The Gulf Shores motto in a rear window reflection
The Annual National Shrimp Festival is a yearly confluence of seafood, music and art that has been going merrily on for 51 years in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Imagine my disappointment when I learned my trip to Gulf Shores late last September was one week ahead of this extravaganza.
I resolved then and there to salve the wound by having some kind of shrimp dish every day of my visit. It turned out to be an easily achieved goal. (The 2025 Festival is October 9-12.)
I wasn’t actually there to eat shrimp, that was just a bonus. I was there to play golf along with about a half dozen other golf writers being introduced, or reacquainted, with a quintet of fine courses, all public, that are part of the attraction to visiting this southern sliver of Alabama perched between Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile Bay.
But my secondary agenda suggests that one of the leading charms of a golf getaway to Gulf Shores is that it can be arranged completely guilt-free. All you have to do is bring the entire family along and everyone will be happy. With its acclaimed 32 miles of white sand beaches along the blue green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, there’s never a lack of activity for all. While the golfer is blissfully swinging away Mom and the kids can be swimming or shopping or Dad and the kids can be out fishing, paddle boarding, jet-skiing or parasailing. Or maybe it’s the kids who are golfing, while Mom and Dad are baking away on the beach.
There are parks, a wildlife refuge, a zoo, dolphin cruises, deep-sea fishing charters, amusement parks, the acclaimed FloraBama roadhouse straddling state lines, and more, as well as restaurants galore with a lot of consumable shrimp. (My goal within a goal was to score some Royal Red Shrimp, sometimes just called Gulf Shrimp, but which are, well, jumbo shrimp that everyone assured me taste like lobster.)
A clotheslines of bras suggests some of the raucous nature of doings at the FloraBama
There are some 17,000 residents in the town of Gulf Shores, and about 18,000 accommodation units for visitors. According to Easton Colvin, a public relations specialist for Alabama Beaches tourism, those units can be at full capacity at peak times, say around July 4, when there might be a half million visitors. There can be up to eight million visitors in a year’s time, so it’s no surprise when Colvin says tourism is a multi-billion industry for the area.
Fishing and golf probably run 50-50 as major draws. But there’s room for all, at affordable prices on splendid courses. Think Alabama golf and the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail often comes to mind. (Indeed, we wrote about it here.) Gulf Shores is a different animal. The nearest Trail course is about an hour away, but the five main courses in Gulf Shores are fewer than 20 minutes apart.
Jesse’s On the Bay offers up great sunsets along with steaks and seafood
The Gulf Shores Golf Club was the first on the scene, a 1963 design by the late Earl Stone, who’d lived in Mobile. Once known as the Golf Club of the Wharf, the course was re-done in 2005-2007 by the father and son team of Jay and Carter Morrish. From the 6,365 Blue tees the course comes in with a 70.5 rating and a 120 slope, making it the easiest of the area courses, and as such serves as the perfect just-arrived warm-up round.
All the courses have dynamic pricing, varying upon the time of day and time of year. But Gulf Shores GC is the bargain of the group, ranging from $70 to $99 with an all-day rate of $125.
As a golf destination, Gulf Shores really revved up after Craft Farms opened up its Arnold Palmer-designed Cotton Creek course in 1987. The late R.C. Craft ran a sod-farming operation, all while thinking that with golf as a catalyst, the Gulf Shores area could become a major tourist area. He was right. With his son, Robert (now the Mayor of Gulf Shores), they reached out to Palmer.
A wall in the Craft Farms clubhouse indicates its Arnold Palmer influence
Palmer visited the property with his design team, with some local press also on hand. R.C. and Palmer sped off in a cart to look at the proposed golf site, but took a detour to the sod farm. By the time the rest of the party caught up to them, they found Palmer stacking sod while R.C. kept up a running monologue. [I take a closer look at Craft Farms in this Golf Travel Wire piece, Crafting a Golf Destination in Gulf Shores, Alabama.]
It cemented a relationship between the two, and Palmer took on the project. And he returned to do a second course, Cypress Bend, in 1993. They remain as Palmer designed them, save for the removal of some bunkers after Hurricane Sally tore through in 2020. Both are characterized by Palmer’s eye for appealing looking holes and, unsurprisingly, lush conditioning. There are no great changes in elevation, but there’s plenty of movement through both courses and abundant water to negotiate.
Director of golf and club manager Ryan Mello said Cotton Creek is the tougher of the two: “You have to methodically plan your way around the course; you can’t lay on the driver all day, and depending upon your tee you’ll have to use a lot of different shots to keep it in play.
Third hole, Craft Farms Cotton Course
“On some holes you still have to play it smart at Cypress Bend, but it’s more of a resort style course, so you can get into your driver more and if you have an errant shot you can save it. Cypress is just as pretty as Cotton, and for the average golfer, 15 handicap or more, seems to be more popular.”
Rates fluctuate according to season and time of day, with a low of $69 and a high of $120. Craft Farms is now owned and operated by the Thistle Hill, a division of The United Company, which operates a number of southern golf courses—including the Peninsula Golf & Racquet Club, a 27-hole Earl Stone design perched on a spit of land between the Gulf and Mobile Bay. Rounds here range from $89-$145.
Third hole, Peninsula Lakes Course
Adjacent to the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, Peninsula is a natural refuge of its own, its 800 acres winding through live oaks, cypress trees, abundant flora and fauna—gators, eagles and cranes frequently sighted—all sitting on about a ten to 12” sand base. Even after a deluge, you’ll never have a cart-path-only restriction here.
Its three nines are aptly named—Marsh, Lakes, Cypress—and give players three route choices for 18 holes, all of them agreeable. The Lakes nine is certainly the most pelagic of the three, and on its seventh hole (the second of back-to-back par-5s) there’s a walkway leading to an expansive view of Mobile Bay.
Jerry Pate took a page from Earl Stone’s book at Kiva Dunes, which opened in 1995, with holes 14 and 15 as consecutive par-5s. At $100-$150 a round Kiva Dunes is the priciest of the Gulf Shores courses, and it’s worth it. As far as golf ratings go, Kiva Dunes not only tops the local charts but ranks on all the best-in-state lists as well.
Fourth hole, Kiva Dunes
Director of Golf Mark Stillings, who has been aboard since Day 1, noted that course was tougher in the early days—“You basically had to hit the fairway off the tee or lose a ball.” But subsequent tinkering in 2015 and removal of trees in 2020 courtesy of Hurricane Sally not only softened the course but shaved off 20 or more minutes of playing time.
It also added to the sense of links-style breadth, with wide fairways, huge bunkers, sandy waste areas, dramatic fairway mounding and mammoth greens—the 18th is a third of acre, some 14,000 square feet!—playing in almost constant sea winds. It’s all a thrill ride, and onsite lodging opportunities just up the ante.
Though I’d had no end of shrimp in ample fine dining on our trip, I’d been shutout as far as Royal Reds were concerned. Our final round was at Cotton Creek, so it all came down to a getaway lunch before heading back to the Pensacola airport. Craft Farms came through with heaving platters of Royal Reds.
They tasted like lobster.
This piece originally appeared in the 2025 Directory & Travel Issue of Golf Oklahoma, in slightly different form.
