Unhappy Gilmore

I’ve never shot a round at the Granada Golf Course, nor do I intend to. I’ve preemptively barred myself from playing there in light of my accuracy, or lack thereof, driving off the tee. It’s my way of being a good neighbor to the homeowners, drivers, and pedestrians located in diabolical proximity to the course, but especially the pedestrians, who I can assure you would be better off going quail hunting with Andrea Bocelli than having me play there.

Some people, however, play there a lot. And I do mean A LOT, namely Granada’s members.

Members, you say. Who knew Granada offered a membership? 🧐🤨

Yeah, I know. I said the same thing and came to learn that it really doesn’t. At least, not one that is open to you or me. As it turns out, the Granada Golf Course has 86 members (10 of whom are nonresidents) who are all that remain of a membership program that stopped accepting new members roughly four years ago. These 86 have been, in essence, grandfathered in.

So how often do these members play? Well, according to the City, 14,472 rounds last year alone. That is not a typo. That is fourteen thousand four hundred and seventy two.

Those 14,472 rounds represent roughly 22% of the total 67,000 rounds played at Granada annually, meaning a mere 86 players are responsible for nearly a quarter of the course’s usage, playing an average 168 rounds per player per year. All of which is fine, in itself. Most of these 86 grandfathered members are actually grandfathers, and so if they can and want to play golf five days a week then God bless them. They’ve probably earned it.

What they haven't earned, however, is the right to place that kind of load on a public facility while contributing next to nothing toward maintaining it. And I do mean next to nothing. Until a month or so ago, the annual fee for this special, closed-to-the-public membership was $921 per year. That’s $921 in exchange for no green fees, unlimited rounds, and priority tee times. When you divide the membership program's total annual revenue of $77,927 by the 14,472 rounds these members play, the city is collecting $5.38 per round to maintain a golf course that the public uses and the taxpayers fund.

To put that into perspective, before the recently implemented changes, Granada's standard green fees were $22 for residents and $28 for nonresidents. That means these 86 members weren't receiving a 10% discount, or even a 20% one, but rather a roughly 75% discount off the resident rate, with no limit on how often they can play.

But most of us probably could have lived with that, given that the program is closed and will eventually dissolve through attrition. The real problem is the steep discount paired with unlimited rounds, which the data show has produced a staggering overuse of a finite public asset. For context, a single resident golf membership at Miami Beach Golf Club (another city-owned municipal course) runs $5,161 annually, is capped at 225 members, and currently has a waitlist. Granada's members are paying $921 for a comparable privilege at a course that has no cap, no waitlist, and, until now, no apparent awareness that it had a problem. True, Miami Beach is an 18-hole course to Granada's 9, but that only strengthens the point. A facility with twice the holes, twice the capacity, and twice the ability to absorb a heavy membership load still saw fit to charge five times what Granada does.

Nevertheless, should the 18-hole comparison invite objection, consider Winter Park Golf Course, a city-owned, 9-hole municipal course in Florida that Golf Digest has ranked among the best short courses in the country. Its resident membership runs $1,350 annually. That’s nearly 50% more than Granada's old fee. And yet Winter Park's 300-plus members (more than three times Granada's 86) operate within a structured, tiered model designed to keep the course within sustainable capacity.

And to think the grandfathered membership isn’t even the whole story. There are three additional associations that have been quietly operating at Granada for decades with prime tee time access, no formal city agreement, and, get this, revenue that flows not to the city but to themselves. The Granada Golf Association (GGA), the Greenway Women's Golf Association, and the Women's Golf and Bridge Club collectively hold priority tee times on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Friday mornings, which are the most coveted slots on any public course. None of these associations appears to have any contractual agreement with the City.

The GGA alone has 60 members paying $75 each, has reportedly collected approximately $500,000 over 20 years, and directs its fees to Charlie's Homes for Children—a charity located outside Coral Gables that the City acknowledges it knows little about. Thus, a private golf association has been using a city-owned public asset to generate half a million dollars in revenue over two decades, none of which has flowed back to the facility, and a portion of which has been directed to an out-of-city charity that has never been formally vetted by or even clearly identified to the city. The Greenway Women's Golf Association collects $45 per member and directs fees toward its own lunches and events. Unfortunately, there is very little data on the Women's Golf and Bridge Club.

