A few years ago, I was working on a story about America’s municipal courses that could use a nip and tuck. Someone suggested Coronado Golf Course nestled in the serene, upscale beach community of Coronado, just minutes from downtown San Diego. For setting, playability and price, it’s arguably one of the country’s great munis, but could it be even better?
I reached out to my friend Tod Leonard, then the longtime golf correspondent for the San Diego newspaper (who has since joined Golf Digest) and an authority on golf in his neck of the woods, and proposed my question. His answer was short and sweet: He wouldn’t change a thing.
That about sums up how I feel about San Diego, one of those cities that is lovely to visit and even better to call home. It’s a hard city to squeeze into a phrase.
For starters, it capitalizes on one of the Pacific Coast’s best harbors, which has made it a home of a Navy and Marine Corps base since 1846. It has a tourist neighborhood with a Victorian Gaslamp District, beloved by baseball fans streaming out of Petco Park, conventiongoers and college students. While outclassed by the Bay Area and neighboring Los Angeles in attracting foodies, it has developed a vibrant roster of restaurants. Its world-class zoo and 1,800-acre Safari Park, 30 miles northeast, draws throngs every day. So do Sea World and Legoland. And Mexico – Tijuana, Baja California and the rest – beckons a few minutes from San Diego’s southern boundary.
It is Spanish tiles, palm trees, tropical blooms, year-round flip-flops, bonfires on the beach and fresh fish tacos – try the Taco Stand with locations in La Jolla, Encinitas and downtown San Diego or Oscars Mexican Seafood with locations in Pacific Beach and Hillcrest, as suggested by native Xander Schauffele.
The city, however, may be most famous for its glorious sunsets. If San Diego has a cohesive identity, it’s a shared embrace of an easy, breezy Southern California casualness.
And, of course, there’s the golf.