Fore!
Harbor Oaks Golf Course opened back in the mid-1990s to great fanfare – deservedly so. Long rolling fairways, big, undulating greens, bright white sand traps, it was a new paradise for the golf enthusiast. And folks came from near and far to play.
The course was privately owned but available to all, meaning anyone of any color. Its opening came at a time when the two golf country clubs, Pine Bluff and Rosswood, were still mostly white, although that stricture was starting to crumble.
Harbor Oaks, however, was instantly everyone’s course, and if one played consistently, there were yearly memberships that were much less expensive than country club memberships. In essence, these players had their own country club.
In many ways, Harbor Oaks put Pine Bluff on the map in a way that brought in visitors like no other entity in town. There were company as well as annual sports tournaments that brought in hundreds at a time. Afterward, those hungry players likely stuck around to eat somewhere. And when they got back home, they talked about how challenging that course down in Pine Bluff is, you oughta go!
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
All of those memories came rushing back when the ribbon was recently cut on a new iteration of Harbor Oaks. The city now owns it, having taken it over when mother nature finally put the last nail in the coffin awhile back with a flood of floods that ruined much of the course and its improvements.
It’s a risk for the city to buy the course, but perhaps not an unreasonable one. Little Rock and North Little Rock have municipal courses — Little Rock used to have more until Mayor Frank Scott Jr. determined that War Memorial and Hindman needed to be closed — and they seem to be making it.
One of the problems that feed many of the city’s issues is a falling population base. Obviously, when people move away by the several hundreds each year, there are fewer people to do anything — eat out, buy things and play golf, etc. But Harbor Oaks had too much potential, at least it is thought to have, for the city to allow it to go fallow, so that’s where we are today.
The comment was made that, coupled with a trip to the casino, a spiffy new golf course might be just the thing to keep people around for a multiday visit. That’s certainly a possibility. We know for sure that it’s nice to drive out through Regional Park and see the course active again. Perhaps, it will catch on like it did once before.