It’s always important to balance old with new, to be open to the latest technologies, trends, and techniques while remaining grounded in the traditions of the game and the land on which it is played. For example, you can book a round at the Old Course in St Andrews on your phone now and pay with your Apple wallet – advancements that would have been unimaginable just 20 years ago. And there are plenty of pubs in the Auld Gray Toon that’ll take your order on an iPad.
For the owners at Shiloh Ridge Golf & Fitness Club in Corinth, Mississippi, that same kind of balance is imperative. For starters, the club is situated between two of the most significant battlefields in American history, Shiloh and Corinth, blood-soaked spots that shaped the way the country looks today. But the 6,831-yard course also has to attract play from people meandering east out of Memphis, north up from Tupelo or over from Pickwick Lake - people who love golf but who couldn’t name a Civil War general if you spotted them Robert and E.
The operators of Shiloh Ridge do everything in their power to market the history of the area and the land on which the course sits while also accommodating the demands of a new golf audience. Director of golf, Lew Johnson, who attended several of the NGCOA seminars in Florida during the 2024 Golf Business Conference as well as the PGA Show, said, “We’re really working to implement some of the strategies that were brought up in those conferences. We understand that we can’t be all things to all people, and we don’t try to be. But when someone walks through the door or finds us online, we are doing everything we can to invest in that person and develop a relationship, to check on them outside of golf. We’re trying to capture and grow a good segment of the market.”
Part of capturing that audience is giving them an understanding of the area. To this day, southerners call what happened there the Battle of Shiloh while northern history professors call it the Battle of Pittsburg Landing. That’s common. Most of the battles took place on southern soil, so the men and women there named those seminal events after the towns or communities where they took place, while the armies of the north, not knowing or caring what towns they burned, named the battles after bodies of water. For example, the battle of Bull Run and the battle of Manassas are the same event. Bull Run is a river and Manassas a town.
Shiloh was technically in Tennessee, although it was so close to the tri-state line that skirmishes spilled over into Alabama and Mississippi. In fact, confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston marshaled his army in Corinth near the land where the golf course sits now.
Then, on April 6 and 7, 1862, Ulysses S. Grant broke through Johnston’s lines like a dagger to the heart of the south. In the bloodiest battle in America’s history to that point, Union forces killed Johnston, defeated his army, and split the Confederacy in half, east and west, with no chance of the two joining again. It was the beginning of the end of the Civil War.
Spend any time at Shiloh Ridge Golf & Fitness Club and you will hear or read details of that story. It’s as much a part of the place’s identity as Old Tom Morris is to St. Andrews or Bobby Jones is to Augusta National.
But there’s more to the land on which the club sits. Corinth’s most celebrated native son was famous aviator Roscoe Turner, a barnstormer who set numerous air-speed records and won many air races between the two world wars. He also opened one of the first commercial air carriers in the south and provided aerial stunts for many Hollywood films.
The fourth fairway at Shiloh Ridge is the old Roscoe Turner airstrip, and the showman’s pet lion, Gilmore, is the logo that greets guests when they arrive at the club.
“The original course was nine holes, built in 1989,” Johnson said. “Then in 2006, Carroll Little (whose family has owned a jewelry business in Corinth for three generations) bought it and expanded it to 18 holes. He has a passion for golf and is making this a nice facility.”
The superintendent grew up just a few miles from the maintenance building, and even the seasonal staff maintain a connection to the area.
“Corinth has about thirty thousand people in the county,” Johnson said. “And we’re about 20 miles from a state park with one of the largest man-made lakes in America. So, we get a number of people who come down from Tennessee and over from the lake to play. Our goal with every one of them is to give them a connection to the area and to the history, but also to treat them with the best service that we can.
“There’s a certain (service) level that’s expected from the public in golf now,” he said. “We know that we have a unique spot given where we are. But that’s not going to do you any good if you don’t provide the golf course and the amenities that the people want. We’re constantly getting better and making sure that we keep that balance between old and new.”