Goat Hill Park

The hole guide at Goat Hill Park tells golfers on the seventh, the Freeway Hole, to "take dead aim and be glad you're not in the grid-lock on the 5 Freeway." The course sits on about 75 acres beside Interstate 5 in Oceanside, California. It is 18 short holes, par 65, and a visitor can walk it for $75 on a weekend.

In 2014 the city expected to spend about $190,000 that year just keeping it open. "It was on life support," John Ashworth, the golf apparel founder who took it over, said later. "There wasn't much grass. It was dirt, really."

Ashworth got the lease over a rival soccer group, and he paid no rent for its first seven years. In return he promised to run the course, fix it up and build a new two-story clubhouse with views of the ocean. He ended up fully renovating the old clubhouse instead, along with the irrigation, the course and the driving range, and prepped for future expansion. About eight years later he sent the city his first rent check, $109,647.58, on a course taking in about $3.2M a year.

A course without a budget to do it justice

The course originally opened in 1952 with nine regulation holes. In the early 1990s Ludwig Keehn redesigned it into the short 18 played today. Running it was another matter. The city leased it to the Oceanside Golf Institute in 1982, and on March 5, 2009 it ended that lease, because the rent was not being paid when due. Simultaneously, the city hired an Arizona-based company to run the place.

That company kept it going on the city's dime. While the city finished its deal with Ashworth, staff were told to keep the course open "albeit at a minimal level of operation." For the fiscal year 2013-2014 that meant budgeted expenses of about $105,000 for water and $85,000 in total other operating costs. Water was getting more expensive and fewer people wanted to play the game, and by March 2014 staff had concluded that "an ongoing City subsidy would be required."

Golfers who played it then remember it plainly. One who started there in 2008 calls it "the worst course in San Diego," though it taught them to hit off bad lies and play slopes. Another remembers a course that was "cheap but awful."

Four offers and a soccer field

The search for a tenant had begun in March 2012, when the city asked for proposals. Four came in. Two wanted to build offices and housing, which would "require a vote of the citizens," and the city recorded that neither the council nor the public supported the idea. The other two were for golf, and staff were told to negotiate with a group led by Ashworth. He had founded the Ashworth clothing brand and later Linksoul, whose headquarters was less than a mile from the course in 2021.

The talks dragged on long enough for a rival to turn up. In March 2014 the council heard about an offer from San Diego USL Holdings, a group tied to the owners of the Real Salt Lake soccer club. It would keep a renovated golf course on the land but add a junior soccer academy and a minor league team, with a field seating 2,000 to 5,000 people. It talked about $8M of spending on the golf and the soccer, $12,000 a year in rent from the second year, and possibly visitor lodging.

The golfers fought back. Geoff Cunningham, Ashworth's co-founder at Linksoul, came up with the slogan "World Class / Working Class" for a Save Goat Hill flyer meant "to get everyone riled up enough to come to the City Hall Meeting." Supporters printed Save Goat Hill T-shirts, and according to Golfweek, Bill Murray and Kelly Slater wore them. The magazine also reported that 45 golfers spoke at one city hearing, and it quoted the line everybody remembers: "When you put in those soccer fields, those divots will be mine."

On March 19, 2014 the council told staff to drop the soccer plan and go back to Ashworth. On June 11 it approved his lease, 5-0.

Paid in park

There was no rent payment in the agreement - at least not immediately. The lease says the programs, services and operations the tenant provides "shall constitute all the consideration," and that the tenant "shall not be required to make any monetary payments to City." Running the place was the payment. The tenant was a company called Goat Hill Park, LLC, and Ashworth later put the idea simply: "We look at it as a park, not as a golf course."

Cash would come later, and only if the course did well. The first term was two years from July 1, 2014, with an option for 30 more years if the tenant hit its marks. Five years into that extension, the city would start taking 5% of gross income above $1M a year. The biggest mark was $3.6M of improvements, and some of that could come as "in-kind contributions, including but not limited to, labor, materials, and professional fees." The city handed over about $23,000 of equipment, mowers and range ball pickers among it, and agreed to fix up to $20,000 of irrigation.

