OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — For 100 years, people have been making memories at Lincoln Park, a now two-course golf complex on the city’s northeast side.
“I think (Lincoln Park) means a great deal to a lot of people around here,” said Aaron Kristopeit, just the course’s fourth head pro and golf director in a century. “It was the first public golf course to open in the state, and so I think it has generated a lot of interest in the game. It’s where so many people started playing.”
Before joining Lincoln Park’s pro staff, Kristopeit worked at the Oklahoma City Golf & Country Club and the Quail Creek Golf & Country Club. He sees some of those familiar faces from the private clubs at Lincoln Park at times. Many of them played golf for the first time at Lincoln Park, he said.
“It’s amazing to me how many members of those places I know that will come through Lincoln once a year for a tournament, and they will recognize me and stop and say ‘Hi’ and say ‘I remember playing here when I was 16,’ or something like that.
“I think (Lincoln Park) also means a great deal to the African American community who plays golf, especially because of the area of the city it is located in, the northeast quadrant.”
Lincoln Park turned 100 this year. Generations of families have gathered there over the years to play a few rounds and swap stories. It’s been a second home for many.
The beginning
In 1922, a small band of outdoor sportsmen launched a golf course that Oklahoma historian Bob Blackburn said “quickly entered the pantheon of public places in Oklahoma City.”
In 1909, Oklahoma City voters had approved a bond issue to establish four regional parks and a circular raceway connecting them. The raceway was called Grand Boulevard, and the four parks became Lincoln, Will Rogers, Woodson and Trosper.
Lincoln Park was the largest, but for the first decade was simply open space for picnics and exercise. In 1921, a local citizens’ club proposed building a public golf course in the park.
Art Jackson, the Scottish-born head golf pro in Tulsa who built a course in McAlester and the Marland course in Ponca City, was hired as the architect and construction supervisor for Lincoln Park. He became secretary/treasurer for the Lincoln Park Golf Club, a private group which would manage the course for 40 years.
Jackson let the terrain of the land dictate the design of his first holes. With a budget of $600, Jackson mowed the prairie grass for the fairways, drilled two wells for watering, installed sand tee boxes and built sand greens that averaged 50 feet in diameter.
The first official day of play on the new nine-hole course was July 4, 1922. The Oklahoman reported that every golf player in town, along with hundreds of curious people, flocked to the park for the opening.
Lincoln Park’s first golf tournament was held the following month. Three years later the course was expanded to 18 holes.
Keep improving
Over the next few years, the Lincoln Park Golf Club invested in more improvements. A stone clubhouse was built with locker rooms for men and women and a small pro shop and caddy shack.
The greens were planted with Bermuda grass, which turned green in early summer and went dormant during droughts and after the first freeze.
At Lincoln Park, Jackson had built one of the finest municipal golf courses in the country from the wilderness of blackjacks and the rocky sand hills in northeast Oklahoma City.
In January 1931, the Oklahoma City Parks Commission voted to add three new 18-hole courses at city parks in partnership with private management clubs, including a second 18 holes at Lincoln, creating a north and south course. Jackson would design all three new courses.
The second pro
Jackson retired a head pro in 1952 after 30 years and U.C. Ferguson replaced him. Ferguson already had worked at Lincoln Park since 1928, starting as a 15-year-old caddy and taking other jobs before eventually becoming an assistant pro.
In 1959, the Lincoln Park Golf Club announced a plan to sell $500,000 in municipal bonds for improvements under the management of a new Lincoln Golf Course Trust.
Six months later, the old club that had operated the courses since 1922 no longer existed and Ferguson and the rest of the golf staff became city employees.
A new clubhouse was built, and the two 18-hole courses were reconfigured. The new layout created a west and east course instead of north and south.
In 1965, Lincoln Park got a makeover again as the Oklahoma City Golf Trust allocated $875,000 in bonds and cash for improvements. The west course was closed during the renovations as a new parking lot, driving range and automated watering system was added. Tee boxes were enlarged, and the greens were replanted with Pencross Bentgrass.
At the end of his career, Ferguson considered the new clubhouse, rerouting the courses to east and west, and the improvements on Lincoln West as some of his greatest achievements.
Ferguson would retire as head pro in 1984 after 47 years on the job.
The star from OKC
Over the years, Lincoln Park has hosted a wide range of tournaments, including high school state championships, collegiate championships, state amateur qualifiers, city championships and others.
A three-time state high school champion from Northeast was a familiar face at Lincoln Park. Susie Maxwell-Berning learned to play golf at Lincoln Park under the tutelage of Ferguson.
Maxwell-Berning would be the first woman to receive a golf scholarship from Oklahoma City University, where she played on the men’s team. She joined the pro tour in 1964 and would go on to win the U.S. Women’s Open in 1968, 1972 and 1973.
In 1978, during an anniversary celebration for Ferguson as Lincoln Park’s golf pro, Maxwell-Berning lauded her teacher for the help he had given her and other junior golfers in Oklahoma City during his career.
Palmer vs. Player
Lincoln Park was on the international stage in 1961 when it hosted a match between two of the biggest stars in golf at the time: Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.
Player had won the the Masters that year while Palmer had just won the British Open. The previous year, Palmer won the Masters, and Player won the Open.
Player and Palmer were playing 25 head-to-head matches in six different countries to support youth golf. Tickets were sold to raise money for college scholarships for junior golfers.
Palmer won the match at Lincoln Park by seven strokes over Player.
The third and fourth pros
Steve Carson would become Lincoln Park’s third head pro and director of golf in 1990. Carson had grown up in Midwest City and previously was the head pro at Trosper.
During the 1990s, fewer golfers played at Lincoln Park as new courses were opened in the area. At the time, Lincoln Park also was dealing with a failing infrastructure as the greens and bunkers were old and declining.
Carson hired a golf course architect to develop a master plan to improve the golf courses and in 1998, the Oklahoma City Council authorized a $6.2 million bond package for renovations.
The west course was closed and every green was replaced, every bunker renovated, a new irrigation system was added and new paved golf cart paths were built. The course, remaining true to the historic layout of holes, reopened in the fall of 1999 to rave reviews.
Eight years later, with increased revenue from the west course, the Oklahoma City Council approved spending another $1.6 million to renovate the east course.
In 2012, the council approved an $8 million bond issue for a new and larger clubhouse. The 32,000-square-foot facility opened in 2015 and Lincoln Park became a popular place again.
Carson retired in 2021 after 31 years as the head pro. Kristopeit, who was the the assistant pro at Lincoln Park at the time, was hired to succeed him.
The future of Lincoln Park
Last year, 98,000 rounds of golf were played at Lincoln Park, the most since the 1980s.
“We’ve been the busiest course in the state over the last two years,” Kristopeit said. “It’s a product of COVID making golf very popular again, kind of driving people outside, and some of the other golf courses being closed around the vicinity.”
Some of those closed golf courses are about to reopen, and keeping Lincoln Park competitive among the best public courses will be a challenge in the future, Kristopeit said.
Kickingbird Golf Course in Edmond will unveil a new clubhouse next year. Earlywine and Lake Hefner courses also have plans for new clubhouses.
All of a sudden we are not going to be the new show in town anymore, so we need to make sure we do what we can to stay relevant,” Kristopeit said.
Will Lincoln Park be around for another 100 years?
“I would like to think so,” Kristopeit said. “Obviously time will tell. You never know what is going to happen. You don’t know what kind of new sports are going to be around that might take people’s interest, but I think if there is one course in Oklahoma City that would survive, I think Lincoln would be at the top of that list.”
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