By Jeff Kissel
Yankee. The word can have a wide variety of meanings. Some may associate it with a cheesy patriotic tune, others may think of men wearing pinstripes running around a baseball diamond, but to certain people in the South it can be representative of something evil – a Northern interloper who looks down on their cultural heritage, however morally decrepit it may be. The Civil War was fought over 150 years ago, but old habits can die hard – particularly in Mississippi, the heart of the Deep South. Whether besieging the city of Vicksburg or simply wintering near the lovely beaches of the Gulf Coast as my family and I did, Yankees are most definitely seen as outsiders in the Magnolia State.
I’m not sure being from Missouri qualifies one to be a Yankee in the eyes of a Southerner. After all, my fair state did formally secede from the Union during the war. That said, Missouri politics back then were dominated by those of St. Louis – the eighth-largest city in the country in 1860, chock full of anti-slavery German and Irish immigrants. The city’s influence helped our state legislature overthrow the secession-leaning governor midway through 1861 thus the “formal” secession that took place was done by a government in exile. Therefore as someone who considers himself a St. Louisan before a Missourian, I will accept my role as a Northern aggressor.
The final destination at Hattiesburg Country Club: the 18th green.
Unlike my forebears, however, I did not choose to march south seeking to reconquer a rogue state – it was simply for warmth. I’ve never been a fan of winter for obvious golf-related reasons, but during a pandemic where I’m homebound, I want no part of the cold. In the Midwest, February is truly the worst month; the joy of the winter holidays and the promise of the early new year are long gone, and the cold grips the land. Even the most stifling places in summer – the river valleys – typically fall under a deep freeze at some point before the calendar turns to March. Golf can be only played with dedication, and layers, on the days when courses are open. Family activities are typically confined to indoor spaces – and with an energetic toddler, as well as an infant, in our household, that just wouldn’t do during the Winter of COVID. With my work temporarily transitioned to full-time remote status, and two kids not yet in school, we needed – and thankfully had an excellent opportunity – to get out of Dodge.
Why Mississippi, you might ask? Well, where else could we go that found such a precise balance between warm enough, close enough, and reasonably priced enough for an extended stay? The Gulf Coast checked all those boxes, and for a family of explorers it offered a bonus: it was a place none of us had ever been. After an extensive search on various vacation rental sites, we settled on a nice little house a couple of blocks from the beach in Gulfport. As we learned, planning for a five-week trip, especially one during which remote work is being done, is quite different than doing so for a one- or two-week trip. It took a particularly thorough bit of inventory management to determine which things we would truly need versus the ones we could do without. As we moved further into January and the St. Louis weather took a turn, our anticipation grew. So when the day came, we excitedly packed very tightly into our midsize SUV, and like noted St. Louis area homesteader Ulysses Grant in 1862, headed south.
During the five weeks we were in Mississippi, I played, by my meager employed father-of-two-young-children standards, a lot of golf. Wanting to experience a fair bit of variety, I chose not to play any course more than once; however, in some ways I felt as though I did see a few repeats. There was a definite sameness about many of the middle-tier courses nearest the coast as the terrain is not particularly varied; it all came down to interesting routing, greens, and surrounds to distinguish one layout from another. Some courses achieved those noble goals, while others did not. The Preserve had the best set of greens, Shell Landing was the prettiest, Grand Bear was the hilliest and featured a cool riverside hole or two, and The Oaks was the one on which I probably shouldn’t have played the extremely flat back nine the day after a heavy rain. Three courses in particular stood out the most on the trip, however, and thus those three will get the most focus here.
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Fallen Oak
The heavily guarded 16th green at Fallen Oak Golf Club in Saucier, Miss.
After spending a few days settling into our new surroundings, the golf itch came quickly thanks to temperatures regularly hitting the upper 60s. So for the first round of my trip, I opted for established, high-end quality. The majority of lists of the best courses in Mississippi list Fallen Oak as number one, and that pedigree is apparent in the logistics and cost it took to arrange the round. As they will repeatedly inform you, Fallen Oak is reserved as an exclusive amenity for guests of the Beau Rivage casino hotel in Biloxi, the equivalent experience to MGM’s sister course in Las Vegas, Shadow Creek. Despite our accommodations elsewhere, I had to not only book a room at the casino, but also drive over and check into the hotel to avoid my tee time potentially being canceled as the reservations agent hinted it might be if I didn’t show up for the room. The course itself is truly remote – a bit of a drive from the coast and the casino, yes, but only about 25-30 minutes – and feels completely isolated from the outside world. The place has an air of exclusivity in accordance with its amenity status, from its gated entrance to the sprawling, opulent, but mostly empty clubhouse. Indeed, the course’s exclusivity causes it to get relatively little play, with the busiest days peaking at around 120 players. On the day I played it, there were less than 20. Only the three shortest sets of tees were out, topping the course out at 6,500 yards and likely owing to the softer than normal off-season course conditions; while a 6,900 yard option did intrigue me, the ominously “by permission only” 7,500 yard tips did not, and I was perfectly content to move up given the condition of my game at the time.
