Brazen Head Would Be
the Final Link in a
Mississippi Golf Trail
Mike Keiser is the most successful developer in golf history for a reason: he understands critical mass.
Mossy Oak Golf Club in West Point, Miss.
Keiser — whose portfolio includes Bandon Dunes, Sand Valley, and Cabot Links, three of North America’s most longed-for golf destinations — has famously said that “one course is a curiosity, but two is a destination.” In other words, a great golf course is all well and good — but to turn mere chatter into visitors, a place needs multiple golf courses close to one another.
That doesn’t have to take the form of a golf resort, of course. In several southern states, that idea has taken shape as a “golf trail” — a collection of courses stretching across a single region, one within easy driving distance of the next. The most famous example is Alabama’s publicly funded Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, but the concept isn’t unique to Alabama. In Louisiana, there’s the Audubon Golf Trail; nine state parks comprise the Tennessee Golf Trail; Arkansas has one, and golf-overloaded Florida has carved out a unique Historic Golf Trail.
And then there’s Mississippi.
The best part about a Mississippi golf trail is that its routing looks like the silhouette of an old man looking down his nose at Alabama.
Mississippi might be America’s low-key best public golf destination. Golfweek’s most recent Top 100 Courses You Can Play rankings include three Mississippi courses; that’s as many as Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee combined. Mississippi’s collection is diverse: Mossy Oak in northeast Mississippi is rollicking and elemental, while coastal Fallen Oak is meticulously maintained and demanding. And the portfolio is scattered across the state; nearly every region enjoys great public golf that would support a de facto golf trail.
The one area lacking great public golf, though, is the one that effectively prevents a golf trail from existing: Mississippi’s capital city, Jackson.
Dancing Rabbit Golf Club’s Oaks course in Philadelphia, Miss.
Jackson is a wasteland of public golf options: state-owned LeFleur’s Bluff shut its doors in February, and the Refuge in suburban Flowood has been closed for a perpetual renovation since mid-2017. The City of Jackson owns two lovable municipal courses, but no one seriously considers them destinations. Jackson’s metro area includes a handful of high-quality options, but all of them are private.
That dearth of public golf options, smack-dab in the middle of the state, has effectively foreclosed Mississippi as an option for any golf travelers looking to spend a week driving from stop to stop. A golf trail need not be official to be workable, but Jackson has stood in the way of even a de facto trail.
Brazen Head, though, could change that.
The budding Rob Collins and Tad King project at the former Colonial Country Club would immediately become Jackson’s go-to public golf option and only must-see destination. It would be worth doing if only to bring quality public golf to a major city that lacks any.
But establishing Jackson as a hub for great public golf would unite the northern and southern halves of the state and effectively create a golf trail with a diversity and quality unmatched anywhere in America:
Grand Bear Golf Club in Saucier, Miss.
On the Coast, options run the spectrum from high-end, resort-level courses like Fallen Oak and the Preserve to scruffy, quirky Great Southern and everything in between.
In Hattiesburg, Timberton and Pine Creek are both fun and accessible, but nevertheless are very different offerings.
In Jackson, Brazen Head would be the trail’s lynchpin; if the Refuge ever reopens, it also would be a worthwhile addition.
In Philadelphia, Dancing Rabbit’s 36-hole facility (Azaleas and Oaks) would merit an overnight stay.
In West Point, Mossy Oak and Old Waverly — arguably Mississippi’s two best golf courses — would do the same.
In Tupelo, another nine-hole King Collins project would break up the final leg of the trail.
The DeSoto County area offers several options for a trailhead, from highly regarded Mallard Pointe to Tunica National.
That’s a full week’s worth of golf, with each trail site no more than about 90 minutes from the next.
And the diversity of that portfolio is what would set Mississippi’s collection apart from the likes of Alabama: travelers to Mississippi could pick and choose their trips’ courses based on budget needs or architecture tastes. That’s a huge contrast from the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, which gets repetitive quickly — both in terms of style and cost (depending on the time of year, a seven-day trip with rounds at each Mississippi trail site would cost well under $400 in greens fees). The trail would offer the golf traveler’s equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure story: whatever one’s preferred style of play or level of cost, the trail could offer it.
The potential upside to all these courses is obvious. That’s only when Brazen Head gets off the ground, though.
Not for the first time, then, the rest of Mississippi’s fate is tied up in Jackson’s more than it might think.
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