Some funny-shaped putting greens appeared at Thrive City outside the Chase Center on Thursday.

So, uh, I guess nobody looked at these things from above or didn't think anyone would be. But the Kaiser-branded Thrive City is surrounded by multi-story office buildings, so these putting greens that were set up for a Spring Golf Day event today distinctively look like dicks.

The internment camps in California and elsewhere that housed primarily Japanese Americans following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent wartime paranoia were mostly in far-flung locales. But one camp specifically for "enemy aliens" was on San Francisco property, next to a municipal golf course just south of the city proper.

Local writer and historian Gary Kamiya writes today in the Chronicle about the history of Sharp Park, which remains today a city-owned park and municipal golf course in Pacifica, managed by SF Rec & Parks. It's considered one of the finest municipal golf courses in the country, in fact, designed by renowned golf course designer Dr. Alister MacKenzie who also designed Augusta National Golf Club.

The property was the ranch of wealthy SF lawyer George Sharp, who died in 1882, as Kamiya tells us, while at work in a city courtroom.

Sharp's widow died 23 years later, and her executors would eventually decide to donate the property to the City of San Francisco in 1917 for use as a recreational park. John McLaren, the 56-year superintendent of Golden Gate Park, suggested a golf course in 1930, given the popularity of the city's other two municipal golf courses at Harding Park and Lincoln Park, and ended up recruiting MacKenzie for the job to create the 120-acre Sharp Park.

It wouldn't be long before the land also became a homeless "relief camp," built with help from the federal Civil Works Administration, to house poor San Franciscans during the Depression.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, and after President Franklin Roosevelt signed the infamous orders to round up and detain Japanese Americans, Sharp Park would become a different sort of camp in 1942, Camp Sharp Park. Kamiya points to a news report in the San Francisco News, that reports on "scores of alien Japanese" being relocated to Camp Sharp Park after being processed at Angel Island — with the news piece suggesting that these presumably innocent local citizens had perhaps recently been taking snapshots along the Peninsula coast "possibly making note of reefs, currents and landmarks for the Japanese Navy."

At the same time that military batteries were being constructed in the Presidio and the Marin Headlands, to defend against a Japanese naval attack that never came, around 500 Japanese Americans, likely including families, were housed in barracks at Camp Sharp Park. Kamiya notes that in July 1943, after calls by the US government to take suspicious Japanese and German immigrants off the hands of Latin American countries, 119 Japanese Peruvians were transferred to Sharp Park as well.

(The latter detail is interesting in light of the recent global culinary trend celebrating Japanese Peruvian cuisine, known as Nikkei cuisine, which grew out of generations of Japanese immigration to Peruvian cities — and in SF we have Kaiyo Rooftop downtown, opened earlier this year, and the upcoming Chotto Mate atop the old Macy's Men's Store building in Union Square, both showcasing Nikkei dishes.)

Other internment camps, known as Assembly Centers and Relocation Centers, were located in much more rural locations in California, like Manzanar near the tiny town of Lone Pine in the Sierra foothills, and Tule Lake, which was considered a prison camp for dissidents.

But the SF-owned Sharp Park camp was right here, just a few miles outside the city, and living there likely was unpleasant for those forcibly relocated there.

Other non-contiguous bits of land owned by the city of San Francisco are mostly on islands, as Kamiya notes — like the Farallon Islands, and Red Rock Island near the Richmond Bridge.

Photo: SF Rec & Parks

Thursday marks the kickoff of the PGA Championship, the only major golf tournament in the 2019-20 season, and it's happening in San Francisco's Harding Park without any fans able to attend.

Around 90 of the world's 100 best golf players are expected to compete in what will be the last — and only — major tournament in the season, following postponements of other tournaments like the Masters (happening in November and again in April) and the U.S. Open (happening in September and again in June). The scheduling situation, as CBS reports, makes the PGA Championship hold a particularly prominent place for this season's competitors, ahead of what will be an extremely busy 2020-21 season beginning in September — and currently set to have seven majors including two Masters and two U.S Opens.

TPC Harding Park, one of the most celebrated public golf courses in the country, was originally known as Harding Park Golf Course, and sits out by the Pacific Ocean near Lake Merced. It opened in 1925 and was named for President Warren G. Harding, who died of a heart attack at San Francisco's Palace Hotel two years earlier, while in office. The course plays host to the annual San Francisco City Championship, which is the oldest continually-played city championship in the U.S.

And after an abbreviated season in which the top players have been playing in some intense summer heat elsewhere in the country the last several weeks, they arrive in San Francisco for a PGA Championship in Fogust. Longtime golf commentator Dottie Pepper, who will be providing on-course reporting for CBS Sports, tells the network, "This is going to be the toughest test these guys have faced so far." She cites the drop in temperature and the humidity, which will slow down golf balls considerably. And having visited the course this week, she says, "It is mean. It is wet. The rough is extremely long. The greens are firm. The wind did come up a little bit... You’ve got a golf course that’s set up extremely difficult. And it’s just going to be a huge test."

