We had some lunch in the clubhouse and headed over to the 1st tee on the Highlands Course. It continued to be a quiet afternoon at Hampton Cove and we got out early again, which was nice since we had a long drive back to the Atlanta area. Plus, we were hoping to beat some storms!

The Highlands Course is further from the Flint River and located at the base of a hillside. While the River Course doesn’t have any homes bordering it, the Highlands Course is in a community and out of all the courses that we played on the trail, this one had the most homes surrounding it. But, the scenery overshadowed the homes, especially on the back nine!

One of the employees mentioned that the Highlands Course has a little bit of everything. That turned out to be true as there is some elevation change, water, and a mix of open and tree-lined holes. It has plenty of pine trees and even some linksy looking holes with fescue covered mounds framing the fairways. The course looked great, there’s no doubt about that!

The front features minor elevation changes, a club at most, and meanders its way down to some lakes, which start coming into play on the 8th. The most interesting feature on the front is an old barn which is visible on the 4th and 5th holes. When playing the 5th, that barn is an easy target so try not to hit it!

The back nine is centered around two par-3’s requiring a carry over water (the 11th & the 16th) and four lakes. The lakes affect play on much of the back nine and because of the way the holes are routed, most of the trouble is on the right side. Make sure your misses are to the left!

We played the orange tees which are 6806/72.8/128 and I found the Highlands Course to be so much more playable than the River Course. I found that there was a lot of flexibility on the drives and approaches here.

As far as individual holes go, there are plenty to talk about on the Highlands Course. As a group I thought that the par-3’s and par-5’s were the best! The 11th and 16th are 177 and 211 yards, respectively. They both play over water to greens on a peninsula. The 11th has more room to bail out while you have to hit a good long iron on the 16th to find the ball!

The course conditions were nice and once again I was impressed with how the trail courses drained. We just about made it through the front nine when a line of storms blew through. We waited close to an hour for everything to pass and then headed back out for the remainder of our round. It was sloppy in spots, but by the time we played three holes the course looked great!

The greens were top dressed with sand which caused them to be slower and every now and then they would bump or wobble. The fairways were cut down and nice and full.

I enjoyed playing the Highlands Course and it was my favorite course at Hampton Cove. Before getting to the pictures of the Highlands Course, I’ll post some random thoughts about the RTJ Trail in general. These aren’t in any specific order and I’ll try to keep them brief.

• The convenience of 36+ holes at most sites is nice. You can park the car and leave it in the lot all day.
• Try to pack light if you are playing multiple sites as we stayed in a different hotel every night, except one.
• Most of the courses on the trail need combo sets of tees!
• The courses are not walker friendly.
• The courses aren’t easy – I was expecting the designs to favor the casual golfer more than they do.
• There are a lot of mid-length par-4’s.
• The maintenance was consistent from one site to the next.
• Compared to other top public courses in various states that I’ve played, the greens were pretty slow.
• I found the value to be average, not great. We paid $600 for 8 rounds of golf. If you are one of those folks who want to utilize the unlimited feature of the package you could increase your value. We intentionally made a choice to play more sites and fewer rounds so that didn’t help our “bang for the buck”.

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