This brings us back to the crux of the issue. Granada’s membership pricing didn’t come close to offsetting the additional burden it placed on the facility. The city’s own analysis shows the course running at 66,278 rounds in FY25, against an industry-recommended capacity of 40,000 to 50,000 rounds for a 9-hole municipal course. The National Golf Foundation puts the overuse threshold at 40,000 rounds. BrightView, the course’s own maintenance contractor, recommended capping play at 50,000. Granada was exceeding both benchmarks while its membership revenue was actually declining (dropping from $98,816 in FY24 to $77,927 in FY25) even as member usage remained crushing. Meanwhile, FY25 total revenue came in at roughly $1.33 million against projected FY26 operating costs of nearly $1.95 million.

Hence why the City recently adjusted the membership structure. Under the new model, resident members pay $2,100 (which includes a Country Club component), receive 30 complimentary rounds annually, a $5 discount on additional rounds, and priority tee time access, which is a marked improvement over the status quo for the city and, frankly, still a good deal for the members. Unfortunately, but somewhat predictably, news of this forthcoming membership overhaul has some of the members’ golf pants in a bunch. It would seem Tocqueville was right when he said the appetite grows by what it feeds on, as what was once an unreasonably generous accommodation has now evolved into an object of entitlement for some. For some, $5 golf is not a perk but an inalienable right.

At least it is for one member. One particularly persistent, perpetually fixated, and involuntarily retired member named Jack Thompson, aka Unhappy Gilmore. For those who’ve spent any time in the Gables’ political trenches, Thompson needs no introduction. He is known for being, hands down, one of the most vicious and thoroughly unhinged agitators that ever walked our pinkish sidewalks. For the uninitiated, allow me to present Thompson’s Wikipedia page, which as you will see, reads more like a rap sheet than an encyclopedia entry and is probably twice as long as the longest post I’ve ever written, the highlights of which include:

• In 1988, Thompson ran for Miami-Dade County State Attorney against Janet Reno, handed her a letter at a campaign event asking her to disclose her sexual orientation, and filed a police report accusing her of battery when she touched his shoulder in response. The special prosecutor called it “a political ploy.” Reno won with 69% of the vote.

• Thompson spent much of the 1990s crusading against rap music, sending opponents documents with a photo of Batman pasted over his own face on his driver’s license. He described himself as “playing the role of Batman.” He wore a Batman wristwatch.

• Thompson sued a Miami radio station after documenting 40,000 mentions of his name over eight months, claiming the station owed him $5,000 per mention. He sought $200 million.

• After the Florida Supreme Court ordered him to undergo a psychiatric examination, Thompson passed, and has since referred to himself as “the only officially certified sane lawyer in the entire state of Florida.”

• In 2008, the Florida Supreme Court permanently disbarred Thompson on 27 counts of professional misconduct. He responded by suing the Florida Bar, all seven Supreme Court justices, and roughly 70 other defendants.

I can’t tell you just how violently you have to shit the bed to be permanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court, and how unfortunate it is that Coral Gables is one of Thompson’s only remaining beds.

Anyway, suffice it to say, Thompson isn’t exactly taking the Granada membership overhaul gracefully, as evidenced by his barrage of emails on the matter. Sent in rapid-fire succession to every city official he could locate—not to mention Elaine de Valle, and, naturally, the Gables Gazette—each email adheres faithfully to the Thompson template. Every city employee who declines to bend the knee becomes "King George" and every minor disagreement becomes a constitutional crisis.

Among the plethora of absurdities contained in the more than 50 emails Thompson has sent the city in just the last two months, Thompson himself estimates that three rounds of golf per week at Granada is worth roughly $6,000 annually, which, given his own usage, likely understates his personal stake considerably. He has also been coordinating privately with Dr. Castro since at least late March, meeting with her before the issue ever reached the public and even offering to draft her legislation—because she’s obviously incapable of drafting it on her own.

And lest you think Thompson reserves his venom for faceless bureaucrats, no target is too accomplished or too tangentially connected to his grievance to escape his attention. Included in his email barrage is a letter to Raoul Cantero, a former Florida Supreme Court Justice and prominent attorney, informing him that his complimentary golf rounds may constitute unreported income and that Thompson, who notes he "only practiced law for 32 years," would be happy to explain the situation if Cantero would just give him a call. Yeah, “practiced” is the operative word there, pal.