The list of promises was long and not everything was ultimately built as intended - normal as an owner understands what can and cannot be done with the resources available to them. A six-hole kids' course, donation only. Gardens tended by local youth groups, with some of the produce going to charities such as Brother Benno's Soup Kitchen. Botanical and sculpture gardens. Concerts and outdoor movies on a grass pavilion. And a "two-story Clubhouse/Bar & Grille with contemporary environmental design, and balconies with views of the ocean and the city."

The course got a new name and a logo too. Cunningham drew a black goat standing on a tall letter O, with 19 and 52 on either side, and in 2015 called it "my favorite logo I've ever made." The name was the point. "By changing the name to it's nickname we were saying that it was no longer up to the City to decide for us," he said. "That the Goat is not a joke, it is what we love and we are claiming it."

Today the goat sells as a $40 T-shirt in 10 colors, "silk screened in our hometown of Oceanside."

The drought paid for the grass

On October 26, 2014, 60 residents turned up to help clean the place up, but the real fix turned out to be water. California was in a drought, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was paying property owners to rip out grass. By Ashworth's account, Goat Hill got a $2.3M turf reduction grant, took out 27 acres of irrigated turf, and used the money to "replace and upgrade our entire irrigation system and mainline." "As crazy as it sounds," he said, "we were very lucky due to the drought." In 2016 city staff also recommended paying up to $125,000, out of developer fees, to hook the course up to reclaimed water.

Two years in, the city credited the operator with "in excess of $3,600,000 in improvements." The first two items on its list were "the completion of the turf reduction" and "installation of a new sprinkler system," the same two jobs Ashworth says the grant paid for. After those came the course, the driving range, and a renovation of the old clubhouse.

The golfer who learned on its bad lies puts the result simply: "Now it's got fairways with grass and everything."

The six-hole kids' course shrank to three holes. Gil Hanse designed them for free, and an online campaign fronted by Ashworth sought another $55,000 to build them. "Kids will play for free, but it's not free to build," he said. It is called The Playground, and kids play it free.

What had not started was the new clubhouse.

Thirty years for the man

The first two years ran out on June 30, 2016. That October the city's real estate manager, Douglas Eddow, reported that the operator "has not completed the construction milestones with respect to the design and construction of the new clubhouse/bar & grille." The operator blamed "market conditions and the inability to finance such a project." Eddow's next sentence reads: "Nonetheless, GHP has requested the 30-year extension of the term."

It got the extension. The amendment ran the lease to June 30, 2046, and made the clubhouse due only "at such time as it can be demonstrated that Lessee can reasonably finance the development thereof." Eddow's report explained that the deal "was based on the expertise and good will of John Ashworth," and tied the new terms to his company "as it is presently constituted." Any sale of the lease would need the city's consent, in its "sole and absolute discretion."

The city got the thing it cared about most. In the staff report's words, the course would stay open to the public "without the City incurring a direct economic impact." New promises went in, among them an outdoor wedding venue for 90 to 150 guests. Esther Sanchez, who as a councilmember had asked for a workshop on the course's future back in 2006, moved the amendment. It passed 5-0.

The amendment calls the property "the Center City Municipal Golf Course, now known as Goat Hill Park Golf Course." The city's own golf web page still lists it as Center City Golf Course, also known as Goat Hill.

The first check

Rent finally started on July 1, 2021, five years into the extension. For the year ending June 30, 2022, the city's 5% came to $109,647.58, and it was paid.

Worked backward, that means the course took in about $3.2M that year. Under the lease, gross income counts food, drink and merchandise, but not lessons. So the goat pays rent: above the first $1M, the city's share of every $40 T-shirt sold at the course is $2.