Bunkering guards the outside of the 13th fairway at Fallen Oak.
My main gripe with Fazio courses in the past has been some rather unimaginative cookie-cutter green complexes in places, but here at Fallen Oak such a thing was not a concern. From the first, which features a horizontal spine about midway through the green, to the enormous and undulating eighteenth, the greens were delightfully creative, extraordinarily quick, and nearly impossible for a Midwesterner used to winter bentgrass. Mainly thanks to those greens and the ever-present wind whipping through the trees, the course certainly lived up to its pedigree in terms of difficulty. The property featured a surprising amount of elevation change compared to nearly every other course on the Coast, in many stretches of holes never allowing the player to get a comfortable flat lie, and featuring enough of a variety of hole lengths that every club in the bag was tested. While the outward nine felt a bit more open, a number of ponds came into play to ratchet up the difficulty, and a few large trees were used in particularly clever fashion, such as the live oaks restricting the second shot on the par five sixth. The huge ninth green featured a small protrusion in its back right portion that fell away and down-grain from the rest of the green; naturally, the pin was located back there, making a three-putt all but guaranteed.
Despite the hillier terrain and narrower hole corridors of the back nine, I enjoyed that side at Fallen Oak more than the front. After a couple of tricky short par fours at the eleventh and twelfth, my favorite three-hole stretch of the course began, taking advantage of the hilliest portion of the property. The thirteenth is a dogleg left par five that exemplifies the discomfort I cited earlier; there is no easy shot from this rumpled fairway, and many a good second shot will kick left to the point that the approach is semi-blind and difficult to judge over the front bunkers. Following this uphill brute is a wonderfully devilish short hole, the par three fourteenth, which plays slightly downhill to what I considered to be the most exciting green on the course. Surrounded by bunkers front and left and set in a lovely opening in the deep forest, the green features two small shelves in the front left and back right that are separated by a ridge; the front left portion, however, feeds off of the green at the front middle, as I learned when I landed my ball a mere six feet right of the flag and watched it roll twenty more feet down the hill to its right. Finally, the fifteenth – another par five – tumbles back downhill opposite the thirteenth and thus plays significantly shorter. This hole was as close as I came to birdie all day at Fallen Oak; despite being on the back fringe in two shots and admittedly inches from rolling over the back of the green into the woods, I three-putted for par.
I’d be remiss in discussing Fallen Oak without bringing up its namesake, the oak tree with a fallen limb that sits along the right side of the fairway on the eighteenth. It’s a beautiful and colossal old tree, kept through some form of witchcraft in the same state as it was found by the Fazio team when designing the course, and makes for a lovely photo opportunity while playing the finishing hole. As luck would have it, a ballooned drive left me on the mulch underneath the tree, but after a lucky break on the approach to avoid the pond and one of the greatest bunker shots of my life, I managed to walk away with a closing par; perhaps the fallen oak proved to be my lucky tree.
Great Southern
The opening hole at Great Southern Golf Club in Gulfport, Miss., plays inward from the Gulf toward the railroad tracks that bisect the layout.
All that casino course opulence had me itching for a round somewhere a bit more laid-back, a bit grungier, more akin to the municipal courses I often play at home. I found such a setting at Great Southern, just down the beach highway east of downtown Gulfport. The club’s history is well-documented in many places across the web, Lying Four included, so I won’t belabor any gripes against its description as a “Donald Ross inspired” course. Regardless of said description, Great Southern satisfied the need; between the extraordinarily firm sandy turf to the slightly hairy greens to the ever-present CSX railroad tracks bisecting the routing, it was an unpretentious place that was perfectly empty for a mid-afternoon weekday round where my three-year-old son could tag along riding in the cart for the first time. As for those greens: I was thankful they were a bit hairy, as quite a few had some heavy tilt to them.
The clubhouse at Great Southern sits on what presumably once was sandy scrub/dunescape, and as such the holes immediately adjacent to it have a barely noticeable bit of elevation change along a series of ridges parallel to the water. A number of holes on the front nine are routed cleverly across them, such as the par four fourth where the landing area and green both sit atop the ridges. Farther away from the water the land is flatter, so more artificial features are needed to create excitement for the player; the sixth hole has that in spades. Easily one of the most unique holes I’ve ever played, the sixth is a par four of all of 250 yards, but with two huge quirks: first, the large live oak tree right in the middle of the fairway at about 120 yards from the green, and second, the green itself, which slopes steeply from front to back with a slight kicker slope on the left side. In front lies a devastatingly deep bunker, and behind lies a shallow muddy bunker-like depression likely intended to catch balls rolling off the back of the green towards the intimidatingly close fence. It makes what seems like should be the obvious miss – long – a not-so-great proposition. I’m still not sure how best to play this hole; while I birdied it, it was the result of a lucky second chip after chunking the first one trying to be too cute.
