Following up on Tom's point about public courses in need of restoration/reconstruction, two courses immediately come to mind for me.
Cedar Crest golf course is one of the city of Dallas, Texas municipal courses. it is also the site of the original Cedar Crest Country Club course that was designed by Tillinghast. It hosted the Dallas Open in 1926 that was won by Macdonald Smith followed by the PGA Championship in 1927 that was won by Walter Hagen. In 1954 it hosted both the United Golf Association Negro National Open and the USGA Public Links Championship.
Despite this history of being an outstanding course that hosted national championships, it would suffer from poor maintenance for many years as the city invested very little funds into it until 2004. The city spent 2 million dollars to replace the existing clubhouse that burned down in a fire. The new one was built on the site of several of the existing holes and D. A. Weibring designed both the new ones and some of the existing greens and bunkers. I had the privilege of being down there twice in the past 2 years and was deeply impressed with both Weibring's work and the bones of the original holes. This could be a special course if/when a restorative reconstruction is done. Currently, talks are underway between the city and a group of local businessmen who want to make that happen. In order to do so they started the "I AM a golfer foundation." To learn more about this, visit their website at:
www.iamagolfer.com.
Another original Tillinghast municipal course that has tremendous upside potential if Kansas City would put any money into it, is Swope Park. When I was there two years ago it stunned me as being among the worst public golf courses I had ever seen. Even just reconstructing the bunkers and greens would be a monumental improvement as they are in embarrassingly poor condition. Those who play this course do so in hopes that one day it will become a good course once again.