physical threats.

 

Wow, that has got to be unnerving. Police interview you, or anything like that?

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Yes. Homeless problem exploded here in Colorado when pot became legal 5 years ago. I know more states have recreational marijuana now, but we've become a destination for the vanquished. We have a problem with them drinking non-potable water on the golf course.

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Wasn't there a show about ten years ago on GC about a down-on-his-luck golfer that lived in a drainage pipe, did odd-jobs trying to get his bag out of hock?

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Many years ago I was playing with some friends when this guy, probably mid-40s, came walking up out from the trees on the 16th, clearly homeless and half in the bag. He introduced himself and basically said, hi, this will sound strange but I grew up in that house and used to play a lot of junior golf. I was really good. But I'm an alcoholic and have lost everything. Can I hit your driver? Gave him the club and absolutely smoked it. We walked together for the next three holes or so and I let him use my clubs. I wound up really liking him, just incredibly blunt and honest about how he'd ruined his life. Coolest thing that's ever happened to me on a golf course. He shot level par on those three holes.

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> @"mizuno player" said:

> Interesting and sad topic. I'm in San Jose for Hockey Nationals. Lots of homeless around here. I can see why. It ain't cheap......

> But for the grace of ......

>

 

It gets a bit worse as you head north, San Francisco is bad. Portland has camps

 

I go to San Jose probably 5-6 times a year and I've never noticed it as much as in SF, Portland or Seattle. I imagine golf courses in these areas would deal with this, especially public ones.

 

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If you want to get the homeless off the golf courses, just have about 40% of your population move from the area and abandon their houses. That's what we did in Baltimore. Lots of places for homeless people and junkies to live. In fact, more space opens up every day.

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There are a couple courses where I've seen that here in the Houston area. One had people living under the bridges on the course, but there are a few where it is obvious by the types of trash (pizza boxes, bottles, etc) that people are living in the woods in some of the far edges of the course. I've seen a lot of the cone-shaped water cups in the woods also, too deep in for them to be from the players. Unfortunately, I used to spend quite a bit of time looking for my balls in the same areas, so I saw more of the evidence than better golfers probably did.

It seems to have gotten slightly better at the courses here (or I just spend less time in the woods). A few years ago it was pretty bad.

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> @ohioglfr said:

> Wasn't there a show about ten years ago on GC about a down-on-his-luck golfer that lived in a drainage pipe, did odd-jobs trying to get his bag out of hock?

 

Yes. Mostly fiction and he didn’t really “live” in the pipe. Not a nice person but GC completely overlooked his criminal background in favor of the sham of a story. Domestic terrorism, no contact order violation, 300 day jail sentence other issues related to ex. Went to Puerto Rico, then tried to cash in on his “fame”, was homeless there for a time, then started suing people (not his first frivolous lawsuits experience, sued CNN, lol, for millions, didn’t last long). May still be in Puerto Rico. His ex was a Cosby accuser and Cosby was counting on Burk’s help, lol, in discrediting her and of course that all went south quickly for poor Bill. Burk was just weird. Couldn't feel sorry for him but I still think he was exploited by the guy that came up with the idea for the show, filmed it and misrepresented so much crap in the "documentary" and GC somehow managed to sell out by putting it on air. For many of us, it was still the train wreck we kept watching!

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> @golfgirlrobin said:

> Well, my husband and I found a dead homeless guy on our course yesterday. Does that count?

>

> Played yesterday afternoon and above the bunker on the first par three, something was lying in the grass. I thought someone had left a jacket behind and walked up to grab it, and it was a man. Called 911, obviously, but he’d been dead for some time.

>

> Not a typical experience, thankfully, but the course did just install new locks to keep people out of the bathrooms.

>

> My guess is that the OP is talking about Haggin Oaks in Sacramento. I’ve seen play stopped there many times because members of the local homeless community are on the course and there have been physical threats.

 

Did you finish the round after that? Not sure how I’d react to finding a dead person on the course then just continuing to play.

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  • 2 weeks later...

> @BB28403 said:

> Probably due to a lack of mental health care. We need much better access for people with mental health problems. They just can’t bear the weight needed to perform in society.

 

I agree with this. We, as a nation, have not done a good job with this. If you speak with these people long enough you usually, quickly, see some problems between the ears. I don't make light of it, either. It's very, very sad to see it. We have a regular beggar near our big muni who's a woman. Breaks my heart to see a woman begging by the stoplight like that. She always has a nice smile to give...

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> @PZero said:

> "Homeless population has exploded here in Cali"

>

> I knew it was Cali before I clicked. Your voters are your problem.

Yes. Not to get political...but I am philosophical. Took the family over to play golf south of Reno, NV this weekend. Had a wonderful time. We plan to leave Cali. Don't want to raise my kids here anymore... This was once one of the most incredible places to live...

 

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