A Well Kept Secret,
Perhaps Not For Long
The Fields Golf Club
LaGrange, Ga.
Date: June 2, 2019
Greens fee: $35.25 (walking 18)
“Where is this place, again?” asked my wife, not for the first time.
It wasn’t her fault. But describing the precise location of the middle of nowhere is no easy task. Somewhere between Montgomery and Atlanta — or between Auburn, Ala., and Newnan, Ga., depending on how well you know Interstate 85 — lies tiny LaGrange, Ga., home of the Fields Golf Club.
In an era where the Internet has ruined every secret course that golfers once kept, the Fields remains — somehow — a true hidden gem. Neither Golf Magazine nor Golf Digest lists the Fields among Georgia’s best. The course’s mostly inactive Twitter amount has 16 followers. Sixteen. Somehow, no one seems to know about this place.
The green complex at the end of the long par-4 11th hole feels lush and still, in stark contrast to some of the Field’s wilder, more windswept holes — but in perfect complement to the pond and pines in its surrounds.
The course’s remote location only adds to the feeling of isolation. The Fields is only a little more than an hour’s drive from Atlanta, but the trip from Birmingham — my staging point — is a full two-and-a-half hours, along tiny, winding roads, up and down the foothills of the Georgia Piedmont. Between the long drive and the time change, I left Birmingham at 4:30 a.m.
It was worth it.
The Fields — and that is the perfect name for this course, which looks like an enormous clearing across rolling pastureland — looks more discovered than created. The swales of its land move like waves, some small and some enormous. But not one inch looks anything less than perfectly natural, touched only as much as a playable surface required.
That sense of discovery penetrates this place. The holes rarely reveal their full selves from the tee box; more often, the course shows the player only enough to tell the line that the next shot should take. But the landing areas for those shots are often blind, as is the target for the ensuing shot. Thus the course reveals itself little by little, being discovered shot by shot.
. . .
If the mark of great golf course architecture is presenting choices that make players uncomfortable, then No. 1 at the Fields is a great hole. The view from the first tee box is a paradox: a wide, comfortable corridor, with no indication as to what awaits the tee shot through that corridor. The large swale that collects drives then blinds players for their approach to the green. But once the player emerges from the swale, the sight awaiting them is stunning: a large, immaculately contoured green complex, with boldly flowing scalloped edges.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, shocked, and not for the last time. This is the genius of the Fields’ routing: never letting on what awaits until the player needs to know — and even then, sharing only as much as the player truly needs. This style of presentation requires the player’s faith that the course will not abuse his trust. But this course never lets you down.
At the par-4 second hole, a hard-left dogleg invites a tee shot that challenges the large fairway bunker on the inside of the bend. If the drive clears the sand, then less than 100 yards remains to the green. Again at No. 3, a successful tee shot leaves less than a full shot to the putting surface. A flip wedge would do the trick either time, but the contours surrounding these greens beg for running shots.
The intimate par-3 fourth at the Fields, nestled on all sides by pines and abutting one of the few water hazards on the course.
The fourth is a par-3 surrounded completely by trees, with the green tucked dangerously but naturally close to a small forest pond, every element of it in perfect proportion to its complements. “Holy shit!” I muttered again — again, not for the last time.
The first four holes wind toward and through the woods on the property’s edge, and when the course emerges into the massively scaled clearing after the fifth tee shot (“Holy shit!!” I said, louder this time), the Fields’ central brilliance makes itself clear: it’s not just a collection of individually great holes, it’s an absolutely triumphant routing. The remainder of the front nine traipses across the brawniest, most wind-exposed swath of the old cotton field, before returning to the trees for the first half of the back nine.
