A Glimpse Into the Past,
Rebuilt for the Present
Highland Park Golf Course
Birmingham, Ala.
Date: May 30, 2019
Greens fee: $49.50
For Highland Park Golf Course’s first 60 years, African Americans couldn’t play. And then, for a year and a half in 1962 and 1963, no one could.
The Alabama Journal (June 27, 1963).
Highland Park, on dramatic, rolling terrain in downtown Birmingham, has been open since 1903 — first as the Country Club of Birmingham, then under its current name after the city acquired it in 1927. Like every other part of public life in the South in 1927, Highland Park was segregated. Birmingham built a blacks-only golf course in 1952 in an effort to ward off integration, but in late 1961, a federal judge held what everyone already knew: racial segregation was unconstitutional, even on a golf course. That left the city what should have been an easy choice: open Highland Park to everyone, or close it to everyone.
Birmingham chose the latter. Mayor Arthur Hayes defended the decision by describing it as “what we thought we had to do.” So in January 1962, Highland Park closed. The city filled the holes in Highland Park’s greens with concrete, just to make sure no one played. Eventually, the city reopened the course in June 1963 (the story of which was told to National Public Radio by Dr. Jesse Lewis in 2013).
Today, the only remaining trappings of Highland Park’s past are the ones that encourage play rather than prevent it: it’s a short course playable at all skill levels, and it’s the site of Tad Moore’s annual Southern Hickory Four Ball Championship. The course long ago lost its capacity to keep up with modern equipment, but even though titanium drivers have a tendency to gobble it up, its rolling land creates a quirkiness that is timeless.
. . .
Fairway bunkering along the right side of the fourth hole. On the narrow fairway’s opposite side, a slope stands ready to nudge wayward drives back to happier ground — a common feature at Highland Park.
Highland Park's only major renovation work occurred in 1998, when Bob Cupp completely reworked the layout (although old aerial photos suggest that the original playing corridors remain largely intact). By that time, at more than 90 years old, Highland Park had — as one contemporary description put it — “fallen into ruin.”
Not anymore. On this early summer day, the course played firm, but the turf was in tremendous shape. There is no “lovably shaggy” quality to Highland Park; it’s legitimately in great condition. The course is surrounded on all sounds by downtown Birmingham; it stretches across every inch of the land it occupies, and there is nowhere else to grow. Even from the tips, Highland Park measures just 5,801 yards. But this doesn’t hold the course back: the holes are routed across the hilly land so cleverly that the course’s shortness is a virtue, with a handful of drivable par-4s and lots of fun downhill shots.
The right side of the green on the par-5 eighth hole is gettable. The left side, not so much.
The first hole offers both: at 307 yards from an elevated tee, the green is absolutely reachable — the first of two (perhaps three, for the truly freakish) drivable holes. I drove my tee shot into the greenside fringe, and after chipping close, I tapped in for a rare (for me) opening birdie. Even after five holes, I was just 2-over on the round.
But in golf, as at Christmas, big things can come in small packages. The 395-yard, par-4 sixth hole runs downhill to a fairway with a convenient left-to-right slope on the lefthand side — a common feature at Highland Park that compensates for its narrow fairways by kicking slight misses back onto the short grass. Despite the help, I made triple — then did the same thing on No. 7. For one more day, at least, the course record was safe.
The approach to the 10th green.
Despite the hidden potential for putting up big numbers quickly, the front nine is never boring — but the back nine is at least as good. The 10th’s tee shot is reminiscent of the downhill shot at the first, but this time with a wider fairway and (thanks to a water hazard fronting the green) no chance of getting on in one. The 12th is a long par-5 (541 yards) with a fairway so narrow that the right-to-left slope on the righthand side isn’t just a generosity, it’s the ideal play.
But the best hole on the course is less generous. The 14th measures just 273 yards, but it runs straight uphill with a gentle left-to-right curve in the fairway leading to a large greenside bunker built into the hill’s final few yards. For big hitters, the green probably is drivable with a perfectly placed fade — but finding the bunker would be a severe toll for missing. Laying up off the tee with a short iron is an option, but the approach shot will be fully blind; something short of the bunker is an option too, but it introduces an awkward yardage to a barely visible flag. Like all great par-4s, it seems gettable at first glance — but the more you think about the options it presents, the more you realize that none of them is ideal.
The downhill, drivable 15th hole.
Highland Park finishes strong with one last dramatic, downhill tee shot before climbing back uphill to the clubhouse. There’s a little of Bethpage Black’s finishing hole wrapped up in Highland Park’s No. 18. There’s also my Sanderson Farms Championship hat somewhere on the left side of the fairway (it’s a long story).
I limped in — literally, nearly. Despite being just 5,800 yards, Highland Park’s hilly terrain is a beast of a walk.
. . .
I’ve been coming to Birmingham regularly for nearly 10 years, and public golf here has always perplexed me: the area has a ton of solid public golf options, but none that has ever bowled me over enough to be an obvious go-to. Highland Park has changed that. I’ve played here twice now — once with hickory clubs, and once with modern equipment. The different styles of play between those two rounds reveal how every inch of Highland Park has purpose.
It took decades, including years of social tumult — but now, at least, Highland Park is a course that Birmingham can be proud of.