After decades of debate, false starts and cost overruns, luxury golf finally arrived in the Bronx on Wednesday, as the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point opened in the shadow of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge.

Forty years ago, as swaths of the South Bronx blazed, such a news bulletin might have been an April Fool’s joke. But while the public links made its debut on April 1, the 18-hole course marked a milestone for urban fans of golf and the end of a long struggle for the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

The parks department already oversees more than a dozen other municipal golf courses, including four in the Bronx. But the new golf course in Ferry Point Park, in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx, the first built in the city since 1964, represents a departure, elevating municipal golf to a new level of sophistication — and expense.