Richard Keene hasn’t been playing at Brainerd Golf Course since it opened 100 years ago. It just seems like it.
“I haven’t been out here quite that long,” Keene said at Saturday’s celebration of Brainerd GC’s centennial. “Just since the mid-1960s.”
Keene, a five-time winner of the Brainerd Invitational, the club’s 80-year-old signature event, was among 120 players who teed it up in a special two-man scramble. Under threatening skies and intermittent rain, Richard Brame and Bob Lawson teamed for a 12-under-par 60 and the win.
Before the tournament got under way, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly called Brainerd GC a “quintessential Chattanooga place.”
“It’s really the anchor of this great, old, iconic Chattanooga neighborhood,” he said. “I think of (the course) like you would think of a historic building.
“It’s really the community’s course — it has a character that’s not like any other course around here, both in terms of the people who play here and the course itself,” he added.
The entry fee for the event was 50 cents — the amount it cost to play 18 holes at Brainerd GC when it opened.
Keene recalled caddying there when he was a kid, getting $5 for working a round in the morning, followed by lunch — a bologna-and-cheese sandwich, chips and a Coke — for $2. Then he’d pay $3 to play in the afternoon.
“So you’d go home empty,” he said, “but you’d had a big day.”
Keene also remembered being taken to the course by his father.
“And now my daughter and I play out here,” he said. “Beginners can play out here. It’s just a great facility for everybody.”
The city of Chattanooga has owned and operated Brainerd Golf Course since the early 1990s. Eddie Taylor, who oversees operations for this venue and nearby Brown Acres Golf Course for the city, said Brainerd hosted about 50,000 rounds last year.
“I think it’s probably the busiest place in the city,” he said.
“This, today, is a huge deal,” Taylor added. “It’s really overwhelming. All the history here, all the great players who’ve won the Invitational — to have been part of that, in some small way, is really satisfying.”
Edwin Prichard, who has been in charge at Brainerd GC since the late 2000s, said working there has been like being part of a big family.
“Not just employees, but the people you contact on a daily basis,” he said. “It really is like a family experience.”
Brainerd GC was designed by Donald Ross, a Scot who came to America as a young man and went on to design dozens of courses, including Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina, generally regarded as his masterwork. In addition to Brainerd GC, Ross also designed the course at Chattanooga Golf & Country Club.
Work done at Brainerd GC over the years has significantly altered Ross’ original design, but his drawings still exist and Keene said he’d like to see the course taken back to its “original masterpiece” layout.
“It would literally be a destination,” he said, adding that Ross devotees, who are many in number, would travel long distances to see one of his designs restored.
Taylor said such a restoration would cost about $12 million.
“It’s always difficult in a municipal situation,” he said. “You’re a golf course in line with first responders. Those are difficult (funding) decisions.
“(Restoration is) a big mountain to climb, but we’ll see where it goes.”
Contact Bob Gary at sports@timesfreepress.com.