Sylacauga Had a Farm
See My Three-Putt Go
Farmlinks Golf Club
Sylacauga, Ala.
Date: March 2, 2019
Greens fee: $61 (twilight)
Winter is the Deep South’s rainy season. And now, it’s an El Niño year. In the South, that means rain — on top of the rain we usually get during winter. Birmingham, for example, typically gets about 10 inches of rain by this time of year. So far in 2019, though, Birmingham is up past 14 inches.
For golfers, that means playing in soggy conditions or not playing at all. I’ll take wet golf over no golf.
That choice is even easier when the options include Farmlinks Golf Club, my favorite public track in Alabama. The golf course has been open since 2004, but it’s now the centerpiece of a rustic resort that oddly fits into rural Sylacauga. Set on the southern edge of the Piedmont, the terrain is beautiful and rolling — dramatically, at times. It’s meticulously maintained without feeling extravagant. And if you’re flexible on when you play, the rates get quite reasonable.
Punched greens: a bad putter’s best excuse.
Farmlinks isn’t a difficult course, but it’s not mindless either. Fairways are wide, and the greens are big. But within those large spaces, it’s easy to get out of position. And even if an offline tee shot holds the fairway, a longer approach invariably brings the course’s deep greenside bunkers into play. Farmlinks asks you questions without beating you up when you screw up the answers.
Perhaps the course’s only downside is that it’s unwalkable. The greens and tees are spread out too far, and in some spots, the elevation changes are too severe to making walking practical. But even when locomotion is cart path only, and even when the greens are freshly punched (as they were this day), Farmlinks is still too much fun to miss. When the greens fees are down, it’s truly a can’t-miss.
. . .
Farmlinks’ top-notch practice facility demands an arrival long before your tee time.
Disdain for driving ranges might be more in fashion, but I’m a sucker for them. Two small kids and a law practice rarely afford enough time for 18 holes, so I spend a lot more time practicing than playing (not that it shows). A driving range is usually the only chance that a weekend brings to put club face on ball. So even when I’m playing, a nice practice range finds a warm place in my heart.
Perhaps that explains why Farmlinks figures especially highly among my favorites. Its practice facility (“driving range” really doesn’t do it justice) is maybe the best I’ve ever seen. There’s a spacious area for full shots, with yardages to various targets updated daily. There are also large, separate putting and chipping greens, and a practice bunker to boot. And everything is so well spread out that you never feel cramped, even when other golfers are around.
. . .
My round started on the 10th hole, presumably for maintenance reasons (Sylacauga had gotten more rain early that morning, and I assume the front nine needed more attention than the grounds crew could give it before the first groups took off). That was fine, though. The 18th is a better finishing hole than the ninth, but other than that, the front nine is the better of the two sides, so I didn’t mind saving it for last.
The juxtaposition is especially appropriate because I arrived quickly at the 11th hole, which is a microcosm of the whole course. It’s a long-ish but not gargantuan par 4 (386 yards from the Whitetail tees) with a fairway that bulges wide toward the right, giving the player as much room for error as he could want. But the farther right the tee shot wanders, the longer the remaining journey toward the green. Playing toward the left side of the fairway makes the green reachable with a short iron, but it brings a large fairway bunker into play. In between the two extremes lies plenty of fairway, but the farther the tee shot errs toward safety, the more the approach shot’s difficulty increases. This is Farmlinks’ strategic ethos: lots of lines to choose from, all with obvious risks and benefits.
The view from the fifth tee at Farmlinks. I can’t say whether there’s a better par 3 in Alabama — but if there is, then I haven’t found it yet.
Farmlinks’ greatest strength is its collection of mostly stunning par 3 holes. The 15th is a flattish, ho-hum one-shotter, but aside from that, the short holes all require breathtaking downhill shots. The 17th plays across 100 yards of water to a wide green, where missing short is not an option.
The fifth hole delivers Farmlinks’ signature view, with a 170-foot drop framed by a stunning panorama of the woodlands below. The eighth’s elevation change isn’t quite so dramatic, but it’s close; it’s also the longest par 3 on the course (220 yards from the Whitetail tees), although it plays a good three clubs shorter.
The introduction via the back nine also reminded me of the importance of wedge play at Farmlinks. As with much of the rest of the course, the eighth green is surrounded by short grass. In firm conditions, that opens up a range of options for getting up and down: long putts, bump and runs, or high pitches are all fair game. But after my tee shot at No. 8 missed to the right, the course was so badly saturated that I spent several minutes searching for my ball before finding it plugged a good inch into the turf. That’s no one’s fault, but it underscores the limits that soggy conditions place on short game: a 60-degree wedge off a swamp really isn’t an option, nor is putting. Under the circumstances, my solution was to bring out a club with a little less loft than I’d usually choose (I went with my 49-degree approach wedge) and play a low chip onto the green. I reasoned that if I caught it fat in the mud, the ball still had a better chance of finding the putting surface coming off a 49-degree wedge than a 60-degree one. For the most part, it worked.
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The sixth green at Farmlinks. Representative of the rest of the course, the green is large, but so is its companion bunkering.
Resort courses are generally a strange taste on my golfing palate: the course and amenities are frequently so posh that they’re discomforting. At some point, the setting starts to feel unnatural; it’s so nice that it’s not nice anymore. But Farmlinks strikes the balance: it’s a nice, fun golf course that doesn’t make you feel out of place. It challenges you, but without penalizing you too badly for mistakes. It’s not an architectural masterwork (the middle of the back nine is a bit forgettable), but neither is it a mindless slog. You probably wouldn’t want to spend a week here, but for a two- or three-day weekend with some buddies, you could do much worse — especially now that the resort’s lodging and dining options have flowered.
If you can only play once, then give Farmlinks a chance to dry out before you go. But it’s close enough to Birmingham that it deserves a lot more than one visit.