A roadway runs through it: Meadowcreek Parkway will soon overshadow the Bermuda grass and sand-filled greens of the historic course.
Places Well Lose
An occasional series about local sites facing the bulldozer
The McIntire Golf Course “clubhouse” consists of a tiny brick bungalow, a small office and a public restroom—outside, a single picnic table sits on a shaded patio. There’s a metal door spraypainted: “Honor System 20006 (sic) $5.00 City $5.00 County.” Credit-card-size manila envelopes on a hook, with blue tickets stapled in each corner. A hand-lettered sign: “Put money in the envelope. Take ticket as your receipt. Envelope with money goes in the slot. Thanks!”
The nine-hole McIntire course, built shortly after Paul Goodloe McIntire donated this rolling countryside to the City in 1926, is an example of “pasture” golf—that is, a course reflecting the sport’s rural Scottish roots, as opposed to the hyper-manicured country clubs so popular in America. It’s a throwback place, where a stroll returns you to Charlottesville’s sleepy Southern roots—to a time long before condos, traffic jams and $70 greens fees became the norm.
“I played my first round of golf on this course in 1938, when I was 8 years old,” says Lynn Cubbage, who has managed the McIntire Golf Course for the past 14 years. “It cost 50 cents back then, and you had to have three clubs in your bag. Both my sons learned on this course. I’ve got the course record here. I shot a 28. In 14 years, nobody has shot that.”
Soon, the McIntire golf course will change, just as so much else has changed around it. This month, the Virginia Department of Transportation is scheduled to begin acquiring rights-of-way for the Meadowcreek Parkway, a long-planned road that will run from the McIntire Road/250 Bypass intersection north to Rio Road. A steering committee is currently meeting to figure out how to best design the Parkway’s Bypass intersection. When the road and interchange are finally built, (construction is tentatively scheduled for 2008) the McIntire golf course will be altered forever.
A window to the past
The McIntire course’s first hole affords a view that you can’t get anywhere else in Charlottesville, (outside the master bedroom of a swanky condo, that is). The tee sits below a canopy of gnarled trees; hit a true shot and the eye follows an arc through a wide blue sky, a path of lazy clouds that disappear over the forested ridge rippling to the east, dropping into a broad fairway of Bermuda grass among ancient old-growth oaks—some with trunks wider than a bundle of telephone poles.
The second hole stretches across the hilltop toward Charlottesville High School, where the public address system announces a starting lineup, echoing quietly above the birdsong and squeaking chipmunks: “A senior… No. 12…”
The third hole’s fairway plunges down a steep hill toward a red-sand green tucked behind a tricky tree line. McIntire is one of the few courses in the country that still use greens made of sand—more expensive courses cultivate smooth, closely shorn grass. “We used to put 
motor oil on them to keep the dust down,” says Cubbage. “We had to stop doing that, though, because of the water table.” These days he uses a wide, double-handled broom to smooth the dirt. By afternoon, sneaker footprints and tire tracks from golf carts mar the perfect broom pattern as it spirals outward from the hole. A plastic pole, topped with a faded flag that was probably once orange, sits in the cup, marking the target.
Even on a sunny Monday, early evening, the course is nearly empty. On a park bench beside the fourth tee, layers of sound—Meadow Creek babbling, backhoes grunting somewhere behind the trees—soundtrack a view that draws the gaze up a steep hill topped with the wide oak arms. The fourth tee runs along McIntire’s bottomland, hugging Meadow Creek. When the Meadowcreek Parkway is finally built, it will wipe out this portion of the golf course. “They’ll replace the holes,” says Cubbage. “We need that road out here.”
The fifth hole sends golfers back up the hillside, near the Vietnam Dogwood Memorial facing 250. A concrete slab, yellow flowers springing through the cracks. Brown wreaths tied with faded ribbons from American Legion Post 74, DAV Chapter 33, William A. Jones III Chapter. Carved in the stone: “The Dogwood Memorial” and “Dedicated to the lasting memory of all who served our country in Viet Nam.” Twenty-three engraved names, “and especially those from the Charlottesville and Albemarle area who gave their lives in that service.” The Parkway will likely include an interchange that will cut into the hillside at this spot. City officials say the Vietnam Dogwood Memorial will be moved to higher ground.
A stone path traces the hillside from the memorial to the Bermuda grass summit, winding among the ancient trees. A pair of golfers pull their carts across the eighth fairway, ignoring the incessant whine of traffic. “They’ll put condominiums on this place sometime,” says Cubbage. “Maybe not while I’m around, but they will.”