Golfweek has an interesting package online, a shorter version of the larger package that appeared in its June 14 issue, headlined "The muni crisis." The main story is an interesting read that raises interesting and important points. This excerpt gives a good accounting of what Golfweek is looking into:

For a lack of a better term, “everyday munis” – the hardscrabble courses where many remember learning the game – are facing an unprecedented wave of challenges.

Escalating operational costs. Flat participation. Intense competition. Strained city budgets. Increased real estate development pressures. Such factors threaten the viability of munis, and if the courses shut down, some industry executives say, the ramifications will be troubling and many. They argue munis are essentially living museums, and their demise would represent a loss of civic and golf history that is irreplaceable.

And at a time when affordable access to golf is sorely needed to spark participation, the closure of munis would lock out new and existing golfers from the game.

“We’ve studied golf around the world, and in countries that don’t have a supply of affordable public golf, they never grow their participation rate past 2 (percent) or 3 percent of the population,” says Joe Beditz, president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation.

Part of me looks with sadness on the closing of any municipal golf course, and part of me doesn't. Part of me recognizes the importance of municipal golf courses in growing the game, and part of me understands why others don't care about that.

Depends on whether I'm looking with the part of me that is a golfer, or the part of me that is a pragmatist who understands the tightening of municipal budgets and has beliefs about the obligations of governments to their citizens and the proper way to prioritize those obligations.

In some ways, in some places, I've come to view municipal golf courses as anachronisms. Municipal golf courses in America grew out of a response to the fact that all the earliest golf courses here were private, open only to the upper crust. There were social and class issues involved in the creation of the first municipals, there were civic and egalitarian ideals at play.

Mostly, there was the desire to make available to all residents the ability to take part in the game if they wanted to, rather than only if they could afford to join the club (and assuming they could get past the membership committee even if they had the money). It was a response of the hoi polloi to the hoity-toity.

But in many places, those factors don't exist in any more, at least as they apply to golf. In many - but certainly not all - places, one can find affordable public golf without needing municipal golf.

I've seen both sides in the two cities where I've lived most of my life:

• In the city I grew up in, there were two municipal golf courses, and six private courses. No daily fee courses, resort courses, or semi-private courses. Without those two munis, I would have been out of luck. No golf for me.

   

• In the city where I've lived the past 10 years, there are six municipal golf courses, and about 20 other public courses within the city or very nearby. Some of those are high-end courses, but about 10 of them have costs comparable to or less than the muni courses.

Does the city I live in now really need municipal golf courses? Is that something the city should be spending money on? Fact is, this city's courses do not produce revenue, they eat it up. The city subsidizes the municipal courses here.

I can understand how that would bother the vast majority of citizens who don't golf. If the city is going to spend money on something, how about spending it on, say, a city park that everyone, rather just participants in one particular activity, can enjoy? How about building a new library? How about putting more cops on the street? I understand and sympathize with that argument. Fact is, if my current city announced tomorrow it was getting out of the golf business, that'd be just fine with me.

But what about city No. 1? Where municipal golf is the only golf available to most people? What about the little towns where the 9-hole muni is the only golf for miles? Those cities seem better able to make money off their golf courses, because they are not suffering the competition seen in my current place of residence. And then golf isnt' a drain on the public coffer, but a boon to it.

It's those little towns where the death of a golf course saddens me. Probably in part because such occurrences also symbolize the death of small towns.

But enough noodling over this topic. How about list? A sidebar to Golfweek's package was its ranking of the best municipal courses in America. Here's the Top 30:

1. Bethpage State Park (Black), Farmingdale, N.Y.
2. Chambers Bay GC, University Place, Wash.
3. Indian Wells GR (Players), Indian Wells, Calif.
4. Pinon Hills GC, Farmington, N.M.
5. Torrey Pines (South), La Jolla, Calif.
6. TPC Scottsdale (Stadium), Scottsdale, Ariz.
7. Indian Wells GR (Celebrity), Indian Wells, Calif.
8. Memorial Park, Houston
9. Thunderhawk GC, Beach Park, Ill.
10. Wintonbury Hills GC, Bloomfield, Conn.
11. Bear Trace (Ross Creek), Clifton, Tenn.
12. Mount Pleasant GC, Baltimore
13. Harding Park GC, San Francisco
14. George Wright Municipal GC, Boston
15. Fossil Trace, Golden, Colo.
16. TPC Scottsdale (Champions), Scottsdale, Ariz.
17. Bethpage State Park (Red), Farmingdale, N.Y.
18. Triggs Memorial GC, North Providence, R.I.
19. Torrey Pines (North), La Jolla, Calif.
20. Indian Canyon, Spokane, Wash.
21. Laurel Hill GC, Lorton, Va.
22. Hideout GC, Monticello, Utah
23. Chickasaw Pointe, Kingston, Okla.
24. Sand Creek Station GC, Newton, Kan.
25. Sunbrook GC (Pointe/Woodbridge), St. George, Utah
26. North Palm Beach CC, North Palm Beach, Fla.
27. Chaska Town Course, Chaska, Minn.
28. Montauk Downs State Park, Montauk Point, N.Y.
29. Brown Deer Park GC, Milwaukee
30. Wingpoint GC, Salt Lake City, Utah