Hansen: Meet the course that took Match Play from Tucson

To get to Harding Park Golf Course you pay a $6 toll at the Bay Bridge, take the 80 to the 101 to the 280 to John Daly Boulevard to the 32 to a place where the fog doesn’t lift until noon.

This is the place that poached Tucson’s golf tournament.

You know you’re at the right place when you see dozens of WGC-Cadillac Match Play banners fluttering in the morning breeze.

Those are the same banners that flew over Dove Mountain from 2007 to 2014, the same logos that heralded the presence of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and the heartbeat of golf for five glorious days every February.

If you step into the lobby of the 90-year-old municipal golf course you see a large display case with Jason Day holding the 2014 championship trophy, although the cacti has been edited from the background.

All of the golf carts have Match Play stickers. It sure looks familiar.

“It’s big time,” says Ray Suarez, a starter at the No. 1 tee on the Fleming course, a nine-hole facility within the sprawling Harding Park property. “We’ve had the Schwab Cup and the Presidents Cup, but this is bigger.”

You see a flier that solicits volunteers: for $90, you get a complete Nike-coordinated golf outfit if you are willing to marshal tens of thousands of golf fans from April 27 to May 3 over a course that was designed almost a century ago.

You wonder if the Bay Area’s madhouse sports appetite — daily worship of the Giants’ Madison Bumgarner and the Warriors’ Steph Curry — will take a break to watch a few days of golf.

“I watched some Match Play,” says KC Evans, who works the pro shop, charging $176 per non-resident at Harding Park “I thought it was boring.”

It was boring until it left town. Then it was mourned.

Monday would’ve been Tucson’s traditional Media Day for the Accenture Match Play Championship; a message from PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, an interview with a big-name golfer like Matt Kuchar or Bubba Watson and an afternoon of golf along the Wild Burro wash that left you wondering what Jack Nicklaus was thinking when he designed a golf course so souped up that even Tiger complained about the greens.

Harding Park is spectacular. If there’s a word that goes beyond spectacular, use it. Even the fog is beguiling.

It has the feel of an old-time, black and white muni. On Friday, the first 24 golfers at the No. 1 tee all walked with push-carts or carried their own bags.

There’s a bit of golf romance to hitting a shot into the trees (there are thousands at Harding Park) rather than a cholla or into an old cow pie.

The city and county of San Francisco, which spent $16 million to renovate Harding Park about 15 years ago, maintain walking and jogging trails through the middle of the course.

Unlike walking the wilderness at the Gallery Golf Club’s south course, or the old Ritz-Carlton Golf Club’s unfriendly Tortolita and Saguaro nines, Harding Park is a walker’s destination.

You don’t have to pay $176 to walk it; the views of bordering Lake Merced, and, in the distance, Golden Gate Park, are free.

One can’t imagine the touring pros complaining about being isolated, or playing a tricked-up course, as they did behind the scenes at Dove Mountain.

Tucson was in and out of favor in eight short years.

After that, it was as if the pros discovered Harding Park overnight. After bolting Tucson, Finchem and the PGA of America agreed to stage the 2020 PGA Championship and the 2025 Presidents Cup there.

The fabled Olympic Club, home to the 1955, 1966, 1987, 1998 and 2012 U.S. Opens, is 2 miles down the road from Harding Park. As recently as 1998, Harding Park was used as the main parking lot for the Open.

Now it’s on all the dance cards.

“There’s no parking here,” says Evans. “People will have to be shuttled in from everywhere. They’ll complain the way they did at the U.S. Open, but they’ll still come to see Tiger and Mickelson.”

If Finchem deserves any criticism for Match Play’s eight years in Tucson, it’s that he didn’t respond to cries that the format needed to be tweaked.

One and done? That works in March Madness, but in golf it diminishes the interest.

Once Accenture bailed out, Finchem had to be creative to draw another $10-million-a-year sponsor and a community willing to stage the game’s most nontraditional event.

Now there is no one-and-done. The world’s top 64 golfers will be guaranteed three rounds. Instead of 63 total matches, there will be 96.

And it probably won’t snow.

Match Play will be greatly missed, but at least it has found a good home.