It is Easy to Forget
What You Do Not See
Roebuck Golf Course
Birmingham, Ala.
Greens fee: $37 to ride 18
Date: September 5, 2020
Of all the things to forget, I’d forgotten my golf shoes.
I keep them next to the front door for a reason: so I can’t leave without seeing them. And nevertheless, there they remained — three and a half hours west of here, in Jackson, with a 25-minute drive from Birmingham’s suburbs to Roebuck Golf Course in front of me. I wondered whether I might find a Dick’s Sporting Goods on the way.
But the glimmering illusions of Hoover and Mountain Brook, two of Birmingham’s largest suburbs, slowly gave way. In recent years, Birmingham has revitalized the southern half of its downtown, which is home to award-winning restaurants and a popular minor league baseball stadium (the Birmingham Barons boast the Southern League’s highest home attendance rate). North of Interstate 59, though, the morning’s long shadows fall on a different picture. The sleek, glassy high-rises from the southern part of town are nowhere to be found here, near the airport; the buildings are old and tired. Coke plants — relics of Birmingham’s legacy as the South’s preeminent steel town — have played hell with locals’ health. Past the airport, downtown recedes, but the decay doesn’t. Northeast Birmingham feels left behind. Payday loan stores flank both sides of the neighborhood’s main drag; dirty gas stations and a Krispy Kreme fill in the gaps. There is no Dick’s Sporting Goods here.
Like other southern metropolises, Birmingham has grappled with white flight for decades. But today, the exodus is multiracial. More than a quarter of Hoover’s residents are now Black and brown. In 2000, nearly 243,000 people lived in Birmingham, and 178,000 of them were Black; just two decades later, though, Birmingham’s population is closer to 209,000, and about 148,000 are Black. In just 20 years, then, one out of every seven residents has left Birmingham — and most of them Black. “[S]ome fear,” the Birmingham News wrote in 2011, “that as middle-class blacks move into suburbs like Calera and Hoover and Hueytown, often for better schools, left behind is an underclass trapped by intense poverty.”
It is easy to forget what you do not see.
. . .
“Hey, do you know where the bathroom is here?” a middle-aged white man asked as I carried my bag from the parking lot to the pro shop.
“I don’t know where anything is here,” I said. Apparently I wasn’t the only one making my first visit to Roebuck. But its first impression is the best that any municipal course can offer: a total lack of pretension. Roebuck takes no tee times, so it’s first come, first served. After handing over my $37, the cashier thanked me, gestured toward the first tee, and told me I could get in line whenever I was ready. “You mean, like, literally get in line?” I asked. Yep, she said. I threw my bag on a cart, drove just behind the first tee behind two or three other groups, and rolled a few putts on the practice green while I waited my turn. Roebuck was already busy, but a couple of hours later, it was packed. Arriving early had been crucial.
From the practice green, on a hilltop overlooking most of the front nine, Roebuck offers its second impression: not as rambunctiously hilly as its sister municipal course, Highland Park, but playful still. At 6,324 yards (5,974 yards from the white tees), Roebuck is a longer course than Highland Park (which stretches just over 5,800 yards), but still reflective of the era in which both were built. Roebuck opened in 1914, just 11 years after Highland Park (which, at the time, was the Country Club of Birmingham), and its small greens still rely more on tilt than contouring, with minimal bunkering.
And like Highland Park, Roebuck’s routing thoughtfully uses landforms as many ways as possible. For example, the downhill tee shot at the par-4 first hole (387 yards from the back tees, 365 yards from the whites) is reminiscent of Highland Park’s opener, albeit not as short; the third hole (347 yards from the blue tees, 322 yards from the whites) is a short par-4 doglegging sharply right back up the same hill; and the long par-5 fourth (566 yards from the blue tees, 559 yards from the whites) tees off downhill again.
But the heart of the front nine — and the best stretch on the course — is the series of three “road holes” beginning at No. 5: two short par-4s, and a short par-3, all running along Roebuck’s fenceline on Parkway East. A big, sweeping draw into the fifth fairway leaves a half-wedge into a green nestled into a hillside, and the tee shot on No. 6 is totally blind — and except for the pin flag, so is the wedge into the par-3 seventh’s green.
The views of the surrounding neighborhood aren’t blind, though. Old brick cottage homes, some with bars on windows and doors, stare back at the golf course as they have for a hundred years. There is an irony to the design: that Roebuck’s most immersive stretch is also the place that demands you not forget where you are.
Although Roebuck’s back nine shares many of the front nine’s core design characteristics — small tilted greens, and few bunkers — the fact that it opened 10 years after the front nine is apparent: in look and feel, it is distinct. Much of the back nine plays throughout the property’s lowest lying area, with less quirky zigzagging and more of a traditional parkland feel; its uncommon par 34 also is worlds apart from the equally uncommon par-37 front.
Not all the elements of Roebuck’s setup are uncommon, though. The small greens are surrounded by rough; and although it’s not oppressively thick, it prevents run-up shots. That’s never fun, but it’s particularly unfortunate at Roebuck, whose quirky yardages frequently lead to awkward distances into greens. Ideally, that should leave players mulling over shots they rarely practice. Instead, the only option is through the air, so the player grabs the same wedge and hits the same half-shot over and over. I rarely practice pitching out of the rough, but midway through the front nine, I’d had so much practice that I got up and down three holes in a row with a wedge in my hand — a rarity for me, to put it lightly.
And there’s no reason Roebuck shouldn’t allow for run-up shots. On this early September morning, the course was firm, and conditioning was well above what $37 usually buys. Roebuck is a pleasant surprise; it should allow for more of the pleasant surprises that trundle onto its greens, too.
. . .
It is easy to forget what you do not see. And despite all the time I’ve spent in Birmingham, I’d never seen the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
On a Sunday morning in September 1963, Klansmen dynamited the predominantly Black church and murdered four little girls inside; if the era saw a more horrible crime against humanity, then I’ve never heard of it. The church was rebuilt, and it reopened the next summer. But nearly 40 years came and went before all the bombers were brought to justice.
Today, the church is the cornerstone of the Birmingham Civil Rights District, 10 minutes southwest of the golf course. Across the street sits a museum examining the city’s contributions to the Civil Rights Movement, and catty-corner from the church is Kelly Ingram Park, with statues of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the four girls. Together, they comprise a plaza of sorts; white and Black, young and old, mill about to pay their respects. It’s quiet — not intimidating, but powerful. There is a feeling here of renewal, of hope. If this small piece of the world can heal, then any can.
So perhaps there’s hope for Roebuck and northeast Birmingham, too. In April, the first full month of America’s battle with the coronavirus pandemic, rounds played at Roebuck were up 71 percent from a month earlier. And with Highland Park’s weekend greens fees above $60 after a recent renovation, Roebuck’s price tag is more in line with what golf’s newcomers and prodigal sons are likely to be comfortable forking over.
It is easy to forget what you do not see. Roebuck is proof enough of this neighborhood’s potential. All the golf course — and the neighborhood — need are for more people to come see.
. . .
You might also enjoy reading…