Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, Alabama

The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail is a collection of 26 championship courses spread across 11 sites in Alabama, stretching from the Tennessee River in the north to Mobile Bay in the south. It is the largest golf construction project ever undertaken in the United States, and its origin story remains one of the more unusual in the sport. In the early 1990s, David Bronner, CEO of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, decided that championship golf courses could attract visitors, create jobs, and generate returns for the state pension fund. He hired Robert Trent Jones Sr., then in his late eighties, and his longtime associate Roger Rulewich to design a system of courses that would be public, affordable, and built to a standard that matched the best private clubs in the region.

The first courses opened in 1992. Three decades later, the Trail remains state-operated, public, and priced between $45 and $190 per round with cart included. The economic logic was unconventional. The financial results were not. The Trail has generated over $2 billion in economic impact for Alabama. For golfers, the relevant fact is simpler: this is the best value in American public golf, and it is not particularly close.