"We'd like to restore Cobbs Creek," Mike Cirba, the leader of the group, told Barry Bessler, chief of staff for the park commission and the city's point man on all matters pertaining to the six city-owned courses.

Bessler, a sometimes golfer but a full-time, no-bull city government lifer, listened politely, offered the occasional nod of interest or approval and, ever the pragmatist, duly pointed out a few daunting obstacles from his perspective. But, after an hour, Bessler ultimately sent Cirba and the three other Friends of Cobbs Creek (FOCC) on their way feeling cautiously optimistic, maybe even encouraged.

"I thought it went well," said Cirba, 49, an information-tech officer for a company in Allentown, who has a passion for golf courses and golf-course design.

Bessler thought the meeting went well, too. "I always have to be a little apprehensive when people come up with ideas about how we should improve our facilities," he said later. "But there was nothing I heard at that meeting that was so far out of the realm of possibility that it couldn't be considered."

Almost as interesting as the restoration project that Cirba and the FOCC propose for Cobbs Creek - essentially returning the course to its 1928 routing and splendor - is the story of how this small band of like-minded thinkers found each other, seized on a common goal and pursued it to the point of at least getting a hearing from Bessler and the park commission.

Basically, they are all denizens of a Web site called GolfClubAtlas (www.golfclubatlas.com), a cyberspace hangout for students and fans of golf-course architecture.

Run by a golf-course design enthusiast in Southern Pines, N.C., GCA is a lively, at times raucous, bulletin board of discussions and debates about everything from the latest changes to Augusta National for the Masters, to what holes or courses are overrated or underrated, to which architects ought to be sainted or drummed out of the business.

It started on a Web site

Cobbs Creek, in West Philadelphia, the city's oldest, finest but often neglected course, became a topic of discussion on GCA one day last October, after Cirba, having played a round there, did a little research into its history, as he often does with courses he plays.

"Cobbs was a mysterious case," said Cirba, unable to come up with much.

Although Philadelphia was late among big cities to build a public golf course for its residents, when it opened in 1916, Cobbs Creek was immediately hailed as the finest daily fee golf course in the country. And over the years, as Merion Golf Club in Ardmore became revered and hosted four U.S. Opens, Cobbs Creek's reputation grew by association. It was, after all, the only other 18-hole course credited to Merion's great designer, Hugh Wilson.

"But even the documentation around Hugh Wilson was vague," recalled Cirba.

Curious, Cirba e-mailed the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, known among golf historians for its Dallin Collection, a series of aerial photographs of the region by a survey company, dating from 1928 to 1939. These days, architects find the photos an invaluable resource in helping them restore classic-era golf courses.

Eight weeks later, with aerial photos of Cobbs Creek in hand, Cirba became convinced that while much at the course had changed over the years, much remained the same. Specifically, 17 of the 18 original green sites were intact, although the routing of the fairways to many of the greens clearly had changed.

The discovery prompted Cirba to post his finding on GCA. That night, after further examination of the photos, Cirba wrote a second post laying as best he could a hole-by-hole comparison of the early routing of Cobbs Creek versus today's.

Within an hour, another GCA regular, Geoff Walsh, 32, from Newtown, Bucks County, a global investment specialist at J.P. Morgan, had added to the Cobbs Creek discussion "thread." "I am so excited somebody has finally seen these aerials!" Walsh wrote.

At 4:29 the following morning, there was another post from another GCA regular Joe Bausch, 44, a chemistry professor at Villanova, who had played Cobbs for years. "Fascinating Detective Cirba!" gushed Bausch.

Doing the research

Bausch decided to join the historical spelunking, heading to the Villanova library, where he plunged into years and years of old newspaper clips and microfilm.

"Joe Bausch is the Indiana Jones of golf-course research," said Cirba, only half-joking.

As even casual fans of Cobbs Creek know, the course has long been hailed for being one of the first courses in the country where all golfers were welcome, regardless of race. It is also known as the course where Charlie Sifford, the so-called Jackie Robinson of golf, honed his game.

But Bausch turned up more, which Cirba has turned into an inch-thick history entitled, "Cobbs Creek Golf Course: Uncovering a Treasure."

Among Bausch's findings:

The driving force behind building Cobbs Creek was not the city or the park commission but rather Robert Lesley, then president of the Golf Association of Philadelphia and a member of Merion, who preached the need for a quality course open to all golfers.

