Azucena Maldonado and the Latina Golfers have been recognized many times and in many places for what they have done and continue to do for the cause of golf in general and the cause of women’s golf in specific. But this August night in Bell Gardens was different. It had a special poignance not shared by any of those other times and places.
You may remember the two runs of what the California golf community called the “Public Golf Endangerment Acts,” bills that would have offered substantial subsidies to municipalities and developers to transform municipal golf courses into housing complexes with a certain affordable quotient. But you may not remember that the Assemblymember who authored those bills hailed from Bell Gardens, and it was that city’s 9-hole 3-par golf course that the Assemblymember claimed was her inspiration for running the bills.
To the Assemblymember’s chagrin, she discovered that her colleagues from similarly situated working/middle class districts didn’t share her views about the value of affordable/accessible golf. The bills died – in large part due to the groundwork laid by organizations like Latina Golfers, the leadership of persons like Azucena Maldonado and the leadership of organizations the SCGA and the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) that translated that grassroots groundwork into an effective legislative campaign in opposition.
During Monday night’s meeting four of the five Council Members issued words about the value of golf and the golf course in their Bell Gardens Park, which is that city’s “central park,” in terms of the multiplicity of both active and passive recreational amenities offered in it, one of them the Bell Gardens 3-par golf course. The Mayor took up golf in college. Councilmember De Leon Sanchez is a member of the Latina Golfers. The two other members who spoke highly of golf and the city’s municipal golf course spoke about wanting to take up the game.
What a difference a few years have made in this Southeast Los Angeles County city that sits on the other side of the San Gabriel River from Downey. From ground zero of an effort that would have caused havoc for the 22.3% of California’s golf courses that are publicly owned to a City Council meeting filled with praise and love for the game and the value if offers communities like Bell Gardens.
Not all reversals of fortune are about bad fortune. Some are about good fortune – and in this case the same kind of good fortune we have heard in recent months in places like Santa Ana, where their River View Municipal Golf Course, just three years ago the subject of conversion to a regional park, was recipient of the same kind of praiseworthy words heard in Bell Gardens Monday night and a 15-year lease agreement with a major management company replete with detailed plans for reinvestment in the facility.
Increasingly, we have been hearing versions of similar “good fortune” in other places in Southern California where not too long ago we were hearing plans for decommission. All thanks to organizations like Latina Golfers, champions of the game like Azucena Maldonado, golf enthusiasts like the Bell Gardens Girls Golf Team, devotees of the game who step forward to counter the game’s naysayers, elected leaders who understand the value golf brings to the constituencies they represent and leadership organizations like the SCGA that devote some of their members’ dollars to assisting local communities in making their voices heard in the public space.
When those voices are heard, golf does all right. And Azucena Maldonado is one of the loudest, most persistent, and most effective voices in the game today.