The World-Class Golf Course Where Greenskeepers Go to Sample New Products
Below are excerpts from articles that originally appeared in Insidehook.
Alabama has a long golf tradition, boasting 11 courses created by famed architect Robert Trent Jones Sr. across the state. But there’s one course in particular, near the rural town of Sylacauga, that should be added to any golfer’s wish list.
Set on a 3,200-acre family farm, Pursell Farms isn’t somewhere you might happen upon. It’s more of a destination unto itself, located one hour from Birmingham, Alabama, and two and a half from Atlanta, Georgia. The closest town is the former railroad crossroads of Sylacauga where, in 1904, DeWitt Alexander Parker founded a fertilizer company.
“That was back when fertilizers came out of the back end of an animal,” says David Pursell, Parker’s great-grandson and CEO of Pursell Farms.
The Sylacauga Fertilizer Company began to grow, working with small farms in the area. After Parker’s death, the company passed to his son. Howard Parker Sr.’s daughter Chris was introduced to future husband Jimmy Pursell by Alabama-born actor Jim Nabors.
“I owe my very existence to Gomer Pyle,” jokes David Pursell of Nabors’ most memorable role.
Jimmy went to work for the Parkers’ family business, settling on the farm and growing their family. The couple had three children, all of whom have gone on to work for the company.
In the 1950s, the fertilizer company started to shift from agricultural to residential and commercial. The product itself also changed, becoming more technical based on client needs. Pursell Fertilizer Company, as it was by then known, created a patented controlled-release technology called POLYON.
“It was an unbelievable technology, kind of a polymer coating that you would spray on top of little small fertilizer granules. We could layer on and it would last longer,” says Pursell.
David Pursell joined the family business in 1980 and moved back to the farm. In 1997, the consumer portion of the business was sold off and he became the CEO of what remained, which included the client base of ornamental nurseries, specialty agriculture, and golf courses.
“There was only one problem we had, and that was that nobody knew about [POLYON]. That was really my charge was to introduce this to as many people who could utilize this technology while our patent was on and for us to be able to really make as much hay as we could while we had the technology under patent.”
He decided to raise awareness for the company’s products through the people that used them: the golf superintendents. These highly trained experts are responsible for golf course maintenance twelve months out of the year. They make decisions on the fertility of the turf, which inevitably affects the playability of the course.
“I had an idea to create what I called the ‘Epcot of golf.’ We focused on golf because golf was a huge growing market back in the late 90s and early 2000s,” he told me. “I need[ed] to create something that golf superintendents from not just around the country or North America but from all over the world would want to come to visit.”
In 2002, Pursell opened The Experience at FarmLinks, a unique golf course designed to showcase and test out their products. Pursell flew in these superintendents from all over the world for a few days of golf, good food, and Southern hospitality.
“[At] every hole we had a different application of our products.”
The 18-hole championship Hurdzan-Fry-designed FarmLinks course has gone on to be named one of the top in the nation by GOLF Magazine, Golfweek, and Golf Advisor. The layout is diverse, and the course is player-friendly, with surprises at every hole. Golfers also enjoy the use of the top-of-the-line E-Z-GO 2021 RXV ELiTE golf cars.
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