But in terms of absurdity and viciousness, nothing Thompson has done tops his threat to file an IRS whistleblower complaint against all the city's volunteer board members. Here is Thompson leveling that threat in email, which I have reproduced as a block quote for legibility's sake (bold mine):

Greetings to You All:

Yesterday certain Coral Gables public officials and I participated in a Zoom-assisted conference regarding the City’s unilateral, unprecedented elimination of all annual golf memberships for the Granada Golf Course.

This was done without any real notice to the public.

Without getting “into the weeds” as to the many shocking and disturbing statements made thereat by city officials let it suffice to say that our city manager, Mr. Iglesias, performed yet again his self-styled role as the city’s aggressive sixth commissioner. He refused to answer certain questions, and when I insisted that he do so he asserted that such insistence was “rude.”

As our nation approaches its 250th anniversary it is right to note that King George found the listing of his misdeeds in the Declaration of Independence “rude.”

Here is just one example: When asked for a justification of the city’s giving away of what amount to free golf memberships worth tens of thousands of dollars at the Granada and Biltmore golf courses to 400 friends of the Mayor and Commissioners, our sixth Commissioner said “WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE THAT.” Thank you, King George.

This non-response comes at a time when the manager asserts too many people are playing too many rounds at Granada. So in the “City Connected” it is free golf for insiders and no golf memberships for mere taxpayer residents.

I have in my hands the City’s own official announcement not only of this insider freebie but also the announcement that city employees, current as well as retirees, also get what amount to free golf memberships as a “benefit.” This is a benefit worth tens of thousands of dollars.

I believe the correct reading of the opinions of the IRS treat these benefits as reportable income.

Therefore , before I file a formal whistleblower complaint with the IRS arising out of the apparent failure of the recipients of this largesse to declare it as income, please provide:

Any documents in the City’s possession pertaining to the tax consequences, if any, of this “benefits” giveaway as well as anything generated by the City Attorney or any other city official as to the alleged propriety or impropriety of this disturbing giveaway on any grounds.

You have thirty days to respond to this concern. In giving the city this generous window in which to explain why this is not “income” it gives the City the notice the city never gave its mere taxpaying residents.

Tell me I’m wrong. The city manager owes city residents an answer.

Jack Thompson

So, according to Thompson, because city employees and board volunteers who receive complimentary golf access aren't declaring it as income, they are committing federal tax fraud. Never mind that the fringe benefit tax rules around nominal recreational perks for public volunteers are considerably more nuanced than Thompson's emails suggest. Never mind that these are largely unpaid residents donating their time to serve their community. Thompson has consulted a law firm specializing in IRS whistleblower claims and is threatening to unleash the federal government on hundreds of his own neighbors simply because his $5 golf habit is in jeopardy.

It’s as vicious as it is stupid, but also par for the course (pun intended) for a man whose delusions of grandeur and unchecked narcissism led him to professional ruin.

Jack Thompson doesn't fight for his community but for himself. He fights to sustain the fantasy that he’s the hero of some great moral struggle, and that everyone who gets in his way is the irredeemable villain. Sure, he covets his $5 golf hookup, but what he covets even more is attention, and he’s more than happy to throw his neighbors under the bus to get it.

Thompson will lose here, as he always does. So will Dr. Castro, who will no doubt ride to his rescue at the April 14 commission meeting, fighting valiantly, but ineffectually, to restore a membership model that was bleeding the city dry because that’s what she does. She finds an aggrieved constituency, however small, and champions their cause with the boundless generosity of someone spending money that isn't hers. Indeed, it's easy to be magnanimous with a resource to which you don’t contribute. Dr. Castro is a renter. She pays no property taxes in the city she pretends to serve. The consequences of her fiscal recklessness are someone else's problem, specifically, the homeowners and taxpayers who would absorb the cost of whatever unsustainable arrangement she decides to defend this time.

Fortunately for the public purse, the good doctor is as likely to prevail on this issue as Thompson is to get his law license back.

P.S. Here is a surprisingly entertaining look at Thompson's career as an anti-video game activist. It's rather long, so if you don't have time for the whole thing, skip to the "Jack Thompson's just not a good guy" section — an apt summation if there ever was one.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Winter Park Golf Course members pay a per-round fee on top of the annual membership. They do not. The $1,350 covers unlimited rounds. My bad, but the broader analysis still stands.

Hat tip to Jack Thompson, who brought this to widespread attention via mass email to every city official he could locate at 7:56 a.m., with all the equanimity and measured grace one has come to expect from a permanently disbarred massacre chaser who once sued all seven Florida Supreme Court justices.