After something like 15 years I finally made it to check out a Trail course in Alabama.  The entire undertaking is very impressive.  A brochure touts “432 holes of world-class golf on 10 sites”.

With a Noon flight and a hotel that didn’t provide my requested wake-up call, all I had time for was a view of Magnolia Grove in Mobile.  The more heralded Falls course is closed for aeration, which afforded the perfect opportunity to go around in a golf car for a quick visit.  

The course is impressive, especially considering its age.  I can think of many “BIG” golf courses where trees were cleared for some 7,000+ yard behemoth that ties together individual holes with a long cart path.  All the ones that come to mind were built in the last 10 or 12 years.  This preceded them.  It was pretty innovative at the time.  

It also struck me as difficult, particularly from the back tee where it measures 7,239 yards and is rated a whopping three strokes more than par.  For some reason I expected it to be more open with less disruption between tee and green.  Not the case, as the Falls has lots of elevation change, carries over marsh and wetlands, and an awful lot of bunkering that is either centerline or encroaching.  

From the tee recommended for anyone handicap 5 or less, here is the day at the Falls.

3s:  197, 187, 206, 215
4s:  448, 413, 391, 443, 420, 393 430 446 437 395
5s:  582, 520, 570, 546

In order to get up to more than 7,200 yards (Mobile is obviously close to sea-level and not in a desert), the course is stripped of any short par 3s, most of the reachable par 5s, and the strategy of risk-reward propositions on par 4s.  Obviously today’s college players and all professionals can handle the length, so I can see why the tees were built.  For some reason the Crossings course is only 88 yards shorter, so it definitely doesn’t qualify as a sporty alternative.

Which brings me to the point of the thread.  Imagine my surprise when I saw the length for most of the other courses on the Trail.  Check out these actual numbers.

THE SHOALS

Fighting Joe (8,092 yards)
Par 3s:  236, 236, 223, 200
Par 4s:  466, 478, 426, 497, 477, 489, 413, 476, 466, 483
Par 5s:  611, 607, 716, 592
Rated 78.7

Schoolmaster (7,971)
3s:  238, 265, 226, 197
4s:  453, 477, 472, 459, 509, 455, 417, 447, 443, 393
5s:  632, 681, 589, 618
Rated 78.0

I could go on and on.  

ROSS BRIDGE (8,191)
3s:  226, 207, 208, 239
4s:  467, 470, 469, 502, 518, 477, 454, 458, 501, 487
5s:  620, 619, 698, 571
Rated 78.5

The others aren’t much shorter.  Actually, when you consider these courses were funded by the State Teachers Pension Fund, they might serve a dual purpose.  It’s almost as if they had elementary school teachers pose the word problem, “Can a golf course measure almost 8,200 yards and still conform to the norm of 5 par 4s on each side and a par of 72?”  The winners are among the best answers from 4th graders in their public schools.  “Hey look!  You did it with only three par 4s over FIVE HUNDRED!  Great job Dixie Belle!”  And who said Alabama isn’t an education state?  (Hey, I didn’t say it isn’t subjective.  You might be more impressed with young Jefferson Waylon’s solution where he kept the par 4s under 500 and only needed the 716 yarder to do so.)

Of course they offer multiple sets of tees.  The “one ups” are a stout 7,126, 7,294 (seriously), 7,446 (not a misprint), 6,968 (a breather at under seven thousand), and 7,072 on some of these courses.  I think I’ve just solved the problem of the Alabama homeless; how about you allow “tent cities” on the back box at the Trail courses?  People can’t actually play these things as any more than a novelty – do they?

This past weekend I had the pleasure of playing Vaquero where several PGA Tour pros – including last week’s winner – call home.  How likely is one of these super-sized trail courses to test “every shot in the bag” when they offer either a steady diet of Driver-layup-wedge or maybe Driver-long iron for a bomber?  Contrast that to Vaquero, a deceptively long 7,064 because of the use of several short holes.  From the back tees there are par 3s of 182 downhill at least a club, 157, and 134.  The only way I’ve got 134 into a par 3 on the Trail is if I pop up my teeshot.

I genuinely liked what I saw today at Magnolia Grove.  Yet I’m puzzled.  Is this a modern-day public works project a la the FDR New Deal where they are trying to provide employment for an extra hundred maintenance crew?

The only plausible explanation I can see is that someone extrapolated the distance gains that coincided with Titleist’s decision to stop making crappy balls and concluded golfers will soon be hitting drives 400 yards.  If that happens, 8,200 (something like an extra mile of golf compared to a dated informal standard of 6,700) will make sense.  Can anyone else offer a different rationale?  Some places, Bandon Dunes for one, were laid out to have “flex” tees where the starting point can be adjusted to preserve the intent of the hole and thus have five or six tee grounds per hole.  (Kind of breaks down when golf associations rate a standard layout.)  Maybe that’s the hidden genius of the Trail.

John,
A couple of points.

One, the Trail, as I''m sure you know, was designed to be a tourist attraction. As such, it's creators believed it had to be memorable and unique, and 7,500 yard--7,800 yard golf courses in the early 1990's certainly qualified as memorable and unique. Quaintness and subtlety are not the point.

Two, almost no one plays the tips. Nike/Nationwide/Hooters events have been held on a variety of Trail courses and they've not set-up from the tips. The distance, for now at least, is more a novelty than an expression of the state of golf and most of the courses have several tee areas in the 6,000 to 7,000 range.

