After a few weeks in Dallas, I was back to Florida for the Christmas and New Years holidays. Saturday turned out to be an odd day of travel and golf. I originally planned to take Friday off from work and leave then. At the last minute I canceled my day off which meant I was now leaving Dallas early on Saturday morning.

Well, a cold front with some nasty thunderstorms was in Dallas early on Saturday morning. I left town about 5 AM and caught up to those storms on the I-20. It took an hour of white-knuckle driving to get through the heavy rain. Fun.

Since the thunderstorms were tracking along my route I didn’t book a tee time anywhere as I figured I’d probably get rained out. Out ahead of the cold front it was a pretty nice weather day. So, I pulled over outside Jackson, Mississippi and looked at the radar. I figured I had about four hours before the storms got to Jackson so I took a chance and just showed up at Bay Pointe Golf & Country Club, hoping to play.

The parking lot wasn’t very full when I pulled in and the proshop said it wasn’t busy. I paid my $42 and dashed to the first tee. I’ll just share the cliff notes and say I quickly finished the entire round. I zipped around in 2.5 hours, although I didn’t entirely escape the rain. Overall I felt lucky to have squeezed in a full round with the incoming crappy weather.

Bay Pointe is one of the public courses in the Jackson area that caught my eye mainly because the website says the course is voted the No. 8 best public course in Mississippi. That statement appears to be based off a list from GolfPass and after playing here, I wouldn’t get your hopes that high. I walked away disappointed with the course in a few ways. But, it was golf and a new course which is always a good thing.

Marvin Ferguson designed the course and I’m sure he did everything he could when building Bay Pointe. Unfortunately, the land here just cannot accommodate a regulation 18-hole course. The piece of land is small and that leads to many narrow corridors, odd doglegs and a cramped feeling. The course is tucked on a bit of hilly land above a wetlands area and the course basically acts as a buffer between the homes on higher ground and the wetlands. All that leads to holes being shoehorned into a small area.

I played the blue tees which are 72.4/132/6760. Unless you are a straight hitter the toughest aspect about Bay Pointe will be getting the ball in the fairway off the tee. As you’ll see in the pictures, trees crowd the tee boxes and it helps to work the ball both ways. The greens are small, built up and slope off in most directions which makes getting the ball to stay on many greens challenging. One thing I liked is that are very few bunkers here. Good idea on a budget course.

There are some difficult holes here. The 2nd is a 398 yard par-4 that has water down the left and a green surrounded by trouble. The 4th is a 605 yard par-5 and it is one of those narrow, odd doglegs. The best holes are the par-3’s and the 3rd and 17th were my favorites. The 3rd is only 126 yards and it is all carry over water. The 17th is 167 yards and also has lost-ball trouble short of the green.

The conditions were so-so and I wouldn’t suggest paying more than something in that $40 range. Since I played during the off-season I’ll give the course a pass. The ground was wet and puddles filled bare areas in the fairways and rough. The greens had a thin layer of grass with sanded areas as well. They rolled just okay.

I feel like I’m coming off as a course snob with this review and that isn’t my intent. Unfortunately, the limited land leads to the tight design and that means the playability suffers. If I was a local I doubt I’d play here consistently, unless my tee game improved.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):