Not a Ross,
But Still a Classic
Great Southern Golf Club
Gulfport, Miss.
Date: March 6, 2019
Greens fee: $46
“Playing Great Southern today,” I texted a friend from a gas station just outside Hattiesburg.
“Oh is that the old terrible course right off 90?” he asked.
I didn’t dignify the question with a response. But my expectations for Great Southern Golf Club in Gulfport — a pitching wedge across Highway 90 from the Gulf of Mexico — were appropriately low. I knew from reputation that Great Southern’s golden days were long gone. I knew from research that its greatest remaining claim to fame — that Donald Ross designed its golf course — was not true. But if I was going to bury that myth publicly (“Chasing Donald Ross”), then I thought I owed it to the course to lay eyes on it.
I wasn’t expecting to find one of my favorite golf courses on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but I did.
To be clear, the credit for that distinction belongs at least as much with Great Southern’s neighbors as with Great Southern itself. The Mississippi Gulf Coast’s golf scene reflects the casino boom of the past 30 years: its courses are mostly new, mostly soulless and out of place. Great Southern is none of those things. It feels like it’s been there for over 100 years because it has. At least five of its holes feature views of the Gulf of Mexico, but without feeling gaudy. It is short and surrounded on nearly all sides by residential development, but without feeling cramped. It is quirky but not gimmicky; it is simple but not boring.
Great Southern’s first 109 years have brought enough headwinds to wonder whether it still will be around a century from now. But if its value as a golf course has any part in that calculus, then it will be here long after its upstart neighbors are gone.
. . .
As I walked to the small practice area to putt a few balls before the round, I laughed: even the practice green is a square.
Part of Great Southern’s reputation here in Mississippi is “that course with the square greens,” but expecting them makes them no less abrupt. There is nothing subtle about them: the greens’ edges are indeed squared-off — and by “square,” I mean 90-degree angles, sharp and perfect enough to make your high school geometry teacher proud. Today, the club points to them as evidence of Ross’ involvement; architect Brian Curley says that he added them during a 1990s renovation as a nod to the course’s historical roots. I’ve played only two Ross courses (Pinehurst No. 2, and George Wright Golf Course in Boston), but based on those rounds alone, there’s nothing about these greens that suggests Ross’ involvement. They are almost all flat — tilted at times, so that putts do not roll dead straight — but devoid of Ross’ signature contours. Like the rest of the course, they’re still fun; they’re just not Ross.
Surrounded to the south by the Gulf, to the north by railroad tracks, and to the east and west by housing, the front nine lacks any more room to breathe. And the land is, almost without exception, dead flat. But the layout makes the most of the property’s limited yardage by steering the holes in different directions; on the front, no two consecutive holes play in the same direction (on the back it happens just once), so the wind coming off the Gulf requires a different adjustment on every hole.
. . .
A yardage marker on the teeing ground of Great Southern’s long, par-4 second hole.
Before the golf course’s construction in 1909, this land was pine forest and swamp; newspaper accounts from that era attest to the difficulty that workers endured to clear the land. Even as late as the 1960s, newspapers describe the course as “tree-lined.” It’s not clear to me when that changed (although I suspect that Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 had some involvement), but today, the course plays wide open. The preferred line off the tee is almost always straightaway, but depending on what the wind has to say about it, that’s easier said than done.
The fourth green, a stone’s throw from the Gulf of Mexico.
The layout also succeeds in hiding the neighboring residential development as much as possible. Not until the eighth tee does housing jump out at you, with a few small back yards separated from the eighth tee by a chain-length fence. In one of those yards, a covey of yard signs — “Trump 2020,” “Drain the Swamp” — stared through the fencing, as if golfers on a Mississippi golf course (of all places) generally need persuasion toward the political spectrum’s right wing. As I snapped a photo, the woman on the back porch who I hadn’t even seen spoke up: “You can get those on the Internet, you know,” she said. Startled, I answered, “Oh, really?” She smiled and pulled her shoulders back proudly: “Amazon dot com,” she said, as though sharing a secret. I thanked her for the name of the world’s largest retailer, quickly pegged my tee ball, and hit the shot with no practice swing.
What’s left of the swampy woodlands bordering the back nine offer a glimpse into the landscape that took months to clear during Great Southern’s construction in 1909.
Most of Great Southern’s back nine literally comes from the other side of the tracks: reaching the ninth tee requires a jump across a railroad that bisects the two sides, and not until the 18th hole does the routing return to the Gulf. Trees are more common on this side, but ironically, the routing loosens up a little. The ninth is a comfortable par 4 (341 yards from the back tees) whose fairway curves gently right and then finishes the turn sharply; playing to the left side offers a better angle into the green, but driving through the fairway on that side is a real risk. And the 10th might be the best hole on the course: a short par 3 (155 yards from the back), whose green is framed on two sides by the old pine forest that covered this land before its development. The putting surface itself is the only one on the course with legitimate movement: a prevalent swale running through the right half that pulls putts toward the pines, as if a shaper began building a biarritz before getting cold feet. Architect Brian Curley, who renovated Great Southern in the 1990s, told me that he pitched a quirky redesign inspired by Seth Raynor’s Fox Chapel Golf Club, but Great Southern ultimately whittled the plan down to something far more conservative. The 10th green is a microcosm of the whole course: tremendous potential, but a long way from being reached.
. . .
Turning from the 11th to the 12th (par 4s running alongside one another in the farthest corner of the property), Great Southern feels its most remote. The corridors are intimate; it is easy to feel alone here, even with homes so close by. Byron Nelson and Sam Snead played a 19-hole Monday playoff here in 1945. Nineteen holes! The gallery would have been right on top of them back here, close enough to hear them talk on the back nine of a sensational duel. It must have been incredible. It’s not anymore. But it could be.
The 18th tee box brings you back across the railroad tracks for a long par 4, a row of homes to avoid on the right, and a final view of the Gulf. An old live oak lies alongside the left side of the fairway here, its roots still somehow reaching into the soil, holding on for its life.
A scraggly old live oak on the back half of the property welcomes players to Great Southern’s ninth hole and bids them adieu as they leave the 17th.
A top 100 course named Fallen Oak is a half-hour’s drive away, but this fallen oak might as well be Great Southern’s logo. Both it and Great Southern are down as down can be; their best days are probably gone forever. But there is still life here, both in the tree and the course. Maybe neither will ever make it all the way back up, but then again, neither needs to soar in order to function, either.
In 2018, Great Southern was in negotiations with lenders out of Florida for a much-needed cash infusion. The results of those negotiations have never been made public. But if Great Southern’s ship ever comes in, then it needs to heed Curley’s advice and go all-in on quirkiness. Its golden days are gone. It is never going to compete with the Fallen Oaks of the region. But it doesn’t have to. It can be something different, wonderful, and attractive to visitors of all skill sets. Heck, it already is. It just needs enough work for its presentation to catch up with its potential.