We’ll Take Anyone

Travis Payne rushes into the ocean to rescue swimmers in distress, charges into burning buildings and provides lifesaving treatment to people. As a firefighter-paramedic at Station 18 of the San Francisco Fire Department, that’s all part of the job. But once his shift ends, Payne often rushes to change into his golf clothes and charges to the nearest course.

Payne is fully accustomed to danger and adrenaline, whether trying to conquer the ocean or navigate a five-alarm blaze. An accomplished surfer, he once finished second at Titans of Mavericks, the world-

famous big-wave surfing contest held south of San Francisco. But these days, Payne finds himself seeking a different kind of challenge: going low at his regular outings with the San Francisco Fire Department Golf Club. The capital letters are there for a reason. No ragtag group, the club dates to the mid-1960s and today includes nearly 200 members, all of them active or retired firefighters. They gathered for 12 tournaments in 2025, featuring some of the Bay Area’s top courses and overnight trips to Monterey and Reno.

Those events—along with frequent games alongside good friends Chris Pratt and Reuben Ramos, two of the club’s leaders—offer a welcome respite for Payne. He worked for ambulance companies for 12 years before joining the fire department, where he’s doubled as a paramedic and firefighter the past seven years. That’s nearly two decades of fires, 911 emergencies and split-second life-and-death decisions, an almost daily exposure to real-world trauma and tragedy.

“I’ve had a lot of crazy calls working in San Francisco for so long—shootings, stabbings, all kinds of pretty gnarly stuff,” Payne says.

His main stress releases are chasing waves in the unruly surf at Ocean Beach and trying to coax a little white ball into the hole. Payne tells me he’s currently carrying a 5.4 handicap index, evidence that golf is not some passing fancy.

The game brings its own brand of tension, of course, as Payne says he learned during a recent round on his 41st birthday. He was playing Peacock Gap in San Rafael with his wife, Raquel, and found himself 3-under par with three holes left. Payne had never posted a sub-par round, aside from once on a par-3 course, and he suddenly felt a familiar surge of adrenaline as he came down the stretch.

He went bogey-bogey-bogey to finish. Golf can be cruel.

Still, that experience helps illustrate why the game captivates Payne. He grew up in Pacifica, a coastal suburb south of San Francisco, and often played Sharp Park, an inspiring if scruffy Alister MacKenzie–designed municipal course near the ocean.

“Going out in the evening by yourself, dropping some balls and playing a round at sunset can be super spiritual,” he says. “But, at the same time, I’m trying to lower my handicap and get better, so I go to the range and work on my short game. I want to get a lot better.”

This quest comes without the hazards of his job or his other sporting passion. Big-wave surfing is a pulsating thrill ride—until it suddenly becomes life-threatening. Payne understands this all too vividly, mostly from a Mavericks experience about 10 years ago.

He and a friend both took off on a wave, accidentally hit each other and simultaneously disappeared into the swirling ocean. Payne initially got lucky and popped right up, only to see his buddy at the end of the leash attached to his 9-foot surfboard—something ominously called “tombstoning.”

Put another way: His friend was far underwater, even with the wave gone. Payne started paddling but got crushed by three more waves, pushing him deeper into the rocks below. The last wave thrashed him and held him down to the point where he couldn’t move his arms or legs.

Fortunately, perhaps miraculously, Payne managed to float to the surface, spotted a jet ski there to help and got pulled out. His pal also survived.

“That was definitely the closest I came,” Payne says. “I’ve had multiple times where I almost drowned, maybe two or three really scary ones, but that was definitely the worst one.”

He pauses, contemplating the contrast to his chosen profession and his dedication to chasing birdies.

“I guess golf is probably the safest thing I do,” Payne says.

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John McNulty, who once ran the San Francisco Fire Department Golf Club, bops around Green Hills Country Club on his cart, introducing a reporter to notable members.