Great Southern’s 17th green.
Aside from the final hole, the back nine at Great Southern lies on the inland side of the railroad tracks and was a bit more uninspiring than the front, with more of a swampy than dunesy feel, although it did feature the unique quirk of three consecutive par fives. I did enjoy the last two holes, particularly the seventeenth, a short par four playing to a heavily bunkered narrow and deep green with a ridge bisecting it horizontally; however, the turf wasn’t quite as firm as the front and my son was getting bored not being able to see the Gulf. Three-year-olds, like the Scots of old it turns out, prefer their golf to be within sight of the sea.
It’s hard to critique a course when it’s down on its luck; after all, none of us want to be judged at our worst. Great Southern filed for bankruptcy in mid-2019 with the goal of restructuring its large amount of post-Katrina debt, thankfully without being required to shut down, but has had to literally weather storms ever since. While rounds everywhere went up in 2020, that fall Hurricane Zeta did a number on the property, destroying trees as well as the roof of the clubhouse, as evidenced by the tarpaulin covering remaining three months later. Conditions were sorely lacking in early February; while it was the dormant season for Bermuda, the greens appeared as though they hadn’t been mowed in weeks, and the fairways and rough were indistinguishable. Still, it’s the only course quite like it anywhere near the Coast, warts and all, and it would be a great loss to the game of golf if it disappeared.
Hattiesburg
A tough pin at Hattiesburg Country Club’s 10th green.
I hadn’t planned on venturing too far from the Gulf Coast to play golf during my time in Mississippi, as the immediate area has plenty of courses worthy of my time. Sometimes, however, plans change in a nice way. Through the modern miracle that is social media, I was fortunate to be able to arrange a particularly exciting final round of my trip at the lovely Hattiesburg Country Club, located a shade more than an hour’s drive north of the Coast. My host, Mississippi-based golf course architect Nathan Crace, renovated and modernized the 1959 Press Maxwell design in 1999 and acts as a consulting architect to the club to this day. Crace’s career in golf has been an exciting one, from working as an assistant club professional all the way to starting his own design firm, Watermark Golf/Nathan Crace Design; as a kid who doodled golf courses non-stop growing up, I couldn’t help but be excited to get to spend a day discussing the trade with him. The course’s championship pedigree was exciting too; from 1968 to 1993 it hosted the precursor to the PGA Tour’s Sanderson Farms Classic, then known as the Magnolia State Classic, an alternate-field event during Masters week. Future major winners such as Nick Faldo, Fuzzy Zoeller, and Paul Azinger competed in these events; a couple of others, Craig Stadler and Payne Stewart, scored their first (albeit unofficial, as it was considered a satellite event at the time) PGA Tour victories at Hattiesburg. On the amateur side of the ledger, along with the annual Mid-South Four Ball and regional events such as the Magnolia Amateur – a prestigious invitation-only event for top collegians and mid-amateurs – the club has hosted and continues to host numerous state and local events.
One of the first things I noticed about Hattiesburg is that the golf course’s setting is sublime. Perhaps my lack of experience on private clubs in the South is showing, but Hattiesburg felt like Augusta National to me, or at least how I would expect Augusta National to feel. With yellow flags waving in the breeze, visible across the gently rolling landscape between the tall pine trees and large green complexes surrounded by mounds and white sand bunkers along with the occasional pond… never mind the dormant Bermuda turf (which was still fairly firm and playable) or the handful of houses dotting the very edges of the property, I kept hearing the roars and Dave Loggins in my head. (Perhaps the Magnolia State Classic organizers were onto something scheduling opposite the Masters.) As for the course itself, Hattiesburg isn’t going to stretch itself to challenge bombers, topping out at 6,900 yards from the tips. It’s not overly narrow thanks to the significant tree removal that’s taken place over the years – Crace cited a number in the thousands of trees taken out since he began work in the 1990s – but a handful of spots require a certain shot shape to find the optimal side of the fairway. The greens are large but their slopes are mostly subtle, intended to allow faster green speeds without becoming ridiculously difficult. Mainly, Hattiesburg manages to find just the right balance between challenge and playability, a spot on the scale where the fun factor goes way up. Crace himself put it best, “I know I’m biased, but [Hattiesburg] is a special place… I could play it every day and never tire of it.” I, on the other hand, have no such biases but I very much agree that it’s a course I would be very comfortable playing over and over.
The green at Hattiesburg Country Club’s short par-4 eighth green, with the par-3 second hole in the background.
