PREP GOLF: Beulah's Harper honed skills on homemade course

Over the past 15 years, Virgil Bolton has watched his grandson, Jacob Harper, grow into one of the best golfers in the state, literally from his back porch.

On the course Bolton built from scratch.

“(In the early 1990s) I took on the project to build me a seven-hole course just for the family,” Bolton said. “I got two contractors to come in and asked how much it was going to cost to clear the land off, and they wanted so much money that it looked like if we were going to get it done, we’d have to do it ourselves.

“We got out and started looking and found a piece of equipment. And I sat on that piece of equipment for two years.”

Word of mouth spread as Bolton was forging his links out of the rocky and woody terrain on his 38 acres off Lee Road 279 in Beulah. Soon, Bolton’s original plan turned into a nine-hole course for the community: the Rolling Hills Golf Course.

“People got to wanting to play on it. They didn’t even let me finish,” Bolton said. “It didn’t even have any greens, fairways, none of that. Just dirt. But some of the ones that played when it first started here are still teeing it up.”

Even though Bolton unexpectedly had a new business on his hands, he still wanted it to be a place for family first and foremost.
And that family soon included Jacob, who came home from the hospital the day Rolling Hills got its first golf cart.

“His mother brought him straight from the car — didn’t carry him out to her house or nothing — got right on a cart and took him around the golf course,” Bolton said.

“And he’s been on it ever since.”

Harper, a rising sophomore at Beulah who will turn 15 in August, finished seventh in the Class 3A state tournament in 2008 as an eighth grader. He followed it up with a second-place finish this year as a freshman.

He said he would not be the golfer he is today without the unique skill set he developed growing up on Rolling Hills.

“It’s just so narrow and tight. And you get some real crazy bounces out here,” Harper said. “If you can keep it in these fairways, you can hit it in just about any of them.”

‘It don’t play very easy’
Harper could probably play Rolling Hills with his eyes closed if he wanted.

He should be able to. He estimates he’s played some of its 10 holes — Bolton’s son built the 10th about a year ago — tens of thousands of times.

“This is probably the hardest hole on the golf course. It don’t play very easy,” he says about No. 1. “You can hit it right down the middle of the fairway and it’s liable to be in the woods.”

“I like this hole, too. It’s real interesting,” he says about No. 3, where he hit his first hole-in-one. “You’re not going to fly it on the green. It’s gonna go in the water if you hit it on the green. You gotta hit it up on that little flat and it takes one bounce down there.”

“They don’t really go anywhere,” Harper says of the two ducks basking in the shade by the pond on No. 9. “You’ve gotta kind of dodge them.”

Bolton said Harper practices on Rolling Hills about four hours a day. Every day. Since he was about 4.

“We have the facilities here, but he’s just spent hours and hours and hours out there right by himself,” Bolton said. “Chipping and putting and hitting. I can’t pinpoint one thing other than dedication. He’s one of the few that’s gritty enough.”

While Rolling Hills is shorter than most golf courses — it has a par-3 that measures 73 yards — it presents enough unique challenges to frustrate its clientele.

Narrow fairways, tiny greens and unforgiving lies give the course its character. And make it the perfect place for a young golf phenom to hone his craft.

“If you hit a bad shot out here, you’re gonna be in trouble,” Harper said. “If you don’t hit it somewhere really close to the fairway, you’re gonna make a six or a seven.”

Harper says his goal is to win the 3A individual state championship each of his last three years in high school.

He acknowledged it’s going to be difficult, but his chances would improve vastly if the tournament happened to move from the manicured lawns of a Robert Trent Jones course to the inhospitable terrain of Rolling Hills.

“I believe I might could handle it out here,” Harper said.

‘A labor of love’
Anyone who knows Virgil Bolton will tell you he’s not usually one to boast. Unless you bring up his grandson.

“He’s pretty quiet until it comes to Jacob and golf,” Beulah golf coach Eddie Daniel said. “He loves that as much as anyone’s ever loved anything.”

You can hear it in the way he talks about Harper, and how he began playing with his grandfather and uncle when he was only 4. Harper could hold his own with them not long after.

You can see it in “Jacob’s Corner,” a section of Rolling Hills’ one-room pro shop devoted to Harper’s achievements over the years, including the trophy from the first tournament he won, at Indian Pines in 2002: a 7-year-old playing even though he was below the age cutoff.

You can sense it in the dedication the 68-year-old Bolton shows toward his grandson’s burgeoning career, following him to every tournament and taking nearly sole responsibility for the upkeep of Harper’s home course, which takes Bolton a day-and-a-half to mow all the way through.

“It’s a labor of love for me, it always has been,” Bolton said. “I love to cut grass. I reckon I’m just thankful I can do that.”

Harper said the support he received from his family growing up has been instrumental to his success.

Between his mother, grandfather and uncle — “He never let me win,” Harper says of Virgil Bolton Jr. — Harper was never short of a playing partner.

After all, Harper only has one occasion next to his name on the course’s “Hole-in-One Wall.” His grandfather has six.

“I really don’t think I’d have played too much if somebody hadn’t played with me really early,” Harper said.

‘By his side’
Beulah High School didn’t have a golf team until last school year.

Then, partly because the school wanted a more organized venue to show off Harper’s talent, the Bobcats started a team with six golfers.

This year, the program grew to 17.

Harper grew as well: about six inches. Now there’s more power behind those shots that routinely cleave Rolling Hills’ tree-engulfed fairways. Although Harper said there was an adjustment period.

“It was really awkward right in the middle of (the growth spurt),” Harper said. “Because I usually swing real easy and real long. But now I got it shorter and a little faster. It took it a long time to get it back where it was.”

Nothing Harper, Daniel and Harper’s swing guru, Bucky Ayers, couldn’t fix. And just in time for Harper’s impressive showing at the state tournament and his busy summer.

Harper said he’s got about five or six tournaments coming up over the summer months, including the Future Masters in Dothan, starting today. More than 300 players will be competing, and one could be the next Stewart Cink, who Harper is quick to point out as a past winner of the tournament.

Even with this flurry of activity, he’ll still have time for his therapy sessions on Rolling Hills. Harper will still be a common sight to Daniel when he drives past the course, hitting ball after ball after ball at the bucket-lid targets he’s set on the fairway.

“You don’t burn him out until you start making him do stuff, and you don’t ever have to make Jacob,” Daniel said. “He plays because he wants to.”

And, when he can stand the heat, Bolton will be out there with Harper, providing encouragement and support during practice rounds and tournaments alike.

Just as he has since Harper was a boy.

“He’s still got three more years in high school, and I’ll be there as long as he keeps asking me,” Bolton said. “When he gets to college, I won’t be following him all over the United States, but he can text me or tell me what he’s done.

“Whether he wins or loses, I’ll be right there by his side.”

dmorrison@oanow.com | 737-2568