There’s Jose Velo, a retired deputy chief whose son, Kevin, plays on the PGA Tour. Here’s Dave Jackson, the club’s oldest player—he turns 85 in November and still reliably splits the fairway off the tee. And there’s Eric Hipp, who in his younger days kicked for USC, including the decisive extra point in the 1980 Rose Bowl.

They’re all there for the SFFDGC event at Green Hills, a classic MacKenzie design in Millbrae, within shouting distance of San Francisco International Airport. It’s an atypical July day, rainy much of the morning, though that does little to dampen the enthusiasm of the 80-plus players savoring their chance to play a pristine private layout.

Jackson, as sharp and spry as a man 20 years younger, reflects fondly on his long career in the SFFD. He worked downtown at Engine 2, then Engine 38, then Station 5—“floating all over the city,” as he puts it. Jackson joined the golf club in 1970, stopped for a while when he got into tennis, and eventually returned to the course.

The firefighters played marquee courses back then, too, including Harding Park and Lake Merced and even uber-exclusive San Francisco Golf Club. Jackson met colleagues from other stations through the events, building a strong and important bond.

“It’s kind of like combat,” he says. “You have to trust one another, because you go into dangerous situations together. So, you build a rapport with your peers that lasts your whole life.”

And what does he recall about those early club outings, more than a half-century ago?

“I just remember we had a lot of fun,” he says. “There was always pressure to play well, because it is a tournament and you want to beat your peers, but it was always fun. Maybe there was a little more drinking back then—that’s why we probably didn’t mind triples as much. A couple of beers, you feel a little better about it.”

Jackson and several others at Green Hills also play in the retired firefighters golf club, a subset of the bigger group. The retirees mostly play courses in the North Bay, in addition to joining the active firefighters for many of their tournaments.

McNulty, 64, joined the department in 1990 and started running the golf club with two others in 1999. He had never played the game until he 

became a firefighter, and then he discovered a golf net in the back of his station. He was quickly hooked.

Moving firehouses isn’t always easy, but when McNulty was reassigned, he usually knew people through their time on the golf course. San Francisco firefighters work 24-hour shifts, typically from 8 a.m. one day to 8 a.m. the next, so they share an uncommon schedule.

“It’s a second family, because you work 24 hours together,” McNulty says. “That bond is already there from work. But then, after work, it’s extra strong, because you have the same time off [as your colleagues] that most people don’t.”

So, why not gather at the golf course?

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Hipp, like McNulty and many others in the SFFDGC, has deep San Francisco roots. He grew up in the city, attending Riordan High and City College of San Francisco. Then he took a memorable detour to Los Angeles.

Hipp spent two years as the starting placekicker at college football powerhouse USC. The Trojans went unbeaten in 1979, capped by their 17–16 win over Ohio State in the Rose Bowl; Hipp launched the 1980 season by kicking a walk-off, game-winning field goal to beat Tennessee in front of more than 95,000 fans in Knoxville.

Among his teammates were Heisman Trophy winner Charles White and future Pro Football Hall of Famers Marcus Allen, Ronnie Lott, Anthony Muñoz and Bruce Matthews. Their head coach was John Robinson, who later earned induction into the College Football Hall of Fame.

“Really great memories,” says Hipp, now 65 and retired. “I remember being kind of nervous most of the time.”

One example: Frank Sinatra was the grand marshal for the 1980 Rose Bowl parade. When Hipp and his teammates ran onto the field for pregame warmups in Pasadena, there stood Sinatra in the flesh. That moment and the whole USC experience was a lot for a 20-year-old to process.

“I appreciate it more now than I did then,” he says while walking the back nine at Green Hills. “I did look around, but it was more like, ‘Let’s get this done and get out of here.’”

Dave Jackson is 85 and still splitting fairways.

Eric Hipp kicked the game-winning extra point for USC in the 1980 Rose Bowl.

John Silva is a station captain and a mustache enthusiast.

They are just a few of the characters who work and tee it up in what Silva calls “one of the meccas of firefighting.”

