Town Rankings / Alabama

The Best Golf Courses in Prattville

There is a hole at Capitol Hill where the Alabama River opens up below you and the whole round changes key. The Judge Course plays along that river, waterfall hole and all, and it is the reason a small town north of Montgomery ended up with 54 holes of Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail golf and a permanent spot on the Alabama golf itinerary. Prattville did not grow a golf scene slowly. The Trail built one, all at once, on a bluff over the river.

So this ranking, like Opelika's, is an argument inside one complex. Three courses, one site, one river. The questions are which course uses the ground best, which one you would play twice on a two-day trip, and which one survives being the third tee time on a tired Sunday. Golf first, then the day, then the value of the whole package. The answers sort themselves quickly at the top.

1Capitol Hill Judge Course

The Judge is the course Prattville is known for, and the river is why. Plenty of Trail courses are big. Plenty are hard. The Judge adds the one ingredient the rest of the complex cannot copy, which is a routing that keeps returning to the Alabama River and making the water part of the golf instead of the backdrop. The waterfall hole is the postcard, and postcards are usually a warning sign, but here the scenic holes are also the strategic ones, the ones where position off the tee decides whether the approach is brave or stupid.

The concession is conditioning of a different kind: a course this popular takes a beating, in traffic and in expectations. Everybody arrives having seen the photos. Played cold, on its golf, it still wins this town going away. It is the only course in Prattville a golfer would drive past the other two to reach, and that is the definition of No. 1.

2Capitol Hill Senator Course

The Senator is the second course at Capitol Hill and the one tournament watchers in Alabama tend to bring up, a sterner, more links-flavored test than the Judge's river theater. Where the Judge seduces, the Senator cross-examines. If your group splits on which round they talk about at dinner, it is usually the low-handicappers defending the Senator.

It loses the top spot on setting, and setting is not a small thing in our scoring. Same town, same trip, one course plays along the river and one does not. But as second courses go in this state, the Senator is a luxury: a full argument, not a filler round.

3Capitol Hill Legislator Course

The Legislator completes the set, and third at Capitol Hill is a better job than first in a lot of Alabama towns. It is the traditional one of the three, the round that feels most like the parkland golf the region grew up on, and it gives a 54-hole weekend its necessary change of pace.

It finishes third because somebody has to and because its case rests on variety rather than superiority. Played alone, judged alone, it is a good course that a Trail traveler is happy to have booked. Ranked against its own siblings, it is the one you schedule around the other two. The last tee time of the trip, the early flight home, the bluff still visible from the parking lot: that is the Legislator's slot, and it fills it honestly.