Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Oxmoor Valley (Short)

This is not a terrible course for those looking to get in a little bit of practice late in the day or as an add-on round after a turn around one of the main courses. The biggest drawback to the course, and it is a huge one, is that the course is an extremely difficult walk. But overall, this is a fair course.

Holes to Note

Hole 2, 224 yards
Very long hole, the second longest on the course in fact. Played downhill to a generous green built with large fall off areas short, right and long. Certainly a difficult second hole.

Hole 5, 135 yards
Nice short hole coming on the heels of three real beasts. But this hole is no sleeper being played into an undulated green with a large fall off long of the green.

Hole 14, 253 yards
This longest par 3 on the course is also the poorest routed hole on the course. The tee is slightly above the level of the green, but there is a 110 feet deep depression between the tee and green that the player must walk down and back up in order to reach the green. This is an exceptionally poorly routed hole, though the fun in playing a very long par 3 like this can make up for that slightly.

This image not taken from the back markers

This is a fair course overall. Not as much variety as could be done with a par 3 course, but it's nothing terrible either. Could have been routed much better though. 3 of 10

Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Oxmoor Valley (Valley)

The Valley course at Oxmoor Valley starts off with a hole that plays greatly downhill, moves on to a stretch of holes that are dead flat, goes to a set of gently rolling holes, and ends with two significantly uphill holes. The course is more easily walked than it's Ridge neighbor due to being flatter, but some places still have significant distances from one hole to the next. Overall, this is a rather nice course and most certainly one to be enjoyed.

Holes to Note

Hole #1: Par 4, 440 yards

This hole plays significantly downhill off the tee and is certainly not a gentle handshake to begin the round. The safe play would be to take a fairway wood or perhaps a long iron and play towards the bunker on the right. The more aggressive player might attempt to take the tee shot over the bunkers on the left and give himself the shorter shot into the green.

The player who hits towards the right bunker will be left with a longer shot, obviously, but will be rewarded with a flat lie. The player who takes his shot over the left bunkers may get a flat lie, but may get quite a bad lie because the fairway beyond the bunkers is quite narrow with significant fall-offs on either side.

The green, like most at the facility, is rather nondescript, sadly.

Hole 11: Par 4, 361 yards
This hole gives the player a couple of options as well. The fairway is flanked with two bunkers (a feature this writer dislikes, for what it's worth). Playing towards the one on the left will leave the player with a flat lie, playing towards the one on the right might leave the player with an odd stance, and or course the player might try to hit driver over all the trouble and be left with a short shot to the green.

From the fairway, the green is significantly elevated, preventing the player from seeing the entire flagstick.

It occurs to this writer just now as he's writing that the terrain for this hole reminds him quite a bit of what he saw for the 2nd hole at Pine Valley. Which actually makes the quality of this hole seem rather poor...One has to wonder if Rulewich saw the similarity and somehow thought this hole was a nice homage to the 2nd at Pine Valley? In this writer's opinion, it's not. But that notwithstanding, the hole is not bad.

Hole 12: Par 5, 506 yards
This may be the most strategic hole on the course. The tee shot is a Cape style allowing the player to be as aggressive as his heart, mind and ego will allow.

While it would seem that the bunker on the left might be overkill, it's nothing to get worked up over. From the fairway, the player will have to navigate a minefield of bunkers to get to the green. If the player doesn't believe he can reach the green in two shots, he must decide whether to play short, long, or even with the set of fairway bunkers.

For the player who attempts to go for the green in two or is hitting his third shot from the lay-up area, he will be forced to contend with a large bunker fronting the green.

This is likely the best hole on the property and makes as good a use of natural features as this writer has seen in a Rulewich designed course.

Overall, this course is solid. While there aren't a great many special holes, they are all rather solid. The only real issues one might take with the routing come on the stretch of 12 through 17. Each of these holes have rather significant green to tee distances and while being decent holes, the routing takes away any flow the course may have had. Add in a few crossings of public streets and that goes away even more. Sad, really. Could have been much better. 4 of 10.

Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Oxmoor Valley- Ridge course

This course, like all on the Trail that I have played finds way to get very picturesque holes while coming up with a very compromised routing and nothing of great interest. It's quite sad, really. This course really amounts to target golf, as most would define target golf that is, (I'll make a post one day about my take on "target" golf) in that the player is basically forced to hit it to specific spots in order to be given a flat lie to the green, most typically this is around the 150 yard marker. Anywhere much closer to the green than that and the player is likely to be faced with a very uneven lie. Another negative here is that the course requires aerial shots into all 18 holes (actually all 54 holes at the club require aerial shots) and that just gets repetitive after about the 6th or 7th hole. But this course isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, it just isn't anything of real goodness.

