Closing the book on Trump Doral

My attempts to become a member of the World Class Super Premium Ultra Fantastic Trump National Doral Golf Club have fallen on deaf ears.

It appears this will not be happening.

However, I never planned to move to Miami in the first place. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from when my father dragged our asses there a long time ago. A cramped, cigarette-smoke-filled Winnebago, in the middle of August, at a crappy campground on the alligator-infested edges of the everglades, is no sane person's idea of a "vacation."

But that's OK, because located just 3.2 miles from my house, is the lovely Rancho Park Golf Club, seen here.

Rancho Park has everything Doral doesn't: charm, accessibility, and $3 a bottle Bud Light Breakfast Beers.

This is my grandfather's kind of course, you know if my grandfather weren't escaping Russian pogroms and hightailing it to America to drive shitty taxis all around the Bronx, and actually played golf.

In fact once you enter the unguarded gates at Rancho Park, it's easy to imagine yourself stepping back in time. As well as escaping Los Angeles. If not for the Spanish tiled roof on the clubhouse, you'd swear you were in Milwaukee, circa 1967.

Here's the course.

Here's the driving range.

Here's the cafeteria, aka restaurant.

And here's the Men's Locker Room...



Actually, I didn't take any pictures of the Men's Locker Room. A grown 44 year old man snapping pictures of ancient creaky lockers and perma-stained ceramic urinals, is well...not a good look.

You'll just have to take my word on it.

In short, there's nothing fancy or pretentious about Rancho Park. Even more ironically, given its location, about two long well hit drives from toney Century City, there's nothing remotely Los Angeles about the place.

In other words, Rancho Park is my kind of golf course, you know, if golf were my kind of sport.

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UPDATE: there's a chance the good folks at Doral are onto me.