The River and The Highlands at Hampton Cove

Finally ! Huntsville, AL and me got to be friends.

Two of my golf friends, Rick and Ken, went with me to the RTJ Golf Trail courses at Hampton Cove just outside of town.

We stayed at a local Hilton Garden Inn, which was extremely nice and only about 6 months old. I highly recommend you stay there if you get the chance, as they has the absolute nicest people I’ve ever stayed with.

Their breakfast was a work of art ! Good coffee, juices, real grits, gravy, biscuits, eggs any way you want, more fruit than a rain forest, bagels, sausage, bacon, cereal and all of it prepared fresh and by some tremendously friendly people !

The beds were like sleeping on air, the pillows were perfect, the rooms were way above the usual hotel room and their foyer was like sitting in the Biltmore House !

The business center had 2 computers, so I could keep up with email without having to wag along a laptop and they had a Pantry to provide anything you might need, but had forgotten.

And where else can you look out your 4th floor room to see the sunrise and 2 rockets ? Yes, rockets. Real ones. Huntsville is home to a Space Center. I can’t wait to go back and take along my better half by far. The local eateries were all just as friendly. I’m sensing a theme here - Huntsville = friendly people.

Once we got to The Highlands Course for our 8:20 am tee time on Friday, they had taken the liberty of putting a gentleman from Canada with us.

We didn’t mind, but it would have been nice if they’d asked us first.

Rob was from Toronto and was in town for a wedding. he was a good golfer and was a great guy, so it worked out okay. We were glad they had joined us up with him.

The Highlands Course is still trying to green up, as it’s still early in the year. That made the lies kinda tight, but rolling the ball around the greens was easier, so that was a good tradeoff.

The Highlands Course also winds it’s way thru a very high-end subdivision, but never once did a house come into play.

It’s supposed to emulate a Scottish links, but this was just a hilly course that wanted to be a links style course.

It’s hilly, lots of terrain changes, kinda tight in spots and the greens are not very user friendly.

Tour pro’s would boycott having to putt up and around this many humps and bumps. Even 3 foot putts had too much break.

Hint to golf course architects - Make the greens large, flat and leave room to run the ball along the ground for the average golfer to enjoy your course.

All in all, the 3 of us agreed we’d never want to play this course again. Sorry.

The River Course at 11:20 am on Saturday was our next round and we showed up pretty early to hit some practice balls on the very well manicured range. They had buckets of water to wash your clubs and the grass was perfect. Nice touches all around.

There was also a grill going at that hour and the cheeseburgers were $5.50. A tad high, but since neither course brings you back to the clubhouse after 9 holes, you need to take food out with you.

The beverage carts were very regular in coming around and they were driven by some very nice kids who were generous with cups of ice and were as friendly as everybody else was.

Again, they had taken the liberty to add a gentlemen to our group and again we could not have gotten a better guy to join us. Greg, a lobbyist from Montgomery, was a great ball-striker and very fun to be around. All 3 of us liked him and hated to see our time with him end.

The River Course was almost daylight to The Highland’s night. Flatter, except around the greens, which are built up and surrounded by LARGE mounds and humps for some strange reason. No houses and extremely quiet and peaceful. It wound in, around and thru a lot of the Flint River, hence the name, a lot of trees.

Neither of those should trouble you though, as this course was very, very playable, generous and user-friendly.

We all 3 agreed we could play it every day and never get tired of the surroundings, the course or the challenge.

All in all, I can’t wait to get back to Huntsville, AL and have some more great food, play some more great golf and interact with some of the friendliest people on earth.

Take my advice and stay at The Hilton Garden Inn , and tell ‘em Mike sent you.

And if you need a second course to play around Huntsville, head over to Fightin’ Joe in Muscle Shoals, like we’ll do next time.

Hmmm…maybe next month will be a good time.