Holes to note:
Hole #3: Par 5, 539 yards
This hole is noted not because it's good or great, but because it is a photogenic train wreck. This hole plays significantly downhill off the tee to a tongue of a fairway sticking out into a clown's mouth pond. Any shot hit longer than 255 yards will go into the pond if not hit directly down the center. From there the margin of error gets lower and the fairway runs out at 305 off the tee.

From here the player is left with a forced lay-up to roughly the 150 yard post, as is the same for most holes, or to the upper fairway that is visible in the picture below. The forced lay-up is due to the green being perched up about 10 feet above the fairway level on a giant pile of shale stone; it is unknown if this pile was on the site when Jones/Rulewich first saw the site or if they took time to pile it up.
The view from the fairway, near the 250 pole:

The shot to the green is then as boring and one dimensional as the other 18 approaches: know yardage, pick club, hit. No chance for anything else here.

And finally a look at the clown's mouth from the green looking backwards.

Hole #5: Par 3, 179 yards
Fair par 3 hole. Not much going on here, certainly not much going on with the green, but I really like the crater bunker in front of the green. Sadly, given they have done away with some of these crater bunkers at other trail sites, I wonder how long it will remain?

Hole #6: Par 4, 447 yards
Nice cape hole from the tee. The fairway runs parallel to a deep ravine (which is horrible to walk through, by the way) and the player must choose how much of the angle he wants to take off. The carry to the fairway taking a ball right towards the edge of the trees in the ravine is about 290 yards, the carry if one plays to the far right edge of the fairway is about 215 yards.

From the fairway, the player who took the more aggressive line off the tee will be rewarded with the shorter club into the green and this is of major benefit on this hole because the green is significantly elevated and any shot will have to carry the entire distance to the green, a green that is not incredibly deep.

Hole 12: Par 5, 483 yards
This reachable par 5 offers multiple options off the tee and is probably the most strategic hole this writer has played on the Trail thus far. The safe play from the tee, down the righthand fairway will give the player a better angle to the green from a flat lie, but a much longer shot.

But the player who tries a play down the lefthand fairway will be rewarded, IF he can pull off the shot, with a much shorter play into the green, possibly with as little as a wedge.

From the left hand of the fairway, it is apparent that the angle to the green is not as good, having to play over bunkers and possibly around the trees the right, but as you can see by the significant slope of the fairway, shots can run out quite a long way.

Overall, I think the course falls short of what it could have been. The routing, specifically, green to tee distances, is rather substandard. The holes themselves are, as is pretty standard of Roger Rulewich, quite picturesque is many cases, but lacking a lot of substance. And the greens are lacking in the way of both very bold and subtle contouring. And of course, the green surrounds have virtually no features which the player can use to manipulate a shot. But as a whole the course is not bad and is certainly better than much of the public golf in Alabama, and elsewhere, within it's price range. Overall 4 out of 10, above average.

Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Oxmoor Valley and Ross Bridge

June 20th at Capitol Hill didn't work out. One of the courses was closed for green maintenance, so I drove on past there and went to Oxmoor Valley outside of Birmingham. Oxmoor Valley has 2 full length courses and an 18 hole short course. I walked all three courses, which was very difficult. These courses were not designed with walking golfers in mind, not even as an after-thought.

The Ridge course is, as one might expect, designed over the highest ground on the property. It has some extreme elevation changes but had some fairly solid holes. But in general is was nothing special, my overall review was 4 out of 10, which is solid.

The Valley course is much more easily walked. The first hole plays sharply downhill and then 17 and 18 play sharply uphill, but in between, the holes are reasonably flat. Flat enough to be a decent walk. But as is standard, there are sometimes huge distances between green and tee. Once again, course is decent, but nothing special. 4 of 10.

The routing of the short course is even worse than the other two. The hills are really out of hand. The course is decent, but there is a lack of variety in the holes. Not terrible, but not great. 3 of 10.

Ross Bridge, however, was very, very good. There is a decent variety in the holes, doglegs of different directions, straight holes, the par 3's are solid, par 5's are quite nice, and very good variety in the par 4's. Some differing lengths in the par 4's would be nice, such as one or two 300-350 yard holes, and perhaps make one of the par 3's a bit longer and a par 5 longer, but overall, the course was quite nice and varied to be nearly 8,200 yards long from the back tees. This course is, so far, the best on the Trail by a wide margin at 6 out of 10.

Individual reviews upcoming for these with pictures.

As a side note, I did walk the 54 holes at Oxmoor Valley. It was a very good "warm-up" for my Hundred Hole Hike on July 9th. Showed me that I will need to change socks more often than I expected and also change shoes. But in general, my hike should be a major success if I take time to make sure my feet and other body parts are doing well.