Asheville Municipal Golf Course

Asheville Municipal Golf Course — "the Muni" — is a 1926 Donald Ross design and a landmark of Black golf history that the region's grand resorts too often overshadow. Built to grow the public game (a round cost 50 cents in 1927), it became the one course in Asheville open to golfers of every race — the first course in North Carolina to racially integrate. Since 1960 it has hosted the Skyview Open, created as a haven for Black professionals shut out of the PGA Tour; the tournament has sent 29 Black golfers on to the pro tours, among them Lee Elder, Jim Dent, Chuck Thorpe, and Harold Varner III. Its story — the players and the community that made it matter — was told in the 2020 documentary "Muni." A Donald Ross course that outlived segregation to become one of the most historically important public tracks in the South, it is now being restored to Ross's original design.