Given the tight and fairly consistently rolling property, I was a bit concerned going in that many of Hattiesburg’s holes would blend together. That was not the case, as the layout presented one memorable hole after another. The gentle handshake opening holes lead into the third, a long dogleg-left par five that quite literally tumbles downhill to a Biarritz-style green perched to the right of a pond. Crace’s renovation lengthened the hole by about 60 yards, moving the green to its current location and replacing a stand of pine trees in the center of the fairway along with it. The third green shares the perimeter of the pond with that of the thirteenth hole; about as far from the clubhouse as one can get at Hattiesburg, this spot has the ambiance of another Amen Corner. Following a trio of excellent par fours, particularly the uphill fifth, the smallish green on the par three seventh provides another highlight. Subtly sloping off of a series of mounds and collection areas at its edges and coming to a slight peak in the center, this long and narrow green is oriented at a diagonal to the tee so that the required shot shape is left-to-right, right in my wheelhouse. (Don’t worry, right-to-left players, there is plenty for you at Hattiesburg too.)
The inward nine features slightly more terrain movement if you look hard enough, most notably on holes like the majestic uphill tenth – particularly if the flag is tucked in the small upper shelf in the rear of its green, which is indistinguishable from the long par four’s fairway below. The par five thirteenth forms the other bookend to the pond adjacent to the third green as cited above; however, the orientation of the hole is such that it plays down from a rise in the fairway to the green in front of the pond instead of to the side. Thinned wedges, beware. A quirk in Hattiesburg’s routing takes players right past the clubhouse from the sixteenth green to the seventeenth tee, but the two finishing holes are great enough to more than make up for any awkwardness. The par five seventeenth – most reachable on the course outside of the almost-a-par-four ninth – plays over a pond and a series of ridges to a large green that slopes mostly from front to back, particularly in a tiny section in the farthest back right. Finally, the picturesque eighteenth returns in the opposite direction towards the clubhouse. While the hole forces players to lay up short of the pond – a situation exacerbated by the ever-present tailwind – it offsets such sins with the best green complex on the course. Seriously, this thing is massive – well over fifty yards deep and featuring at least five feet of elevation change from front to back across three distinct tiers, it makes distance control a must.
The term “hidden gem” gets thrown around an awful lot in golf circles, to the point of overuse. If everyone is trying to find or play the hidden gem, is it really hidden after all? Regardless, I try not to use the term unless I really mean it; in the case of Hattiesburg, I very much do. Hattiesburg is absolutely a hidden gem. No opportunity to visit should be passed up. It’s a place I had never heard of before being invited, but ultimately jumped to the top of the list of most enjoyable courses I played on the trip.
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Fallen Oak’s par-3 14th is short, but well defended.
While Ulysses Grant and his Army of the Tennessee moved east after their visit to Mississippi, many of my fellow Northerners who showed up in the early 1860s remained; perhaps overstaying their welcome, they were unceremoniously purged a decade later. Recognizing that our small family did not wish to suffer the same fate – after all, everyone we met was very friendly! – we packed up our things after five weeks and began the long journey home. The term “carpetbagger,” a label that originated in the South, was hopefully not one we deserved. In all seriousness though, the Coast was a wonderful place to visit. Gulfport and its surrounding area had lots to do for our small family (even COVID-restricted to outdoor spaces only) and we found it to be neither overcrowded nor overly pretentious. The beaches were relatively empty in the off-season, but they were well-kept and attractive; best of all for this seafood lover, I could get fresh, delicious shrimp nearly whenever I wanted. The weather was mostly pleasant; despite a smattering of chilly days on the Coast during our stay, including a record low of 22 degrees one night, our decision to snowbird proved to be fruitful. Eleven inches of snow fell in St. Louis during those five weeks, and the temperature spent far more time in single digits than it did in the fifties. No golf was to be played in St. Louis in February, to be sure.
As for the golf that was played in Mississippi – the most I’ve played in February of any year, ever – it proved to be relatively solid overall considering the time of year. In rather fitting fashion, I did manage to close the trip on a high note. On my final hole in Mississippi, I found my approach on the eighteenth at Hattiesburg to be just shy of the mark; the flag was on the middle tier, and I watched my nearly pin-high approach roll back down the slope to about twenty-five feet short. No matter, as my putt slid slightly left-to-right on its way up the hill… and found the bottom of the cup for an unexpected birdie and my best score of the trip, a 77. Those two words – unexpected birdie – feel like a bit of a metaphor for our trip; despite COVID, and despite the challenges it took to plan and get there for a five-week visit, the Gulf Coast ended up exceeding our expectations both on and off the golf course.
Jeff Kissel works in the healthcare IT industry and lives in suburban St. Louis. He regularly pontificates about golf on Instagram at @munis_and_monsters.
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All photos: courtesy Jeff Kissel
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