Paired Up at the Muni: Brainerd Golf Course
A lesson in authenticity taught by a century-old muni
“This is the kind of neighborhood with houses where young couples are just moving in or someone has lived there for 40+ years,” my cousin Ben told me when pulled into the cracked-concrete parking lot. The course’s clientele reflected that.
The group behind us looked to have put thousands of miles on their push carts, while the one in front looked to have just taken the plastic off of their clubs. Same goes for the businesses on nearby streets, with fresh, hip coffee shops and restaurants sprinkled amongst old, tired car lots. While home values in the neighborhood may trend towards the lower side of the city, there’s plenty of value to be gained in being close to Brainerd Golf Course.
Tucked into the shadows of the Chattanooga Airport sits this 1926 Donald Ross original—so close to the airport that your drone will force-land if flown higher than 10 feet, I learned. Although tweaked twice over the years (‘53 and ‘83), Ross’ ideology still shines, particularly through the green complexes. Rare is the community-style muni that offers greens with slopes large enough to play creative short-game shots, but Brainerd is flush with those, especially the three-tiered fifth green and the wave-pool ninth.
Even for a town spoiled with exceptional private and public golf, this muni holds its own by requiring you to hit every club in your bag, and to do so quite well. This was not the gentle handshake I had in mind for my second round since having shoulder surgery back in August, evident from the first hole, which required a five iron into a stiff wind after a striped three wood.
Uncle Ted
A stop in Chattanooga wasn’t just for Brainerd. I have an aunt and several cousins that moved to this East Tennessee town in recent years. Although the muni tour will be centered around random pairings, I thought it best to see some familiar faces to start. For lunch, we stopped at my cousin Anne Charlotte’s house to see her ever-growing family and so I could introduce them to my girlfriend, Mia.
The last time I saw them was shortly after my Uncle Ted–their dad–passed away in the fall of 2019. He had two funeral services, one in Chattanooga and another in Ocala, Florida, their home for several decades. When thinking back to those services, I’m struck by the amount of people that attended: 400 in Chattanooga and around 1,000 in Ocala. In front of those crowds, each speaker was able to nail the essence of Uncle Ted—even the ones who only knew him a short time.
The reason for that was quite clear: Uncle Ted was always 100% himself. There weren’t different versions of himself depending on the audience.
He was himself when he’d sneak away from the adults’ table at family gatherings to play games with the kids. He was himself when pulling into a fancy gathering in his run-down RV, leaving tire tracks in the grass and oil stains on the driveway. He was himself when he’d swing by a movie theater shamelessly getting a large buttered popcorn to go while running errands. He was Uncle Ted all the time.
If you spent any amount of time with him you felt like you knew him, and you did, because there was no facade, which was extra refreshing in the social media era of building fake representations of yourself. When Uncle Ted was involved, you knew what you were going to get, and for that I really miss him.
Back to Brainerd
“Wet,” the pro shop said when I asked how the course was. “Greens are good though,” they added. True on both counts, I decided to walk with one of my go-to golf buddies, Colton, who lives 25-minutes across town. Rounding out the foursome were my cousins, Ben and Bret, who chose the “cart path only” life…and remained faithful until the par-5 eighth.
You know how you’ll meet someone and wonder how you haven’t been friends your whole life? That’s how I felt when I met Colton two years prior at Sweetens Cove. We both went to Tennessee for undergrad and our social circles criss-crossed yet never aligned, but we’ve made up for lost time with many golf rounds the past two years. We caught up about work, future golf trips, and I answered popular questions like where will we park each night and where will we eat—questions Mia and I had yet to determine for our first night on the road.
Meanwhile, Ben and Bret had a high stakes match going into the par-5 eighth hole, which when you’re family that means bragging rights, not money. After a wayward drive, Ben veered off the cart path for the first time, and up popped the ranger as if summoned by an ancient spell. From a distance I heard him loudly exercising the full rights of rule No. 9 on their welcome sign: “Ranger has full authority.”
“I’m still reeling from his correction,” Ben texted me a day after the round.
When the first words on a golf course’s welcome sign read, “The following rules are strictly enforced,” they mean it.
Be who you are
Brainerd, like my Uncle Ted, isn’t trying to be something they’re not.
Often when courses have ties to a famous architect they’ll build that association into the price. Not Brainerd, where the fee to walk nine holes on a Sunday afternoon was $13. They’re not trying to compete with the big dogs in town, although they easily could with an influx of cash.
That said, it’s easy to view Brainerd as a course with loads of potential given the blueprint Donald Ross laid out nearly 100 years ago, but the beauty of the course is that they’re not lost in a daydream. They know they’re a community muni, and they serve their regulars well.
I hope to return on a dryer, summer day. But if it’s wet again, I’ll be sure to keep all four wheels on the path.
Next Stop: Atlanta
After handshakes and well wishes it was off to the gas station to wince at the diesel price before heading to our home for the next few days: Atlanta. All we had left to do was find a place to park.