If you have any passing interest in golf, the young player to watch is 27-year-old Jordan Spieth, who could join a very elite club if he were to win the PGA Championship this week. As the Associated Press reports, one more win at a major tournament and Spieth joins the ranks of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan, and Gene Sarazen, who all have won four majors since the Masters tournament began in 1934.

Other top-ranked players likely to fare well are 27-year-old Justin Thomas, who is currently the number-one-ranked player on the PGA Tour; 30-year-old Brooks Koepka, who previously held the number-one seed in 2018; and 26-year-old Bryson DeChambeau.

At age 44 and with a troubled back, Tiger Woods is not favored to win the tournament, although he won other tournaments on this course back in his prime around 2005. As he tells the Chronicle, "When it’s cooler like this, I just need to make sure my core stays warm, layer up properly. I know I won’t have the same range of motion as I would back home in Florida, where it’s 95 every day. That’s just the way it is."

The purse for the PGA Championship is $11 million.

Photo: TPC Harding Park/Facebook

🏌Steph Curry and President Barack Obama had Round 2 on the golf course today 🏌

VIDEO: https://t.co/ELT6PXQrJy pic.twitter.com/5Al13MlR8r

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 9, 2016

The Obamas are officially on vacation in Martha's Vineyard again, for two full weeks, and the President had a rematch on Monday with Steph Curry at the Farm Neck Golf Club — a "grudge match for Curry," as CBS 5 reports, after the President beat Curry at a game of golf last summer (see tweet below). Reportedly, the foursome also included Steph's dad, Dell Curry, a former NBA player for the Charlotte Hornets and more recently a color commentator on Hornets broadcasts.

According to the Vineyard Gazette — where, sidebar, today's front-page headline is about this family dog who was rescued after going overboard in Nantucket Sound — D.C. lawyer Cy Walker rounded out the foursome, and it was a sunny day with "streaky white clouds" that "carried the promise of a pretty sunset." The public-private 18-hole course at Farm Neck is apparently "a favorite presidential haunt" where President Obama also spent his Sunday afternoon. His partners Sunday were NBA player Chris Paul, Cy Walker, and White House aide Joe Paulsen.

Per KRON 4, we still do not know if the President beat Steph again, or what the scores were, seeing as the media out on the Vineyard clearly can't be counted on for details. The Hill reports that this was the President's 301st golf game since he took office.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Curry's teammates Draymond Green and Kevin Durant were in Rio taking on Venezuela on the men's Olympic basketball squad — a game they won handily, 113-69. Curry had to bow out of the Olympics, as you may recall, because he's recovering from a knee injury.

Just the other week we got to see Curry out on the links with pals Justin Timberlake and Alfonso Ribeiro, doing "The Carlton." As USA Today reported last year, Curry is actually a great golf player, in addition to being the NBA's first unanimous MVP — he shot a 76 while playing with the President, and that actually hurt his handicap, which was just 2.4 at that time.

From last summer:

Related: Video Du Jour: Steph Curry Dancing 'The Carlton' Cleanses Our Sadness Tinged Palate

As a modern day Johnny Appleseed or Davey Crocket, folk hero Bill Murray is entitled to move about the world with puck-like impunity, his shrugs, winks, and grimaces accepted as apologies wherever he goes. TMZ reports that such is the case now, as in one of the actor's grumpier or more mischievous moods he took a bunch of phones from fans who were gawking at him and chucked them off a roof.

In Northern California to compete in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am through Sunday, Murray, whose appearance in Caddyshack can now be seen as autobiographical, was chilling at popular see-and-be-seen Carmel hot spot Vesuvio. The particulars of the occasion, reports KSBW, involve Justin Timberlake's annual tequila party.

Okay, it's not exactly what you're thinking: Murray reportedly wasn't drinking. But maybe he should have been. Fans taking his photo on their phones, with flash, from nearby, got more Lost in Translation/Scrooged Bill Murray when he grabbed the phones out of their hands and hurled them from the rooftop bar, two stories up.

But not to worry: Murray has agreed to pay for the phones, police say, and that's okay with the would-be paparazzi. The star can now hit the links again in peace — except for the frequent questions and camera attention he gets there. SB Nation reports that onlookers turn to Murray after every stroke to catch a potential Carll Spackler bit — something he never delivers.

