The Shoals, Alabama

The Shoals Schoolmaster is worth playing

Muscle Shoals. The name alone is great. It sounds like it should be a blues song or a dive bar or both. Turns out it's a small town of about 15,000 people in the far northwest corner of Alabama, sitting on the Tennessee River, and it's home to one of the more remote stops on the RTJ Trail. Getting here takes commitment. It's over an hour from Huntsville, about two and a half from Birmingham, and there is not a lot happening in between. You drive through small-town Alabama, past fields and gas stations and churches, and then suddenly there's a golf course sitting on a bluff above a lake that looks like it belongs somewhere far more expensive.

The Shoals has two 18-hole courses sharing a single clubhouse. Fighting Joe and the Schoolmaster. We played the Schoolmaster, which opened in 2005 and was designed by Roger Rulewich. It's named after Woodrow Wilson. Apparently Wilson was nicknamed "the Schoolmaster" for his academic background and there's a dam named after him on the Tennessee River nearby. I did not know any of this before I showed up. I still don't really care. But the course itself earned the name because it teaches you lessons whether you want them or not.

The Schoolmaster is the tighter of the two courses. Fighting Joe is supposed to be more open and links-like, big wide fairways with fescue on the edges and wind coming off the lake. The Schoolmaster goes the other direction. Tree-lined holes, narrower corridors, more doglegs. It feels like a traditional parkland course in the sense that you actually have to think about where your tee shot is going rather than just aiming at the middle of a massive fairway and letting it rip. After playing some of the wider RTJ courses earlier in the trip this was a welcome change. Not every hole needs to be 500 yards wide.

It still plays long though. Nearly 8,000 yards from the tips which is absurd for a tree-lined course. From the markers we played it was more manageable but the elevated greens added effective distance to almost every approach. Club up. That was the theme of the entire Alabama trip and at the Schoolmaster it was especially true. The greens sit above fairway level on most holes and anything short rolls back down the front slope. Bent grass greens, which was a change from some of the other Trail courses, and they were in good shape. Fast enough to be interesting without being punishing.

There's a waterfall guarding the green on the 2nd hole which is a nice early surprise. It's the kind of feature that on some courses would feel gimmicky but here it fits the terrain. The back nine gets more interesting with the trees pressing in and the doglegs getting tighter. You need to work the ball both ways off the tee or you're going to spend a lot of time in the trees. The 18th is the hole everyone talks about. It's a par 4 that climbs up to the clubhouse on a bluff overlooking Wilson Lake. You finish your round walking up to this view of the Tennessee River stretching out below you and it's properly impressive. As far as finishing holes go it's one of the better ones we played on the Trail.

The clubhouse view is worth mentioning on its own. We sat on the terrace after the round with a beer looking out over the lake and the surrounding hills and it felt like we were somewhere much more exotic than northwest Alabama. The staff were friendly. The whole operation felt well run. We saw a marshal a few times during the round which after the Silver Lakes experience where there was nobody to be seen was reassuring even though we didn't need one that day.

One thing that was starting to grate by this point in the trip though. The food. Every single RTJ Trail clubhouse has the same menu. The same burgers, the same wraps, the same everything. By the time you've played your third or fourth course you're sitting down already knowing exactly what's on offer before you open the menu. It's like a chain restaurant that happens to be attached to world-class golf. I get it, they're all run by the same operator and standardising keeps costs down. But when you're on a week-long trip eating at these clubhouses every day it gets old. You're playing all these wildly different courses in different parts of the state and then you sit down and it's the same lunch you had yesterday. A bit of local character in the food would go a long way. Give me some Alabama barbecue. A local fish dish. Something. Anything that makes this clubhouse feel different from the one I was at 24 hours ago.

I'll be honest though. The Shoals doesn't burn itself into your memory the way Silver Lakes or Ross Bridge do. It's a really solid golf course in a beautiful setting and I enjoyed the round. But there's no single hole or moment that I can point to weeks later and say that's the one. The 18th comes closest. The waterfall on 2 is cool. The rest is just good, well-designed golf through trees on rolling terrain. Sometimes that's enough and sometimes it gets lost in a trip where you're playing a different course every day.

The Fighting Joe is the one I probably should have played. Or at least added. It's the longer of the two at over 8,000 yards from the tips and it's the course that tends to get more attention. People who've played both seem split on which is better but Fighting Joe is generally considered the flagship. The open links style with the wind off the lake sounds like it would be a completely different experience from the Schoolmaster and might have given me more to write about. If you're only playing one course at The Shoals, honestly I'm not sure which to recommend. The Schoolmaster is the safer bet because it's a more traditional layout that most golfers will feel comfortable on. Fighting Joe might be more memorable if you're up for a challenge. I'd say play both if you have the time. Neither one will take more than four hours if the course isn't packed.

The isolation works both ways. On one hand it means fewer crowds and a peaceful round. On the other hand you're a long way from anything. The Marriott nearby apparently offers a shuttle and includes a free round with your stay which is a smart deal if you're building the trip around this stop. Otherwise you're driving a decent stretch of empty highway to get here and a decent stretch to get to the next course.

For the trip as a whole, The Shoals was a pleasant day. Not the highlight, not the low point. A solid course in a stunning location with a great finish. If you're doing the full Trail it's absolutely worth including. If you're picking and choosing your stops and the drive time is tight, you could skip it without feeling like you missed the best thing on the Trail. But you'd miss that view from the 18th green and the terrace afterwards, and those are worth something.

The Shoals

The Shoals