When local entrepreneur Bob Bonner eyed acquiring the lease on Grand Marais Golf Club in Centreville, Ill., he knew he had an image makeover ahead of him, based on a nickname the course had attracted.
“I refuse to have a golf course in a popular black community named as ‘Grand McRaggedy,’” Bonner said.
“The platform was here, it just wasn’t maintained. My goal was to build value in it.”
Bonner, who owns McDonald’s restaurants throughout the Metro East, said he put a $1 million into improvements to the golf club, including landscaping with three new ponds and trees planted throughout the course, and some of the holes redesigned.
“It’s not your grandpa’s old golf course,” Bonner said. “This will be a shot-maker’s golf course.”
The course is located in Frank Holden State Park, and as such owned by the State of Illinois. Because it is publicly owned, it was once one of the only courses where African Americans were permitted to play in the St. Louis area. Now it is the area’s only black-operated course and club. But the club’s doors and tees are open to all.
“My focus is to make it special for everyone, but I especially want blacks to have some place special to come and play golf,” Bonner said.
“We are available to everyone and anyone. I want minorities to embrace the game of golf.”
Though reconstruction is ongoing in some areas of the course, it attracts a lot of regulars from the St. Louis area. James H. Buford, president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, and various St. Louis entertainers host events at the club.
The club’s general manager, Willie Williams, has been at the golf club since 1994. A golfer himself, Williams knows what is expected in a golf course.
“We are stepping up our services. I feel very good, proud and honorable,” Williams said of improvements Bonner has brought to the course. Williams sees the club expanding beyond its current field of 18 holes.
The Grand Marais Golf Club is an 18-hole, public golf course with an United States Golf Association index rating of 71.9 and slope rating of 136 from the back tees. In golf terms, this translates into being a playable course. The course is par 72 covering a maximum distance of 7,007 yards from the championship tees – a good, long distance.
The golf course incorporates Westwood Bermuda fairways, tee boxes and push up designed bentgrass putting greens that average around 3,500 square feet in size. There is a continuous cart path serving the entire course that enables golf cart usage under all weather conditions.
The operator and manager do not mind physically working on the course. They work on the course daily, greeting guests and improving the facility. The same goes for Director of Golf Houston Topps, who came aboard in the winter of 2005.
“We do it all,” Topps said. “We wear many hats – anything we can do as partners.”
Though Topps knows the history of the course and its importance as a black-operated facility, he said he is focussed “not so much on the color of skin but the color of money. I learned a lot to cut cost in so many different ways.”
As they improve the facility and focus on the bottom line, Bonner savors the history of the golf course and the importance of being African American and operating a golf club. He has come a long way from “the Grand McRaggedy.”
Bonner said, “I just want people to know that this golf course is history and knowing and understanding what they have.”
For further information, call 618-398-9999 or visit www.GRANDMARAISGOLF.com.
