7 min read
(Featured Image by Stephen Denton)
It's a wonder how a cup can runneth over in a vacant space.
Part play, part art, part civic statement—members of the Terreno Baldío Country Club have been making use of Phoenix’s vacant spaces with a guileless, deconstructed and root form of desert golf that echoes the game’s primitive beginnings.
Playing a Guerilla-style street form of the modern game since 2016, Terreno Baldío’s initial concept was conceived by Steve Weiss and a collection of artistic colleagues for a Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art competition, before being shepherded into reality by Weiss and his friend and artist, Joe Brklacich.
The concept of the “Vacant Lot Country Club” was a reaction to downtown Phoenix’s then-overt trend of “land banking”. The practice, at its foundation, sees investors purchasing parcels of property with little or no intention of bettering said space for the neighborhood in which it sits, and keeping the space untenanted for as long as it may take to better a bottom line.
Such a practice does not lead to a perfect pairing with the right-brained, especially those who take an inherent pride—if not possession—of their home turf.
(Photo by Stephen Denton)
Phoenix-native Weiss—a long time fine arts and corporate photographer, teacher and commercial location scout, now in semi-retirement as an independent film curator—is a wise man, an educated man and a practical(ish) man. He’s also an idealist. Think: part-Jeffrey Labowski, part-punk Arnold Palmer.
A founding and current member of the Downtown Voices Coalition, an amalgamation of downtown-Phoenix stakeholders who discuss planning, along with the effect that future developments may have on the local economy, Weiss doesn’t begrudge the concept of land banking because of the local and state tax revenues which are generated. He does, however, take issue with empty city spaces that serve zero purpose to the populace.
Weiss wasn’t alone in his mindset.
“It was a long time downtown discussion about these vacant lots; the landowners were just sitting on them, not doing anything, not adding any value,” says Brklacich. “And it’s been a thorn in the side of a lot of downtown people for a very long time. And, going back to 2007, as I personally began spending more time downtown, I could really see it, and it began to irk me. It was like, ‘Do something additive.’”
Dating back to 2011, Weiss began toying in earnest with ideas of how to make use of the city’s array of vacant spaces. His ruminations found further fuel, via an ultimately inept and over-costly “Valley of the Sunflowers” project, which briefly filled an empty lot in Roosevelt Row with the Helianthus annuus.
“I began thinking that we should do something creative with these spaces,” recalls Weiss. “And then, when the ‘Valley of the Sunflowers’ came, I think that probably pushed my buttons more than anything, simply because they spent upwards of $30,000 putting in lines and then got all these different organizations involved, and it was a big thing.”
In years ensuing, Weiss’s thinking found further form after he read about the pure desert, grassless, 9-hole Snakehole Golf Course in Apache Junction.
“It became about: How do we activate our downtown using the land that nobody seems to want to do anything with,” he says. “The thing is, we’re locals. We own this town. This is our town. This is our bar; this is our other bar; this is our restaurant. And this is our empty lot.”
(Photo by Stephen Denton)
Sticks and Stones (and Pars)
GRADUATING FROM IRKED TO IDEA to activation was bizarre, even for Terreno Baldío’s initial participants—most of whom are connected to the city’s arts and media world.
“At first, it was just something fun to talk about and I’d humor Steve,” smiles Brklacich, who, off-course, runs a corporate recruiting company. “We were kicking around ideas, but for me, as a lifetime golfer, this did kinda sound like a strange idea. And even the first time we laid out a course at our initial lot, I still thought it was really weird.”
Situated on a vacant urban lot in the Roosevelt Row Arts District near the farmers market, the debut course was chosen with both purpose and promise.
“In the case of the first course, we knew that it was city-owned land— specifically, for the Arizona Cardinals stadium as that was one of the locations they were considering,” recalls Weiss. “So, people started land banking in this historic neighborhood that pretty much just got flattened.”
As the debut three-hole course took shape with wiffle balls, mobile hitting mats and faux greens, flat land found instant rise.
“In our first-ever round,” smiles Brklacich, “I turned to one of the other guys and said, ‘This is way more fun than I expected. Just don’t tell Steve I said that.’”
With Brklacich serving as sentry Spock to Weiss’s quirky Kirk, the game found counter-culture context. “Very early on I said, ‘All we need is a 7-iron.’ And hats off to Tin Cup on that,” Brklacich says. “Really, the 7 is all you need to drive, chip and putt. The technical aspects of the game are still there.”
Swing by swing through the desert dust, course routing was a matter-organic. “It kind of combines the fun of childhood—figure it out, make it up,” continues Brklacich. “It’s just a matter of first figuring out where to put the tee box, hit it, see how far it goes and if you can get on in regulation, that’s where the green goes.”
Terreno’s first round came with a curious gallery.
“The only time we’ve ever had law enforcement stop to ask us what the hell we were doing was that very first round at our first course,” Brklacich laughs. “We were playing, a squad car pulls up and the officer said, ‘We heard you guys are hitting golf balls around here?’ We started explaining they were just wiffle balls and they got a kick out of it and watched us play for about 20 minutes.”