The city did not get to spend it. By November 2022 the operator had asked for its rent to be waived, back to July 2021 and on through 2024, in exchange for about $2.1M of building work by the end of 2030. The staff report that took up the request also listed what had been done since 2016. The old clubhouse got better outdoor seating, shade and an upgraded grill. There was the wedding venue, more than 100 trees, and "an apiary where beehives producing honey are kept, in lieu of the community gardens."

There were three buildings in the new deal. The pro shop would grow by about 1,000 square feet and gain a grill, at $475,000. A restroom and snack bar would go up "behind the 13th green," at $125,000. And a two-story headquarters of about 8,000 square feet would house the North County Junior Golf Association, at $1.5M. The first two were expected by January 1, 2024.

The $109,647.58 was to go into a security account held by the city, and the operator was to add $275,000 more. Finish the buildings, and all of it would go back to the operator.

Given the aforementioned renovations, the ocean-view clubhouse was not on the list. The amendment deleted it from the lease entirely. The council passed it 4-0, on its consent calendar, and from January 2025 the rent became the greater of $60,000 a year or the 5%.

World class, working class

Cunningham's slogan from the flyer now heads the fare card, and the fare card shows what it means. Sort the prices by who is paying rather than by the day of the week, and the classes are plain.

Posted 18-hole walking rates as of May 1, 2026. Cart $20 a seat, not included.

Golfer	Mon–Thu	Fri–Sun & holidays
Subscriber	$30	$40
San Diego resident	$45	$55
Public	$60	$75
Junior, 17 and under	$15	$15

Goat Hill is cheap if you are a regular. A subscription costs $249 to $349 a year and halves the weekday green fee, so the cheapest one pays for itself in nine weekday rounds. A visitor pays $75 to walk on a Saturday, or $95 with a cart. Juniors pay $15, the Youth on Course rate is $5, and dogs are allowed.

It is busy. The last published count is 42,000 rounds in 11 months of 2020, a year when COVID-19 restrictions closed it for a month. In a full year, only about one American 18-hole course in four plays more than 35,000, according to the golf course superintendents' association's survey of 2023. One golfer calls it the poor man's Torrey Pines, after the city-owned San Diego course that has hosted the U.S. Open, and says it has "gotten a little pricey though for what it is." Another skips the crowded weekends: "prime is dawn patrol during the week."

The lease gives the city a say over those prices. It can refuse the part of any yearly increase above 5% that it judges excessive against comparable municipal courses in San Diego County, and nothing in the record shows it has ever done so. The lease also makes the operator keep money aside for upkeep. Since 2022 it has had to hold a balance of at least $50,000 every month in a "GHP Capital Reserve Account," for "smaller types of capital improvements and repairs," such as irrigation and the parking lot.

The rent is a building

Golfers who play Goat Hill say the snack bar and the pro shop are built, and that a grill goes on weekends. The city's permit records, as of October 2026, do not show any of the three buildings finished, and they do not say why.

On paper, the restrooms come closest. A building permit application went in on July 3, 2024, six months after they were expected, and the city has twice returned it for corrections without issuing it. A planning application for a snack bar and restrooms, with the food service next to the existing pro shop, followed on November 24, 2025, with Ashworth named as applicant. In October 2026 it was in its third round of review. The pro shop expansion has no permit on file.

The junior headquarters goes back to Ashworth's 2014 phase plan, and the 2022 amendment gave it a deadline of December 31, 2030. Under the lease, it is part of what the operator gives the city in exchange for three and a half years of waived rent.

The North County Junior Golf Association is raising money through "108 Hole Hike" for a building of its own at Goat Hill, which it describes as about 4,000 square feet, half the size in the lease. As of July 2025, PGA Tour pro Xander Schauffele had started the fund with $150,000, another $150,000 had come in, but the association was still about $300,000 short.

In 2014 Oceanside wanted a golf course that would stop costing it money, and it got one. It came from a partner who knows golf. He used his influence, and the community's warm memories of the course, to overhaul the clubhouse and add an assortment of buildings while making space for young golfers to grow a love of the game.