Three, on most Trail courses the prodigious distances are deceiving. At Ross Bridge, for instance, 7-8 of the 14 par-4's play downhill versus only two or three uphill approach shots. Select your tees properly and the courses generally play shorter than the card numbers.

Four, most Trail courses have anywhere from 4 to 7/8 tee boxes, providing "flex" within the card's markers.

Lastly, add in the value of the golf on the Trail -- green fees generally between $35 and $55 for the courses ($85 or so for Ross Bridge) -- with a collection of courses with tremendous variety devoid largely of housing or suburban interferrence, and there's really not much to criticize. Not that you were.

The only two that I have played are at Grand National in Opelika near Auburn.  Good golf courses, great value.  They certainly aren't easy golf, though.

I am proud (or is that ashamed) to say that I played all 8092 yards of The Fighting Joe Course @ The Shoals.  Now I dont normally play the back tees if they are much over 7100-7200, but you just have to play The Schoolmaster all the way back at least once.  After all how many opportunities in your life do you have to play a course over 8000 yards.

I will say that at 78.8 (and I cant recall the slope) my 7.6 Index translated to something like a score of 87 to shoot my handicap.

First of all the features at Fighting Joe are all supersized, and the course is very playable.  Most of the trouble was too far away for me to hit it from the tips so that actually helped a little.  

I dont have it here in front of me but I kept track of what I hit in for my second shots on all par-4s, third shots on the par-5's and what I hit on the par-3's as well.  It was interesting to see.  I remember I had a 6-Iron and one 5-Iron in for my second on two of the par-4's, but other than that it was all 3I, 1I, or 3W (and even one driver off the deck on a hole that was about 495yds.

Again I found the course to be very playable from the tips.  Fortunately on the Fighting Joe course there are less heroic "Do or Die" type carries required than at most of the other Trail courses that I have played.

About 10+ years ago, at the Cambrian Ridge course, they had this 2 day event called the Calvary Charge, 6 man best ball, 27 holes per day. There were a lot of mini tour players and club pros involved, I was by far the worst player in the field.

The winning score was +2 for 54 holes, they had the greens running at like 14+ with the flags all on ridges and US open rough, it was by far the hardest set up I have ever seen.

I played it once in normal conditions, it was pretty fun, the final hole on each 9 runs uphill back to the clubhouse, with triple tier greens. For 27 dollars back in the day, you couldnt beat it. At the time, being from Miami and Tampa and having no access to any private course or even upscale public ones, I thought this was the pinnacle of golf......man did I miss the boat on that call.......

Still, like Brad said, considering the absolute garbage that was around before hand (and after in Louisiana), it certainly served it's purpose.

You could build on a unit-cost basis, and the contractor gets paid for each square foot moved, built, and turfed over. That would explain how you can have a low-bid construction cost (per unit price) with massive earthmoving totals. Like I said about The Shoals-Schoolmaster, if they had moved half as much well, it would have been twice as good and no extra cost, maybe even less.

I don't consider most of the courses to rate a special trip.  I knocked out most of the sites I visited in a quick driving trip after I moved to Nashville.  There's plenty to see that I'd rank ahead of most of them.  I think the enormity of the entire project is more noteworthy than any particular course.

As I said, my particular favorite on the trail is The Senator.  I think most here would consider it to be quite contrived.  It's got a lot of over the top mounding framing both sides of almost every fairway.  I thought it was a fun course to play.

John, see my review in the July 15, 2006 issue of Golfweek of my first RTJ Course, The Shoals-Schoolmaster. I found it overbuilt, poorly shaped, and generally just big for the sake of being big. A real yawner.

The real attraction of the RTJ Trail is simply that they appear to be so much better compared to the decrepit stock of daily-fee courses that was found in the state before. I also think folks in that NASCAR-mad state like driving all of those Talladega-style cart paths.

Brad, I'm a few issues behind.  I'll check it out for sure.  If you find yourself in Mobile, be sure to see Spring Hill College Golf Course at the Jesuit school.  I got there at dusk and was allowed to run around in a golf car and saw a very nice old course that uses the site well.  Unlike any RTJ course, its highlight is a beauty of a 275 uphill par 4 bender around a bunker that squeezes the tee shot.

Access is key in that area as the CC of Mobile is private and Steelwood is gated, almost like a fortress.

On Monday night I looked at a couple greens by the stately old clubhouse of CCoM and was stunned to see bold shelving.  Radical like a Biarritz on acid.

I'd say it depends on what you mean by a "special" trip.  Grand National, for instance, certainly isn't Bandon or Pinehurst or one of the other great destinations for public access/resort golf.

But as an affordable buddy trip for people in the SE, I'd think the Trail serves its purpose pretty well.  Grand National is very affordable, and I doubt that anyone would be disappointed with the golf for what they spent.

Tommy,
In fairness to the Trail, Brad's magazine ranks the Lake Course at Grand National as the number 5 course in Alabama.  (Please, no Alabama jokes here! )  And, fwiw, I liked the Links Course, no matter how poorly named, better than the Lake Course of the two in Opelika.  Honestly, it's pretty good golf.

I read Brad's review as well, and I'll take his word for it.  I have heard that the Grand National courses are the best of the lot, but they're the only two I've seen.  Also, in the interest of fairness, I'm not sure how many of the courses would be on sites that would be considered great sites for golf courses.