Top golfers swing into Harding Park for championship

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- At Harding Park in San Francisco this week it's a who's who of golf. The best players in the world have come to town for the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Match Play.

If President Warren Harding were alive today, he would probably be smiling to see what's happening on a golf course bearing his name.

Harding Park, the San Francisco golf course, is center stage this week as the world's 64 top players have come to town for a five-day, unique, match play championship. It's a chance to see guys like U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk, up close.

Crowds on the first day were not as big as one might expect. There were plenty of seats in the bleachers; in fact, next to the practice green visitors could practically reach out and touch the clubs in players' bags.

"Their speed control is awesome. They don't putt like the way I putt, eight or nine feet behind the hole," spectator John Mulvihill says.

But with Harding being a public golf course, spectators can walk and play these same links most any day of the year.

What makes this year special is the fact that this is the third straight week of big golf tournaments in San Francisco. Last week we had the LPGA played at Harding Park. Next week there will be a USGA championship at the Olympic Club. To have the Cadillac Match Play tournament here, old timers who know the place would call it a miracle.

"It was a goat pasture. We used to ask them what time they let the goats out," golfer Jerry Nuneman of San Francisco says.

Nuneman grew up on this course and caddied in the heyday of the Lucky Strikes Open and watched the slow decline, until a $16 million renovation took place that returned Harding Park to the world map in 2003.

"Oh I see it back and exceeding everyone's expectations," Nuneman said.

A city can't ask much for much more than being the center of a game's universe for three weeks running.