Hipp had a brief preseason fling with the Raiders, but he knew making it in the NFL was daunting, and he saw all his buddies starting to work. So, he returned to San Francisco to launch a career that would encompass seven years with the police department and 24 more as a firefighter.

Among his most harrowing moments was a 1998 fire at City Hall, during renovations on the storied building. Hipp and other firefighters found themselves on the scaffolding around the top of the building’s landmark dome as they successfully put out the four-alarm blaze.

“That was pretty exciting, and also a little scary,” Hipp says. “The scaffolding probably wasn’t set up to handle all the firemen who were up there.”

Several of Hipp’s colleagues at Green Hills echo his feelings: They find a certain exhilaration in fighting big fires. That’s what they trained and prepared to do, even if the opportunities don’t come along too often.

John Silva, a 44-year-old captain at Station 14 in the Richmond district, says San Francisco’s most historic fires—from the destructive blazes after the 1906 earthquake to those sparked by the 1989 Loma Prieta quake—make the city “one of the meccas of firefighting.” He knows it might sound odd to the general public, “but, as a firefighter, you want to go to fires, get experience and do the job.”

His most memorable example came when he and his crew were returning from a medical call at about 3 a.m. They had already been on several calls during the busy night, so Silva and his colleagues were hoping to finally get some rest at the station.

Then, suddenly, they saw and heard fire blow out the window of a building across the street. They hadn’t received a dispatch, but they didn’t need one: The fire was right there in front of them, demanding immediate attention.

“It was literally ‘turn the corner and see fire,’” Silva says.

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Travis Payne followed a natural career path, given his family history: His grandfather was a firefighter, as was his dad, Norm (in South San Francisco), and his uncle Bob.

Payne saw how they went about their lives and eagerly extended the tradition. He started with emergency medical technician (EMT) school, took some fire-science classes and started working on an ambulance. Payne came to relish the medical element, having the knowledge to help people in need.

The firefighting piece still can become unnerving at times. Payne and his colleagues often return to the scene of a fire the next day, when they can see better, to review what happened—and they’re usually startled to realize the house that seemed so enormous in the dark is actually normal size.

“It does psychological stuff to you when you can’t see anything, and you’re crawling around with fire around you,” he says. “The hairs on the back of your neck definitely stand up a little bit.”

Payne’s pursuit of surfing also carries family roots. His parents both surfed growing up, and Payne and his younger brother took up the sport at a young age. They spent summer days at the beach, surfing all day and then heading to a pay phone to call their mom so she could pick them up.

“We were a surf family,” Payne says.

Then, eventually, his father picked up golf—and the rest of the family proceeded to make fun of him. Golf didn’t exactly fit with the popular image of a firefighter and surfer, bold and risk-taking and adrenaline-fueled. But Payne started going to the range with his dad, and he felt the different but still immensely powerful rush of smacking a ball far into the distance.

He attended a golf camp at Harding Park, cementing his interest in the game. And now it’s a routine and meaningful part of his life.

Payne describes the curious juxtaposition of listening to the fire chief give a speech one day, wearing a formal white uniform and exchanging crisp salutes with firefighters, and then, the next day, having a beer with those same men while playing in an SFFDGC event.

“There’s no rank at the golf course,” Payne says. And that’s part of the appeal—no one writes their job title in the boxes on a scorecard.

Another is the club’s impressive schedule. In 2025, events spanned the region, including stops at Richmond, Poppy Hills, Sonoma, Half Moon Bay and Harding Park. August featured a round at the Presidio, a tree-lined track built in 1896 that weaves through San Francisco in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Pratt, one of the club’s leaders, proudly touts its ever-democratic motto: “We’ll Take Anyone.” The saying adorns golf hats worn by more than a few members.

“We just want to make sure people come out here and have fun,” Pratt says. “Enjoy the camaraderie and meet the young, the old, the retired.”

And chase a different kind of rush.