Photos by Jason Henry / New York Times News ServiceWhile Scotland’s Gleneagles is known around the world, San Francisco’s Gleneagles, above, folded into a hillside of vast John McLaren Park, is barely known in its own neighborhood. At left, a course map of Scotland’s Gleneagles in the 19th hole and clubhouse at the San Francisco namesake is a reminder of the urban course’s legacy.

SAN FRANCISCO — Among the things said last week at the golf course at Gleneagles, but not the famous one in Scotland where the Ryder Cup was played this week, were these:

“We were on the fourth tee when three guys came from the basketball court, and one pulled out a gun.”

“Kids are so tired, they don’t even climb the fence anymore to steal golf balls. It’s sad.”

“All putts break toward the Cow Palace.”

The 2014 Ryder Cup finished Sunday at Gleneagles in Scotland, named the world’s best golf resort the past three years at the Ultratravel awards. But across an ocean and across a continent is a distant relative, a hidden, scruffy nine-hole city-owned course named for the revered Scottish links.

“So difficult, we stopped building after nine holes,” a sign on the outside wall of the clubhouse reads.

While Scotland’s Gleneagles is known around the world, San Francisco’s Gleneagles is barely known in its own neighborhood. It is folded into a hillside of vast John McLaren Park next to the dilapidated Sunnydale public housing project, the city’s largest, part of San Francisco’s crime-fatigued southeastern corner.

For many years, local golfers kept removing the sign for Gleneagles, not wanting others to discover their secret. These days, a small green sign leading into a potholed driveway off Sunnydale Avenue is the only indication of what is hidden in the trees.

“The speakeasy of golf courses,” said Tom Hsieh, who has run the course since 2004 as part of a lease agreement with the city and county of San Francisco.

He has seven employees. The starter serves as the bartender. Tee times are not necessary, and there is an enviable selection of Scotch. The six-stool bar faces a wall of paned windows that overlook the first tee and the ninth green. Over the stands of eucalyptus is the San Francisco Bay, striped by the San Mateo Bridge in the distance.

There is a pub but no pro shop. (There is a sign for a pro shop, though, over an empty nook.) On one wall of the pub is a framed poster from 2010 proclaiming Gleneagles one of the 20 best nine-hole courses in the country. (Golf World ranked it No. 17.) Across the room, sharing a wall with an Olympia beer mirror, is a map of the King’s Course at Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland.

The Ryder Cup took place on another Gleneagles track, the relatively new PGA Centenary Course, designed by Jack Nicklaus.

“We’re going to try to create a genuine Scottish golf course feel,” Erik de Lambert said when he took over the lease at downtrodden McLaren Park Golf Course in 1980.

The place was a money pit for the city, treasured by a few, ignored by most. De Lambert changed the name to Gleneagles Golf Course at McLaren Park.

“I don’t think anyone really cared,” said Joe Alvarez, who has played the course regularly for 50 years, often several times a week. “It was like putting lipstick on a pig.”

The course was designed by Jack Fleming, a protege of the course architect Alister MacKenzie, and opened in 1962. A par 36, it is about 3,000 yards of tilted lies. Fairways are skinny, lined by eucalyptus, cypress and redwood trees. Greens are tiny, slick, billowy and nearly perfect, having been rebuilt with bentgrass in 2010. Afternoon players are often greeted by a three-club wind from the west, sometimes accompanied by fog.

“You’re always getting a U.S. Open shot,” said Brian Scott, a regular since 1985.

Scott said he had played courses around the world but found nothing like the challenge at Gleneagles, where the 18-hole record is a tauntingly high 64. He mentioned uneven lies, crooked fairways, towering trees, quick greens. His playing partner, Vidal Carlin, cut him off on his way to the ninth tee.

“It’s just hard,” Carlin said.

Gleneagles has never received the attention of other San Francisco courses, including the city-owned Harding Park, a longtime stop on the PGA Tour and the site of the 2009 Presidents Cup, and the Olympic Club, the site of the 2012 U.S. Open. And it never did what it was intended to do — improve the neighborhood struggling at the base of its slope.

By at least one count, there were 10 homicides in the Gleneagles area in 2012. Two murders occurred in the neighborhood within a week this summer.

But most of the course feels like a world away. The neighborhood is visible only along a couple of holes through the trees and across a chain-link fence. Crime has rarely entered, and even de Lambert once noted that he always kept the flags in the holes overnight without anyone stealing them.

Alvarez, at the bar after a morning round, remembered when teenagers would climb the fence and steal balls in the fairway, only to try to sell them back to golfers later. He reasoned that drug use had made today’s teenagers too tired for such mischief.

Brad Bulcock was on the fourth tee 20 years ago, he said, when three men robbed his foursome at gunpoint. One had a gun that he fired three times into the ground.

“I thought it was fake until I saw the dirt flying up,” said Bulcock, working behind the bar on Tuesday as about 20 golfers played the course.

In the late 1970s, Alvarez was at the course when de Lambert, a brash Swede, came to play. De Lambert had worked as a maître d’hôtel at the elegant Mark Hopkins hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco and as a lighting technician at the less elegant Condor strip club in North Beach, among other jobs. He announced that he wanted to take over the golf course, and the city was happy to lease it to him. Credited with saving the course, de Lambert quickly improved the holes, fixed the clubhouse and added the pub.

And he renamed the course after his favorite one in Scotland.

“Nobody knew what it meant,” Hsieh said. “But everyone went along with it.”

De Lambert spent part of his retirement living in a home he bought near Gleneagles in Scotland, according to his obituary. He died in 2013.

Hsieh, a longtime campaign consultant in San Francisco, took over the lease in 2004. Hsieh and other investors spent $250,000, he said, to redo greens, repair irrigation systems and add hot water to the clubhouse, among other upgrades.

In 2010, though, several greens died quickly of disease. Crews of local golf course experts lent time and equipment, led by Thomas Bastis, the superintendent of nearby California Golf Club. All the greens were remade with high-end bentgrass. The first green was moved to its original location; de Lambert had placed it higher on the hill, into the trees. The greens still break, generally, toward the Cow Palace, San Francisco’s ancient barn of an arena, visible a few blocks away.

The latest threat to the course’s long-term survival came over the summer. Hsieh received notice that water rates, amid the drought in California, would soon rise by nearly 50 percent. Much of Gleneagles was brown, part of a water-and-money conservation effort that left only the greens, the tee boxes and parts of the fairways green.

With Gleneagles’ playing rates dictated by the city ($19 for nine, $27 for 18, Monday through Thursday), and with the number of rounds having dropped to about 17,000 from about 30,000 in 2004, Hsieh gave a 30-day notice on July 1 that he intended to walk away from lease negotiations. The news created a stir in San Francisco. Longtime fans of Gleneagles feared that the 52-year-old course might close.

Hsieh and the city agreed on a nine-year deal in mid-August. He said he expected the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve it in the coming weeks.

“I care a lot about making sure this golf course is here for another generation of golfers,” Hsieh said. “By hook or by crook, we’re going to bootstrap this golf course forward. It’s always been that way.”

On Tuesday, Hsieh pondered the Ryder Cup this weekend. He planned an email to those on his course’s mailing list, inviting them to the other Gleneagles. It may not be world-class, but it is plenty hard. It may not be Scotland, but it is home.