Mississippi Gulf Coast brings nature back into golf: House-crowded courses be gone!

If you’re sick of playing golf on fairways snuggled tight by homes and condos (and who isn’t?), the Mississippi Gulf Coast could be your relief. You can play high-end course after high-end course here that take you farther and farther out into nature. You remember nature, right?

It’s seeing nothing but marsh grasses swaying in the breeze, tall trees lording over fairways and hawks circling overhead. At least, it is on a number of courses in the Gulf Coast.

Several days into a trip here, the pure volume of truly scenic courses has caught me off guard. A lot of destinations have one or two courses where having to retrieve your golf ball from somebody’s backyard is but a bad dream. In the Gulf Coast, they seem to come in an endless parade.

There’s Grand Bear, where just the front drive to the clubhouse takes you six winding miles through the woods, providing only the slightest preview of what’s to come. There’s Preserve, where it’s often just you and the birds chirping away. Even Hollywood Casino’s golf course, The Bridges, only has a few holes where you’re playing toward the hulking building in the distance (and those holes are sort of cool) and then you’re off firing toward the Gulf of Mexico on the horizon the very next hole.

Then, there’s Shell Landing, a golf course with an official turtle wildlife refuge fenced off near its towering back sixth tee.

Play these courses one after the other and you’ll have as much chance of slamming a ball off some kid’s backyard jungle gym as the NCAA Tournament’s ridiculous play-in game winner has of challenging North Carolina.

“We’ve had a wild turkey sunning himself out here on the back of the range for about a week now,” Grand Bear head pro Mike Buckley says. “It’s like a regular National Audubon Society out here.”

Buckley laughs.

“I better not say that too much because Preserve’s all about their Aububon deal.”

Actually, The Bridges is Aubudon certified course too. That’s the thing. When the locals cannot even always remember how many truly nature courses there are, you know the golfer has it good.

I came to the Gulf Coast expecting a number of different things. I never expected quite this much secluded nature.

Four days packed with golf and not one encounter with those annoying golf course homeowners who can’t stand the sight of an actual golfer … that’s golden.