With a little help from a few friends

"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.