36 in 36 at Pursell Farms
Be Where Your Feet Are
by Maxx Delaney
It’s 10:30 am on a Wednesday morning in Birmingham when James rolls up to the arrivals curb and pops open the back of his Suburban. It’s packed to the gills with golf clubs, water, beer and lunchmeat (plus a couple cartons of berries–evidence of James' newfound fatherhood). But the real difference in the cargo of the car was the rack of brand new shirts and shorts hanging crosswise in the back, the first press of Juniper and James apparel. James, smiling as the back hatch rose to reveal the clothes, had become a traveling salesman of his own making, taking this first run of J&J from Gruene, TX to an investor meeting in Atlanta and now to Birmingham for the first official photoshoot.
We head south out of Birmingham and drive for just over an hour, talking mostly of our golf games. Shots we can’t hit. Clubs we want to buy. Rounds we’ve had and may never again.
But as we pull into the property of Pursell Farms, nestled in the hills and valleys of Sylacauga, our thoughts only steer us in one direction–past the just-cut hay striping the pasture, through the warm greeting of the gatehouse attendant, beyond a herd of longhorns on high ground, and onto the fairways and greens of FarmLinks, the course inside Pursell Farms.
Of course, it can’t be that easy. We had to meet the rest of our guys. And check into our farmhouse. And pickup a cherry red 1956 Ford F100 for the weekend. And get coordinated on the plan for the week. And shoot a little behind-the-scenes footage of James picking out all of our outfits for the week. And then shoot a little more footage of us changing into said outfits. But eventually toes started tapping and hands started gripping imaginary clubs and soon enough we were stepping onto the first tee box of Farmlinks. Golfing at last.
We play a twilight twelve, stopping every so often to get a photo or video of one of us looking like we hit a better shot than we actually did. But it was easy to look like a pro at Pursell Farms. Every hole was practically built to be a backdrop. The first few playing flat in a valley until you’re brought high into the hills for views I didn’t know Alabama could provide. One of their crown jewels, the par 3 5th called Hangtime played hundreds of feet downhill, and made for some of the best photos, and shots, of the trip. Just before sunset James made the first birdie of the week, which is only right, and we called it a day there for an early dinner and a little sleep before our sunrise wakeup.
And the sun rose hot and early. We got into our Day 2 outfits and hopped in the truck, ready to carry out a vision that’s been in the works for as long as the brand has. It was a simple idea for a photo that James shared on one of our first calls–a man in the bed of his old truck, hitting range balls at a flag in the distance. So we pulled the Ford up to the bank of a pond beside 17 green, itself another downhill par 3, and rolled out an astroturf mat in the back of the bed. It was a 103 yard shot with a wispy tree branch hanging about wedge-high and halfway between the truck and the flag. We could have spent all day there, throwing wedges over the branch and onto the green, betting $5 on closest to the pins, but eventually the grounds crew came to recut the hole, and so we moved on to breakfast at the clubhouse and our 8am tee time.
Martin Pursell, a friend of James and the head of marketing at Pursell Farms, joined us for our morning round. We plodded along, stopping often in the name of content. It was hard to remember, at times, that the content is what we were here for–especially when you’re 108 yards out licking your chops at an easy pin. But at the turn, once we had gotten our morning’s fill of photos and the light got too harsh, we put the cameras away and played some real golf. (Ok we didn’t put all the cameras away.)
Starting on 10, we played a modified 5-man wolf–meaning the wolf and their partner would play against the three remaining players. Carryovers. Hammers. Birdie doubles. Grand visions of taking all of my friends’ money. But in the end it was Martin who walked away with it all, through a combination of knowing the course so well and generally being a better golfer than the rest of us. For his hospitality he more than deserved it. Every minute we were on the Pursell Farms property felt like we shouldn’t be any place else. And it seemed to share an ethos with Juniper & James: always in a rhythm, never in a rush.