To goad the city into building a municipal course, Lesley appointed a committee to find a suitable plot in Fairmount Park that included Wilson; George Crump, designer of Pine Valley; and A.H. Smith, a member of Huntingdon Valley and the first Philadelphia Amateur champion. To further pressure city officials, Lesley appointed another committee made up of movers and shakers, namely the presidents of several local country clubs.

Although Wilson spent six months designing Cobbs, it's evident that he had help from Crump, Smith, George Klauder of Aronimink and J. Franklin Meehan of North Hills, all accomplished players. George Thomas, who designed White Marsh Valley, Riveria and Los Angeles Country Club, also spent time on the Cobbs site "learning."

Cobbs Creek was once a "must-play" course for visitors to Philadelphia. Ty Cobb and Connie Mack were among the regulars.

Donald Trump played Cobbs Creek often during his time at the Wharton School of Business in the late '60s.

The first pro at Cobbs Creek was Ben Sayers, the legendary Scotsman who played in 33 British Opens, who by then was 60.

In 1929, 120,000 rounds of golf were played at Cobbs Creek, or roughly about three times as many rounds as most busy courses today.

Most of the changes to routing of the holes at Cobbs Creek, the FOCC discovered, had occurred in 1952, at the height of the Cold War, when the U.S. Army laid claim to the par-5 13th hole, just off City Line Avenue, to make way for an antiaircraft battery.

"They were going to shoot down the planes that were going to drop the atom bomb on Philadelphia," Cirba said. "They had [antiaircraft batteries] in a lot of cities." (Today, that battery site is the City Line Sports Center, with a driving range, mini-golf and batting cages.)

Eventually, Cirba and a few other FOCC decided it was time for a closer, in-person look. They were joined by Mark Susko, the pro at Cobbs Creek, who by then had joined in the posting on GCA. Armed with original 1915 blueprints they'd discovered in the archives of Fairmount Park, they gathered on a December morning to walk the course and surrounding woods, comparing what was to what is.

In several instances, once they'd found the old, original tee in the woods, the pitch and slope of greens often made more sense - the greens had been designed to receive approach shots from a different angle.

"These guys are so passionate, they weren't just walking through the woods, they tried to hit shots out of the woods to greens," said Tom Paul, 63, from Newtown Square, another GCA regular who has joined the cause.

Greatness uncovered

If there was a bottom line to that morning, it was that Cirba and the others became convinced that the greatness that was once Cobbs Creek was still in there somewhere, even if the antiaircraft battery had touched off a chain reaction of changes. They also become convinced that restoring Cobbs Creek to something akin to its original state was not out of the question.

From what Cirba and the FOCC could see, restoring Cobbs also wouldn't cost anything like the millions poured into some other course restorations. A number of trees would need to be removed to recreate certain fairways, but no substantial earth-moving would be required. Most important, they believed the restoration could be accomplished without having to close the golf course.

The timing, it seemed to Cirba and the FOCC, also seemed to be perfect to restore Cobbs Creek.

"The U.S. Open is coming to Merion in 2013 and the eyes of the golf world will be on Philadelphia," Cirba said. "There is a new management company [Billy Casper Golf] taking over the courses, and there is a new city administration that wants minority and community involvement with the golf courses."

Recovering a heritage

"Our intent is not to turn this into a country-club-for-a-day," Cirba said. "It is to peel back the effects of time to unveil a jewel of design and allow this golf course to recover some of its heritage."

That day at the offices of the Fairmount Park Commission, Bessler, who had been fully prepared to shoot down their dream, instead found himself intrigued by much of what he heard. He offered only to continue listening. There is no money in the city coffers to underwrite a restoration, Bessler told them, so they must find funding. The FOCC believes it might have luck landing grants from golf organizations or maybe even wealthy individuals. For a concrete blueprint, the FOCC also plans to approach two or three golf course architects who have expressed an interest in doing some or all of the work pro bono.

Finally, Bessler made it clear that nothing the FOCC does at Cobbs Creek can jeopardize the city's new 10-year management contract with Billy Casper Golf, which won't be finalized until May 10.

But even Billy Casper Golf seems intrigued. "We are aware of the group and the time and energy they have put into this," Joe Goodrich, senior vice president of Billy Casper, said Friday. "Once our agreement takes effect, we want to sit down and talk to them. We are wide open to it."

Cirba hopes the vision he and the FOCC have for restoring Cobbs Creek will find support with city government and the golf community.

"We've all got day jobs," he said. "We're all passionate about this project but it's something I've been doing nights and weekends, much to the chagrin of my lovely fiancée. I look at my role as somebody who got the ball rolling."