I was checking out my old Charlotte neighborhood on Google Maps today when I noticed Sharon Golf Course, the old 9-hole golf course up the road from where I used to live, has closed. I don’t remember ever playing there, but it used to be a landmark for me, anyway. My parents rented a house directly across from it when I was (anchors?) away in the Navy. It doesn’t look much like a course, now, does it? Though Google still thinks it is, according to its label. Now there’s a retirement home in its place.
I went searching around to find a story on the old golf course. Charlottean Ron Greene Sr. wrote a nice one which praises it for what it was: an everyman’s course. Its stuff like this I think about when I drive by the now-deserted Cheviot Hills course every day.
Like the eminent closing of the Myrtle Beach Pavilion or the end of Miracle Strip Amusement Park – a favorite from my childhood days – I find it sad when places where people used to have fun disappear.