The steamboat plowed upriver into a stubborn current on a bright, sweltering summer afternoon. Mike, my son, and I watched its steady progress from the Rock Island Arsenal Golf Course’s first tee, which was as close to the mighty Mississippi River as you can get without actually being in the mighty Mississippi River.
Of course, it wasn’t an authentic paddlewheel steamboat like the ones Mark Twain romanticized in his classic books. This was a modern replica that ferries tourists up and down the Quad Cities riverfront. Still, I’ve never started a golf round while a riverboat went past.
The view from that first tee alone may be worth the price of admission to Rock Island Arsenal Golf Course (RIAGC), but there’s more to the course than that. About 128 years more. Arsenal commander Capt. Stanhope Blunt founded RIAGC in 1897. This unlikely golf club at a military installation in an unlikely location — an island in the Mississippi River that looks across at Davenport, Iowa — was granted an operating license in 1906 by Secretary of War William Taft, the same Taft who later succeeded Teddy Roosevelt as President. A beautiful clubhouse was built that same year after the original burned down. A magnificent ballroom was added in 1920.
That clubhouse is still there but not currently in use. The Rock Island Arsenal is still an active military operation, however, and the historic course made a Lazarus-like comeback this spring after closing in 2018. It was reduced from the original 18 holes to nine holes with an all-new irrigation system and restored fairways. It is open to the public, but I’m not gonna lie — you’ve got to jump through a few hoops.
Mike and I had a roller-coaster adventure getting to that first tee once we decided to check out the historic course that I had read about during a visit just before the PGA Tour’s annual John Deere Classic.
First, we made a required stop at the security building just outside the Rock Island Arsenal’s gated entrance. You have to get a pass to get through the gate in order to reach the golf course.
Mike and I parked, went inside, filled out forms and took them to windows that resembled those used by bank tellers. I confirmed my Social Security number on a keypad, put my signature on a digital screen, sat in a chair for a photo and breezed through the process to get my paper pass, which is good for one year.
But Mike somehow hadn’t gotten around to getting Real ID. Without it, he needed a second form of identification. The U.S. Army wouldn’t accept anything else in his wallet and he didn’t bring his passport. It looked briefly as if he was going to prison and, much more important, I wasn’t playing golf that afternoon and was going to be horribly inconvenienced.
Then Mike noticed that a vehicle registration was on the acceptable ID list. We’d driven from Pittsburgh in his car so he went outside and retrieved his registration from the glove compartment. No prison time after all. He got his pass. We then drove to the nearby gate, had our new passes quickly scanned and officially entered the storied grounds of the Rock Island Arsenal.
We already had a tee time, or so we thought. Mike called the phone number on the course website and got no answer. So, he tried to make a tee time online. To do that, he had to create an account. Minor hassle. Once finished with that, he clicked on the 2:40 p.m. tee time. Mission accomplished. Except the website curiously didn’t respond or email him a confirmation. That was annoying after clearing all those digital hurdles. More