"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
bi-weekly online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

July 19, 2005

Most of us who play golf in Tennessee think it’s a great golf state. That opinion wasn’t necessarily supported in Golf Digest’s list of the best golf cities in the United States that appeared in the magazine’s August edition.

Rating 330 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the country with a population of greater than 50,000, Golf Digest proclaimed Auburn-Opelika, Alabama the country’s premier golf town. Johnson City/Bristol/Kingsport Tennessee was No. 2, certainly a good lick for Tennessee golf. But from there it was a long way to the state’s second-ranked golf town, Jackson, which came in at No. 51. Chattanooga was another 55 spots back at No. 106.

What of Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville? Nashville was rated No. 188, Knoxville No. 201 and Memphis No. 272.

Those of you who have played Belle Meade or the Golf Club of Tennessee near Nashville, Memphis Country Club or Colonial in Memphis or Holston Hills in Knoxville might have been taken aback at those numbers. In fact, all three of those towns are covered with great golf courses, but there’s one important reason they ranked so low in Golf Digest’s poll.

Access.

Indeed, most of the great golf courses in all those cities are off limits to the rank and file duffer. Other factors went into the magazine’s rankings, including the quality of golf courses, weather and price, but access was a major chunk of the equation (45 percent, in fact).

That explains why Chattanooga, despite the presence of The Honors, Black Creek, Council Fire and historic Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, was ranked 106. Truth is that’s not a bad spot, considering that Chattanooga, with its abundance of high-end courses and muni-type tracks, is hurting for courses that fall in between those categories. The addition of the Bear Trace at Harrison Bay helped, but we could still use a couple of more courses like the ones that brought Auburn-Opelika home a winner.

When I decided to look into the reasons a slow-paced, football-mad town in the deep South topped Golf Digest’s rankings, I went to the Auburn-Opelika Chamber of Commerce website and downloaded the chamber’s golf brochure. I was a bit surprised to learn that there are only eight golf courses in the area. But only two of them are private.

Of the six public courses, the Links and Lake courses at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Grand National, were given 4.5 stars (out of five) in Golf Digest’s Places to Play rankings. Another, Auburn Links at Mill Creek, was given 3.5 stars, and a fourth, Indian Pines, was rated a three-star course.

That’s a lot of quality golf for non-country club types, especially given Auburn-Opelika’s population of 120,407. Overcrowding isn’t a problem on most days, though the RTJ Trail courses get a lot of out-of-town play. Alabama’s done a tremendous job selling the RTJ Trail as a destination spot for traveling golfers.

Course architect Bill Bergin, who played college golf at Auburn and designed the school’s private Auburn University Club, is qualified to speak for the merits of Auburn-Opelika golf.

“Auburn really has an abundance of good golf,” Bergin said. “It deserves its ranking. It’s a good place to go play, you can get on the golf courses, and you’ve got great weather. It’s hot in the summer, but you’ve got year round golf, too. That makes it a good place to play. If you want to live somewhere and play golf, Auburn’s an excellent place for that.”

The Johnson City/Kingsport/Bristol area isn’t so bad either. I learned to play while working at two of the three newspapers in the Tri-Cities, and always marveled at the quality of public courses such as Graysburg Hills, noted designer Rees Jones’ first project, and Roan Valley Golf Estates.

Like Tennessee’s other MSAs, the three adjoining communities have their share of high-end golf, including old standards Ridgefields Country Club and Johnson City Country Club and fairly recent additions like The Ridges and The Virginian (Bristol is a border town). But the strength of Tri-Cities golf lies in its public access tracks and the relatively low cost to play them. The area's average green fee of $26.44 ranked 18th among the 320 cities in Golf Digest’s survey.

"In other places, most of the time if you go play a $25 golf course, you're playing on crab grass and whatever else comes up and grows," Sam Adams, head professional at Roan Valley Golf Estates, told the Johnson City Press. "I think our golf courses are reasonably well maintained and they are more than reasonable as far as the expense to play."

The Tri-Cities ranked 30^th in quality of available golf courses, another justification in the area’s high overall ranking.

Tennessee’s Bear Trace project might have given some of the state’s metro areas a boost had it decided to build courses near them. As it is, most of the five Bear Trace courses are in remote outposts.

It would be interesting to see how Tennessee would fare if Golf Digest ever decided to rank states for their quality and quantity of golf courses, regardless of stats (private, public) or price. The golf-rich Crossville area wasn’t included in the city rankings because of its small population. The Bear Trace courses weren’t considered, save for Harrison Bay, because they aren’t built in major population centers. And none of the state’s great private courses factored in.

Bundle all those together with the state’s better public courses and I’m guessing Tennessee would be ranked in the top 10 nationally. Until Golf Digest proves otherwise with a scientific poll, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

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