Nancy Birchall was in college when her father won top honors in the L.C. Ringhaver St. Augustine 400th Anniversary Trophy golf tournament.

His name was N.P. Calhoun but everyone called him “Put” — a fitting name considering he was a golf enthusiast and president of the St. Augustine Men’s Golf Association in 1965.

“I have a picture of Daddy in his knickers because he played even as a child,” she said.

Dozens of those pictures are sprawled out in a golden scrapbook her father kept with newspaper clippings of his community involvement and golf happenings.

Many of them revolve around what was St. Augustine’s premier course, the Ponce de Leon Golf Course, that opened in 1916 in an area north of the Historic District and closed almost 90 years later.

The place to be

Nancy and her husband, Ron, had their wedding reception at the clubhouse, not far from the golf course.

“It was kind of a social hub for the community back then,” she said. “I mean that was about the only place you could have a wedding reception back then.”

The entire property housed the 18-hole golf course, designed by Donald Ross, a clubhouse and a hotel and even before the Birchalls’ time, it was the “it place to be” in St. Augustine.

The course was built during the reign of hotel tycoon Henry Flagler.

The mogul spent time in St. Augustine and other parts of Florida building it up for those who could afford it.

Author and historian Thomas Graham researched and wrote about Flagler and his impact on the Nation’s Oldest City in his book, “Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine.”

“The whole thing about Flagler’s arrival to St. Augustine was about spending leisure time in the winter,” Graham said.

The course itself was built in 1916, shortly after World War I, and owned by the St. Augustine Golf Development Co., its stockholders including the Florida East Coast Hotel Co. and local businessmen.

President Warren G. Harding hadn’t yet taken office when he visited the course in the early 1920s, though he had visited many times before.

“The Hardings were regular visitors,” Graham said. “They may have missed a season or two during the war but for the most part, it was an annual thing.”

Aside from the famous, a group of local men known as The Thieves played on the course for decades.

The group started in the 1950s, but Walter Daniels didn’t get involved until 1991.

The St. Augustine native said a friend suggested he try it out and sure enough, he loved it.

“If you went out there and signed up with them, you went out with them and played,” Daniels said. “You didn’t have to go round people up.”

It was an escape for the golfer as he was fascinated with its beauty and various wildlife like bobcats, raccoons and even a bald eagle.

 Out of business

After a run for decades as St. Augustine’s premier golf course, the property succumbed to low turnout numbers and closed to the public in 2003.

A plan hatched to develop the 400-acre property into what is now a neighborhood called Madeira off U.S. 1 North.

Daniels has only driven through it once just to look.

As he drove through, he noticed that the houses looked nice on the marsh.

The Birchalls relive the course’s glory days through Nancy’s father’s bound scrapbook and the trophy he won years ago.

If they could bring the course back for the city’s 450th anniversary, they would.

“It breaks my heart every time I drove out there,” Ron said. “It was the place.”