Previously: Bill Murray Was In Oakland Last Week, Taking Over A Taxi So The Driver Could Play His Sax

Yeah, so, we won't be hosting the America's Cup, we're not getting any money for Super Bowl 50 (which, let's face it, is really in Santa Clara), and George Lucas just dissed us in favor of Chicago. But all is not lost, as San Francisco's Harding Park has been named the host of two major golf tournaments to take place in the 2020s.

According to Golf Digest, anonymous sources tell them that Harding Park will be the home of the 2020 PGA Championship, known as "one of the most important events in golf."

Golfweek also reports that in 2025, Harding Park will host the Presidents Cup. This will be the second time in recent years that the course has been home to that tournament, as it was also played there in 2009 (remember?).

Harding Park, which is located on the city's west side near Lake Merced, has a rich history: first opened in 1925, the only city-owned public course managed by the PGA tour had its darkest hour in 1998, when it was actually turned into a parking lot for an event at the neighboring Olympic Club.

Former United States Golf Association President Sandy Tatum, known locally as the man who spearheaded Harding Park's $16 million renovation in the early 2000s, was thrilled by the news.

"It's gratifying beyond my ability to express how I think and feel about it," Tatum told the Chron. "Spectacular is the right word for me. It's affirmation of what I thought that golf course could be, and how I thought it could be an asset and have very serious impact on the community. This development really verifies all the thoughts and feelings I had coming into this project."

Dates for either event have yet to be set, but Tatum tells Golf Digest that he hopes the PGA shoots for early spring.

"Summer provides the fog problem, interferes with play and because it's a perfectly beautiful site, to see it on a perfectly lovely day just makes the experience there that much more dramatic."

PGA of America is expected to make an official announcement regarding the decision on July 2.

[Golfweek]
[Golf Digest]
[Chron]

The man who interrupted Sunday's U.S. Open trophy ceremony with his bizzarre bird calls and Steve Buscemi eyes is off the hook. As it turns out, the 40-year-old man was identified as one Andrew James Dudley of Wallasey, England and according to the SFPD committed no crime Sunday other than being a quirky weirdo — and that has never been illegal in San Francisco, as far as anyone can tell.

Because Dudley, who sometimes goes by "Jungle Bird" and is a noted deforestation activist, had a ticket, Cops aren't charging him with trespassing. He had been drinking, apparently, but as SFPD spokesman Albie Esparza put it, "All he did was go on the green of the 18th hole and make a bird noise." And apparently that's his schtick, he's got a whole Facebook page full of such videos.

Webb Simpson, whose big moment in the spotlight Dudley spoiled so majestically, got his way though. Before Dudley ended up spending some time in the drunk tank, Webb himself commented, "Enjoy that jail cell, pal." Although, we suspect a sponsorship deal with Polo Ralph Lauren legally requires you to say stuff like that while on TV.

Anyhow, because we just can't get enough of Bob Costas looking minuscule and talking about the gendarmes like he's the Napoleon of NBC Sports, here's that video again:

Previously: Crazy Bird Man Enlivens U.S. Open Trophy Ceremony
[SFGate]
[Deadspin]

The U.S. Open is happening in San Francisco, and that means a bunch of golf fans are descending on the city. The 112th annual golf tournament starts Thursday at the Olympic Club, with practice rounds starting today, and it's actually an unusually lovely day to be out near the ocean. Tiger Woods, allegedly, might be out there for a practice round today, and we already heard an older gentlemen at the corner store crowing this morning about wanting to get a glimpse of him.

Woods last won the U.S. Open in 2008.

Spectators are being asked either to BART to Colma and take shuttles to the course from there, or to park at Candlestick Park, where they are also running shuttles. And everyone else is being advised to just avoid being out on Route 1 or anywhere near the Olympic Club if they can help it, because tens of thousands are expected to be coming to stand around in hushed groups watching the golfers drive and putt.

[ABC 7]

"You don't stuff it with the wrong material. Use soft cloth, never sand or those little little light peanuts." Also: "The only time you want to hit the bag hard is if you're a pitty-pat hitter." [via Everything Is Terrible]

In some non-Bay Area news, golf icon Tiger Woods was in a "serious" car accident this morning.

According to reports, "Woods, 33, pulled out of his driveway in the Isleworth community about 2:25 a.m. when he struck a fire hydrant, and then drove into a tree at his neighbor's property, Florida Highway Patrol reported."

Tiger was whisked to Health Central Hospital in Ocoee. He is listed in "serious condition."

FPH also notes that booze was not related to the accident.

UPDATE: CNN reports that Woods has been released from the hospital.

SUNDAY UPDATE: It's sounding more like this was a domestic violence case, with TMZ reporting the now widely disseminated rumor that Tiger's wife caused the lacerations on his face, after beating his SUV with a (get this) golf club, following a fight the two had over an alleged affair. Anyway, we now have no idea why we even waded into this mess, but yeah...