Letter: Angel Park's high cost irks well-traveled golfer

I've played on five-star courses from Pebble Beach to Pinehurst No. 2 (some were several years ago).

I have never paid more than $50 for a round of golf except in Las Vegas, where I paid $72 at Angel Park (a city owned course). I refuse to pay the $90 plus that many of the courses charge. I am a child of the Depression and I am fortunate enough to afford those prices (at least occasionally), but refuse on principal.

I believe that if hundreds of courses around the country can profit year after year charging 75 percent less than those courses, I would be the personification of P.T. Barnum's well-known cliche. At $100 a round and shooting an 85 I would be paying $1.20 per stroke for every drive and every tap-in putt.

How can a family person, driving nails, clerking in a store or working in a casino, raising a family and sending kids to school, be able to play without his family sacrificing?

Now the casinos are acquiring hundreds of acres of valley land for private courses for high-rolling foreigners to play. Of course they will occasionally let locals play if they cough up $250 or more (that would cost me $2.95 a stroke).

Ted Maddox

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