With added rounds, Terreno traction took further hold. The city site would find high-rise neighbors offering golf claps during play, the club set up a Facebook page to welcome new members and local TV offered some coverage of the curious concept.
And, to Weiss’s delight, visibly making use of a vacant space removed neighborhood taboo.
“In the case of this first course, we took an empty lot that everybody avoided and, next thing you know, we see people tossing frisbees, playing football and walking their dogs,” says Weiss. “We actually activated the space and when this happens–things change... People in the neighborhood started using the space. So, we felt from the beginning that we were actually doing something good for our city.” Thus further proving golf’s ability to catalyze community even to those ‘outside’ of the sport, and foster positive human interaction.
Few Rules, Ample Intrigue
OVER TIME, as Terreno Baldío has become nomadic, its game has found further definition.
After the debut course became a parking lot (oh, sweet irony), the club moved to a space east of Central on Columbus before eventually shifting to a third course, southwest of Thomas and Central on 1st Avenue. Since 2020, Terreno has laid stake at a vacant space in another central- Phoenix neighborhood.
Working with a mantra of asking for forgiveness, not permission—Terreno’s members have experienced far more swing duff than neighborhood guff.
“You see the neighbors coming by to wave; and, yeah, sometimes they play with us,” says long time club member Justin Katz. “And, the more they see us out here, they’re like, ‘Wait, is that a thing?’ And that starts the conversation.
The more people who make use of this space, the more eyes on it— the safer and more activated the place becomes.”
(Photo by Stephen Denton)
Just as Katz, a creative director and consultant, sees Terreno Baldío as “a public art project” aimed to revitalize space, his playing competitor, Phoenix-native Robert Sentinery, a local arts magazine publisher and editor, believes that the game isn’t played sans statement.
“The real estate market in Phoenix is very boom-and-bust; it’s always been that kind of town,” Sentinery says. “There are these situations where there was once a home on this site and some speculator came in here aiming to make a fortune building condos, and then the market turns and they end up with this empty lot. So, yeah, we are saying something in coming out here and activating these forgotten spaces, these spaces in-between.”
While the guerilla game’s edicts lay somewhere between golf’s original 13 rules dating to 1744 and the USGA/R & A’s modern-day 25 rules, the Terreno play isn’t without its competitive juices, camaraderie, context and gentlemanly etiquette.
Working with black-and-yellow SKLZ wiffle balls, each player is provided a cut swath of astroturf to tow, used for each pre-green shot. Per the putting surface, slick carpet squares are cut with PVC cups, 4-inches in diameter, slightly smaller than a regulation golf hole.
Carded at a par-36, the three holes on the current Loma Linda course are played thrice for a full round–with the routing of:
Par-5 1st (approximately 170 yards)—Dogleg left and featuring the faux “Fiery Lake of Doom”— players can’t cut the corner over the imaginary O.B.; while the turn marker toward the green initially began with a spare tire at the corner, it has since been replaced by a small stack of concrete.
Par-4 2nd (approximately 170 yards)—Straightforward, with a daunting tree hazard behind the green; once a small bush back in 2020, the tree now serves as a formidable opponent to par.
Par-3 3rd (approximately 60 yards)—Shortie finish, but sure to provide pressure for the third and final loop around.
While the club once left its greens in-place between rounds at past locations, having the surfaces stolen from its current locale has resulted in Brklacich adding to his duties as Terreno’s “Head Pro.” In addition, he now holds the dual title as “Director of Agronomy”, which involves bringing the carpets home between rounds and ensuring the surfaces don’t crimp.
Taking the greens actually gives Weiss a sense of guilt.
“I know it sounds funny, but I actually feel a little bad about that because it seems more elitist,” he says. “We love the idea that, when we’re not there, people could still be playing.”
Between turf tries, the grounds prove a “true desert golf course; not Disneyized,” says Weiss, whose words prove both apt and humbling. Bounding balls are simply subject to the cause and result of the gravelly, barren and archaic terrain, whether that sees a wiffle top-spinning 30 feet past the green, kicked 20 feet askew by an ill-tempered pebble or stopping next to an emptied airplane booze bottle left asunder by a non-Terreno passerby who opted not to practice Weiss’s “leave no trace” preach.
With a nip from an omnipresent flask helping to assuage bogeys (or worse) and an awaiting “10th hole” social hour, a consistent component to the game, Weiss’s greatest vision for Terreno Baldío is a round that doesn’t even include him on the tee sheet.
“In a perfect world, this idea is dynamite for spaces which are either underused or underutilized,” he concludes. “As much as I enjoy people coming out to play with us, I’d love even more for people to mimic what we’re doing and set up their own courses in other places; and, if they do that, I hope they’d have the same respect for the land and respect for the people surrounding that land. Oh, I can also hope that they only use wiffle balls.”