I spent New Years with friends in San Diego near Balboa Park Municipal, a Billy Bell design. I've only played it a few times, but since I was a kid I've loved driving by - it's a beautiful site. Most of these photos are taken from the road so the angles aren't very good, but they do provide an idea of the dramatic canyons the course is routed in and around. The back nine is particularly good; it sits on a mesa with a lot of canyon holes and great views of the city and bay. Also, after seeing the original routing plan from the "A Compilation of Routing Maps..." thread [courtesy of Greg Hohman & Ed Oden] I was able to include some photos of where the original 18th green & fairway would have been. The land is intact (no housing, etc) and has mostly been given back to nature, but the driving range takes up some of what was once the 18th fairway...
Views of first tee & clubhouse from the car park:
An idea of the chaparral covered landscape here, with some of the back nine in view:
5th green in the center, 6th fairway in the foreground, halfway house to the left, 9th hole in background:
5th green from a different view, with the 9th beyond:
View of the 7th tee, with holes 6 & 10 beyond:
Par five 7th hole from behind the green:
Another view of the 7th hole taken from 28th street that gives an approximation of just how close the 7th green is to the street (very close):
7th hole, If you look carefully you can spot a player on the right side playing his approach (blue shirt). He didn't come far from hitting me while I was taking this photo. I could swear he was standing in the street trying to hit that shot:
Short par four 8th hole from tee to green, with Pershing Drive and the 9th hole beyond. (In the original routing, this was the 7th hole - a par five played from the present 8th tee to the 9th green in the distance):
Par four 10th fairway running along the canyon, with the 11th tee beyond:
View of 10th green, sitting on canyon edge, with clubhouse and golfers on practice putting green visible in the distance to the left:
Start of the back nine, with city in the background:
I also tried to photograph the "famous" 16th hole while driving by on Pershing, but it was nearly impossible without taking my eyes off the road. It's a poor photo but if you look closely you can see how the hole doglegs around the canyon - plus the cool view of the Coronado Bay bridge beyond:
And view of 16th green from the side:
The "lost" original par four 18th hole at Balboa, looking back to the fairway from behind the green with driving range beyond (green would have been somewhere close to the bush in the center of the photo):
Other photos from a similar angle of the land that once was the 18th hole (driving range in background). It must have been some hole:
Original Routing Plan showing the defunct 18th hole, as well as the "lost" holes 1, 2, 3, 10, 12, 13, 16, & 17. [Hohman/Oden]
Still a great muni course, with some memorable holes and loads of charm. It would be fun to envision a partial restoration (the bunkers on the original plan look impressive and all of the original land is still there), but realistically many of the routing changes have probably been for the better. For example, some of the new holes utilize the canyons more strategically, not to mention the first hole was originally a short par 3. So approx. 50-60% of the course is still intact, with many other holes playing over and through original corridors. I think Balboa was reconfigured to its current layout sometime in the 1950s or 60s, having been built in the 1920s.
It looks like the all the recent improvements to the course have been successful - course looks great and I've heard good things about the current playing conditions. The San Diego area has to have one of the best collections of muni's in the country. Another surprise- I've never seen the driving range looking so green!
