Two longtime golf partners - Doug Burro, a Trail veteran, and Mike Feix, a Trail rookie - made up our threesome. This trip followed the pattern of the others I’d taken, though we tacked on one additional day. When the Trail opened, Alabama was attracting about $2 billion annually from tourism that number now is about $14 billion. About 12 million rounds have been played so far. Bronner, head of Retirement Systems of Alabama, came up with the Trail concept - and wooed Jones out of retirement - as a way to boost tourism and help fund the state’s pension plan. Golfers from Orange County, in fact, now annually rank in the top 10 of out-of-state players, he said.ĭr. By the end of the first quarter each year, golfers from all 50 states and perhaps 25 countries will have visited, said John Cannon, president of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. In its 25 years, the Trail has dramatically increased its national and international profile. That helps explain why I’ve made eight week-long trips in the last 12 years and am looking forward to another in about 18 months. The bill for this trip came to about $2,200, including the round-trip flight from Orange County to Birmingham, lodging, rental car we hired from, golf with carts and food and drink (you can click for more information about car rental). I’ve visited only seven of the 11 sites and have been overwhelmed every time by the beauty and difficulty of the courses, the hospitality of everyone associated with the trail and the incredible value for so much memorable golf. Since then, three additional facilities have been built and one existing club near the Gulf of Mexico has been added. The first four, each with two championship courses and one short course, opened in 1992 three more sites opened the next year. He came out of retirement to design the largest golf construction project in history - simultaneously building complexes, each with at least 36 holes, at seven locations around the state. The Trail was the final project for Robert Trent Jones Sr., one of America’s most renowned golf architects, and perhaps his most spectacular. This was my eighth trip to the Trail, a collection of 26 jaw-droppingly beautiful courses at 11 sites from Muscle Shoals in the north to the Gulf Coast in the south. The courses will challenge the best golfers in the world, yet at the same time allow an enjoyable outing for the casual to beginning golfer."įrom Huntsville in the north to Mobile in the south, this destination is second to none for value and a consistant quality of very good golf.Play in the Farmers Insurance Open Pro-Am As one Director of Golf put it, "The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail is an incredible golfing experience for everyone. The courses offer a tremendous amount of flexibility. The courses were designed to measure as short as 4,700 yards and as long as about 8,200 yards from the tournament tees, with as many as 12 tee boxes in-between. The tee markers on the Trail are pegged to ability level, not age or gender. One of the most unique aspects of the Trail are the tee locations. In his unparalleled career Jones had designed more than 500 golf courses around the world, many of which are listed among Golf Digest's "America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses." Jones jumped at the chance and emerged from semi-retirement to tackle the project. Enter legendary architect Robert Trent Jones, Sr., arguably the premier golf course architect in the world. When you're looking for someone to design 18 golf courses, start at the top. Bronner wasn't looking to build just an 18 hole public golf course, he wanted to build 378 holes at eight spectacular sites throughout the entire state, and all at one time! "I don't do windows and I don't do just 18's." Dr. His vision was on a grand scale — big, really big. His philosophy was this: "The stronger the Retirement Systems can make Alabama, the stronger the Retirement Systems will be." With that in mind, and borrowing a page from the movie, Field of Dreams, Bronner decided to "build it and they will come" — not to a baseball diamond in a cornfield, but to a dazzling collection of public golf courses in the state of Alabama.īronner's idea was to use a hot (but clean-burning) vehicle like golf to boost tourism, attract golfers from around the World and spur economic growth within the state. First, how to effectively diversify the assets of the state's pension fund and secondly, how to help the state of Alabama. David Bronner, CEO of the Retirement Systems of Alabama. In the late 1980's, two important things were on the mind of Dr. Alabama's Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail is the largest golf course construction project ever attempted.
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