Finally, over the course’s final four holes, the routing emerges into the open again for a frantic sprint through the property’s most dramatic rises and falls. On the 538-yard, par-5 17th, an uphill drive framed by a tricky fairway bunker leads to a difficult choice: a long downhill approach to a narrow green, or a layup into a collection area guarded by a rock wall reminiscent of North Berwick. Finally, at the long par-4 18th, the fairway runs downhill then sharply back up and leftward, with Carnoustie-style spectacle bunkers directly in line with the green: challenge the bunkers for a chance at par, or bail out right and accept a long, uphill approach shot. The finish atop one of the course’s highest hills offers one of the Fields’ rare views of the full scale of the course below — a breathtaking exclamation point at the end of remarkable jaunt.
. . .
I am not in the habit of calling up architects after playing their courses; above all else, it feels a little too close to The Chris Farley Show (“Remember that long, uphill par-3 on the front? That was cool.”). But sometimes dinner demands that the chef’s hand be shaken. So I e-mailed the Fields’ designer (and now, coincidentally, also its owner) Mike Young and set up a time to talk.
The rock wall sitting beneath the 17th green at the Fields.
When the Fields opened in 1989, it did not look like other golf courses. Remember, this was nearly a decade pre-Sand Hills. But Young took to minimalism naturally, before it was fashionable — and more than that, the earth-moving ethos that guided his peers’ designs in those days offended Young’s sensibilities. “These guys were very — I guess ‘angry’ would be the right word: ‘Well, that guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s not moving the dirt, and he’s not building his greens up in the air, and that’s not the way we do it,’” Young recalled. “And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘What am I missing? Because these guys are full of shit on some of this stuff.’ It’s one reason I’m not in this ASGCA thing, because it just pissed them off that I was getting jobs when they thought I didn’t know what I was doing. And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Guys, we’re not talking about rocket science.’”
Young’s view that less is more, and that golf holes are better discovered than created, eventually earned widespread vindication. The concept behind the Fields — an old cotton field cleared for golf — is almost exactly the plan behind Mossy Oak Golf Club, a Gil Hanse design that opened in 2016. Mossy Oak recently was dubbed the 63rd-best public golf course in America; the Fields has 16 Twitter followers.
For now. “What I want to do is convey what golf can be,” Young said, “and we’re just getting ready to start doing that.”
. . .
Somehow, the oft-unkempt character of the Fields’ bunkering feels just right.
There is a balance to this place that is hard to strike but impressive to behold. On the one hand, the Fields is in tremendous condition. On this day in early June, it played as firm as Astroturf; drives bounded forward 30 or 40 extra yards — sometimes even when I wished they wouldn’t. On the other hand, there is a feeling to this place that is wild and untamed; the fairway grasses are a disuniform collection of short, browned-out Bermuda and some native strains, as if the grasses that filled these fields for ages were merely mown down into a playable surface. Even the sand traps are allowed their imperfections: they are raked roughly, and an occasional weed shoots up, just like you’d expect to see in a natural setting. On most courses, dried grass and thistle sprouts in a bunker might cause an uprising; but at the Fields, it feels just right.
The tremendous 18 hole’s spectacle bunkers, with the long, uphill shot to the green behind them.
The course’s greens capture both spirits: they are pure and consistent, but quick and rollicking. There are not many straight putts at this place, but they would be disappointing if there were.
But for a place that leaves no disappointment, the question remains: how? How can a golf course this good, and this close to a major city, remain a secret? Young said that’s intentional — for the moment.
“We’ve had it now for six years, and I’ve intentionally not advertised because I didn’t want to start until — I mean, we’re just getting the grasses the way we want them,” Young said. “It took us three years to get all the weeds out of the golden grasses that you saw out there.”
Young has a couple of projects in mind for the next 18 months: some maintenance on the bunkers, and introducing more drought-tolerant fairway grasses. After that, he plans to start marketing the Fields more openly. He’s already envisioning hickory golf events catered with barbecue and craft beer — “to get all the millennials over,” he said.
Point being: this place that bleeds a sense of discovery is on the verge of being discovered. It won’t be the middle of nowhere for long.