The Brickyard Crossing

By Sigur Whitaker
 
Brickyard Crossing, Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s golf course, can trace its origins to the 1920s in Miami Beach. Golf was becoming a pastime of the rich and the people who wintered in Carl Fisher’s Miami Beach resort demanded it. Interestingly, Fisher really didn’t care for golf. In fact, he was terrible at it. At one point he played a nine-hole golf course in Miami Beach and lost eleven golf balls.
 
While Carl Fisher did not start the golf course at IMS, he and his partner Jim Allison planted the seed when the track was purchased by Eddie Rickenbacker on November 1, 1927, for $700,000. The massive facility hosted only the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and was occasionally used for car testing. The golf course would bring in additional revenues for most of the year.
 
Eddie Rickenbacker announced the construction of the golf course on March 18, 1928. He hired Bill Diddel, the most prominent Indiana golf architect of the first half of the 20th century, to design the original course at IMS.  Over the course of his career, Diddel designed approximately three hundred golf courses primarily in the Midwest and was known for his innovative designs. The original IMS golf course holes were named for prominent “500” winners and other key figures.
 
The original course consisted of eighteen holes, half of which were inside the track. The course began in the southeast corner of the Speedway grounds where a clubhouse equipped with lockers and showers already stood. The first three holes were laid out along a creek through wooded lanes outside of the track. The golfer then crossed the track via a footbridge near turn 2 to play the next nine holes inside the track.
 
The 150-acre golf course was established as a separate organization, Speedway Golf Corporation. When the golf course opened on August 3, 1928, it had a fee of $1 per golfer during the week and $1.50 on the weekends. 
 
While racing was halted during World War II, the golf course continued to be open. It was managed by Rickenbacker’s brother, Al. On May 30, 1945, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby played an exhibition game at the course. They were in town for a special Memorial Day broadcast for veterans convalescing at the 6,000 bed Wakeman General Hospital at Camp Atterbury Indiana. The exhibition match titled “500 Smile Race” raised funds to support the Indiana P.G.A.’s veterans’ rehabilitation fund. The match, sponsored by the Indianapolis News, was broadcast on WIBC radio in Indianapolis.
 
Tony Hulman, who purchased the track in 1945 from Eddie Rickenbacker, provided that winners of the Indianapolis 500 get a lifetime membership at Brickyard Crossing.  Upon purchasing the track, Hulman told the club director, “We take care of the current drivers and anyone who has ever won the Indy 500 can play here for life.”
 
Between 1960 and 1968, the PGA Professional tour played in the 500 Festival Open. The PGA event started on Thursday with round one followed by round two on Friday and round three on Saturday. The race occurred on Sunday and the final of the tournament was on Monday. It also hosted an LPGA event in 1960 which was won by Mickey Wright. Very few golf courses have ever hosted both a PGA and LPGA tournament in the same season.
 
In 1965, the course was redesigned to include a nine-hole course inside the track and eighteen holes outside the track. In preparation for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum moving to its current location in 1976, the golf course lost a part of its land.
 
The course was redesigned in 1992-1993 by Indianapolis resident and hall of fame golf-course architect Pete Dye. Dye consulted Bill Diddel when designing his first golf course at El Dorado in Greenwood, Indiana. The most famous of Dye’s designs is the Stadium Course at TPC at Ponte Verde, Florida. Famed golfer Jack Nicklaus said “I think Pete Dye was the most creative, imaginative, and unconventional golf course designer that I have ever been around.”
 
Dye’s layout for the Brickyard Crossing course included four holes (7, 8, 9 & 10) inside the racetrack and fourteen holes outside. To access the holes inside the speedway, a tunnel goes under the racetrack. The impetus for the new design was when NASCAR started racing at IMS. The walls of the racetrack were too low for the larger, heavier stock cars. The Speedway removed the outside retaining walls to add new higher walls. Tony George, Hulman’s grandson, asked Dye to incorporate the old walls in the new design of the course. He used the old walls to build retaining walls around the golf course which can be seen around several lakes and hills both inside and outside the Speedway.  
 
Incorporated in the golf course design is an old white and green barn with the Brickyard Crossing logo on the side. The barn, the oldest building on the property, is from the original farm that was on the property when purchased by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway founders. It has been refurbished inside and out and is used by the golf course for storage.
 
One of the challenges of having part of the golf course inside the racetrack is that it gets torn up during wrecks and some celebrations. After a race, the Brickyard Crossing staff will resod the damaged areas. The maintenance staff is responsible not only for the golf course grounds but also for the grounds inside the track. The course has 2000 sprinkler heads on the golf course and another 2000 on the racetrack. The infield irrigation system is shut off whenever a race is scheduled. A car crash could hit an irrigation head and they don’t want water shooting out of the broken sprinkler onto the racing surface. 
 
Another challenge for the Brickyard Crossing staff is to keep people playing golf off the racetrack. They have equipped the golf cars with a GPS system to keep track of the golfers so the staff knows when they leave the golf course and can get them off the racetrack.
 
Brickyard crossing operates with a crew of thirty employees at the golf shop and thirty-five on the maintenance crew. In 2008, World Traveler magazine named Brickyard Crossing as one of the ten most unique courses in the United States.
 
An estimated 20,000 people play the course per year including 200 per day during the Month of May. The 2024 rates from April 26 until October 20th are $210 per player. During the Indy 500 qualifying and race weekends, the rates increase to $250 per person. Those 17 and under accompanied by an adult are charged $125 per person. The daily rates include the use of a cart and access to the driving range (when available) and practice greens.
 
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