# The Birmingham Golf Guide

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/birmingham-al-golf-guide/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Guides / Alabama


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Birmingham golf splits cleanly in two, and a visitor should understand the split before booking anything. In the city, in Southside, there is a municipal course from 1903 that anybody can play. Over the mountain in Mountain Brook, there is Donald Ross, twice at one club and again at another, behind private gates. Public history on one side, private Ross on the other. The town's golf story is the distance between those two facts.

The anchors are Highland Park, the Country Club of Birmingham, Mountain Brook Club, Roebuck, and Greystone in Hoover. We set them in order in [our Birmingham town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-birmingham-al/) and against the state in [the full Alabama state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-alabama/).

## Start at Highland Park

Highland Park is the people's starting point and, for most visiting golfers, the round they will actually play. It dates to 1903, which makes it one of the oldest public courses in Alabama, a city course in Southside that has been taking public tee times since before most American golf towns existed. Courses that old and that public are not common in the South, where golf grew up private. Highland Park grew up as a city amenity and stayed one.

That makes it the right first round in Birmingham for a simple reason. It tells you the truth about the town. Play the 1903 muni first, in the city, with the public, then measure everything else in Mountain Brook against it. A guide that starts you behind a private gate is describing a Birmingham most golfers will never see.

## Mountain Brook: Ross, Ross, and Ross

Across in Mountain Brook the concentration changes completely. The hook for this town is simple and a little absurd: the Country Club of Birmingham is Ross twice over, two Donald Ross courses at one private club, and Mountain Brook Club is also a Donald Ross design, from 1929, private, in Jefferson County. Three Ross courses in one suburb is a density of one architect that very few American towns can match, and it gives Birmingham a claim that outruns its size in golf conversations.

The access reality is the whole story here, so we will state it plainly. These are private clubs. There is no tee time to buy, no resort door, and estimates for membership at clubs of this level run well into six figures, offered as an estimate tier and nothing more. If you know a member, Birmingham becomes one of the best Ross trips in the South. If you do not, it remains a Highland Park trip with excellent scenery over the mountain. Both trips are worth taking. Only one of them is available on short notice.

Roebuck, the city's other municipal option, and Greystone in Hoover complete the working golfer's picture: public and club golf spread across the metro, with Greystone serving the Hoover side of town. A metro this size lives on that layer of ordinary, bookable golf far more than on its private headliners, and any honest guide should say so.

For sequencing, one day is enough for the public version of this town and it is a good day: Highland Park in the morning when a 1903 course deserves your freshest attention, Roebuck or the Hoover side at Greystone if the group wants a second round, and the evening free. A second day only makes sense if an invitation appears, and invitations have a way of appearing after you have shown up once and played the public golf without complaining about the golf you could not play.

## The mistake visitors make

The mistake is arriving with a Ross itinerary and no member to call. Golfers read that Birmingham holds three Ross courses, build the trip around them, and land to discover that private means private. Build the trip around Highland Park instead: book the 1903 city course, enjoy a piece of Alabama public golf history that predates almost everything around it, drive Mountain Brook to see where the Ross courses sit, and treat any private invitation that materializes as the bonus it is.

Birmingham's golf is a tale of two towns sharing one name. The public half has been open since 1903. Start there, and let the private half be the reason to come back with better connections.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.