Business and Golf: San Francisco

The Bay Area can be windy and blustery even in the summer months, but May through September are your best shot for ideal golf weather.

Business Climate

Home to seven Fortune 500 companies, San Francisco is one of the world’s powerhouse economies, buoyed by three economic pillars: banking and financing (the city is known as the Wall Street of the West), tourism and technology. As in most financial centers, the banking sector here has taken a substantial hit in the past year, but tourism has remained strong—16.4 million people visited the city in 2008, generating $527 million in tax and fee revenue alone. Tech companies, such as Apple, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and Sun, are all headquartered in the Bay Area. While the city’s economic fate will always be tied to the fluctuating successes of San Jose and Silicon Valley to the south, those industries were less harmed by the current housing bust than they were by the bursting of the dot-com bubble a decade ago.

Choice Hotel

The Palace Hotel (2 New Montgomery St., 415-512-1111), which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, is exuberantly old San Francisco. Located blocks from the financial district, the hotel’s 538 rooms feature 14-foot ceilings, and there’s a 16-foot 1909 Maxfield Parrish mural called The Pied Piper of Hamlin in the Pied Piper Bar. The spectacularly chandeliered Garden Court was originally the carriage entrance.

Business Breakfast

Named for a quartet of turn-of-the-20th-century railroad tycoons—C.P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins—the Big 4 Restaurant, in the Huntington Hotel atop Nob Hill (1075 California St., 415-771-1140), remains the place where captains of industry gather for breakfast, cloaked in the room’s antique dark-wood paneling and emerald leather hues.

Seal the Deal

The stylish but unfussy decor, superior wine service, innovative fresh seafood specialties and two Michelin stars make Aqua (252 California St.), in the financial district, a preferred venue for entertainment and business dinners alike.

Don’t Miss

It’s well worth the drive out to Spruce (3640 Sacramento St., 415-931-5100), in Presidio Heights, for an evening in the beautiful and sophisticated dining room, a lengthy wine list strong in French varietals and small-producer California pinot noir, and chef Mark Sullivan’s renowned French-California cuisine.

Golfscape

The same factor that drives San Francisco real estate prices through the roof—namely, lack of space—means that the city’s golf landscape is locked in time. While newer courses have been developed throughout the Bay Area, city courses like Harding Park and Lincoln Park (both public), and Olympic Golf Club and San Francisco Golf Club (private) have deep histories.

Play

Though it first opened in 1925, Harding Park (harding-park.com, $46–155) has a rather newly minted pedigree. Renovated in 2003, the course hosted the WGC American Express Championship in 2005 (won by Tiger Woods) and the Presidents Cup last fall (won by Woods and the United States). The first nine holes play through avenues of mature cypress and eucalyptus on the property’s interior, while the second nine circle the perimeter, along the shoreline of Lake Merced.

Golf Hotel

Located 45 minutes south along Highway 1 is the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay (One Miramontes Point Rd., 650-712-7000), where two courses designed and renovated by Arthur Hills—the Old Course and the Ocean Course—hang gorgeously off bluffs overlooking the Pacific.

Stay an Extra Day

In the foothills above the town of Santa Cruz, an hour and a half south of the city off Highway 1, is one of Alister MacKenzie’s most notable American designs, Pasatiempo Golf Club (pasatiempo.com, $220). Home to MacKenzie for the last four years of his life, Tom Doak’s recently completed renovation has restored the course to the great architect’s original standards.

When to Go

The Bay Area can be windy and blustery even in the summer months, but May through September are your best shot for ideal golf weather.