Back Acres Country Club is a private 18-hole layout built in 1961 by founder James T. Gabbert, set just east of Highway 55 in Senatobia. The Bermuda-grass course stretches to 6,492 yards and features four sets of tees alongside a full clubhouse with tennis and pool facilities.
History
Back Acres Country Club in Senatobia, Mississippi is a private 18-hole facility in Tate County whose history begins in 1961 when James T. Gabbert founded and built the original nine-hole course — a club that Gabbert opened for play in 1962 and that has developed over six decades into the full 18-hole layout that serves the Senatobia community today. James Gabbert's founding of Back Acres represents the characteristic story of small Mississippi country club development — a local entrepreneur creating the golf and social facility that his community needed without the outside architectural credentials or development capital that larger cities could attract.
Gabbert's initial nine-hole design established the course on terrain 1.5 miles east of Highway 55 in Senatobia, the county seat of Tate County in the north Mississippi hill country between Memphis and Tupelo. The rolling terrain of this corner of Mississippi — part of the broader upland region that separates the flat Mississippi Delta to the west from the Tennessee Valley highlands to the east — provided the natural topographic variety that makes north Mississippi hill-country golf a different experience from the flat Delta golf further west. In 1967, John Darrah was engaged to both add nine new holes and redesign the original nine — a comprehensive architectural intervention that transformed Back Acres from a local nine-hole club into an 18-hole facility of genuine championship dimension.
Darrah's addition and redesign created the 6,511-yard, par-72 layout that defines the course today, with a course rating of 72.0 and a slope of 127 on Bermuda grass playing surfaces. The Bermuda grass fairways and greens provide the warm-season turf appropriate to Tate County's climate, where the northern Mississippi humidity and heat support Bermuda through the long growing season while the moderate elevation of the hill country moderates the most extreme summer conditions. The full country club amenity package that Back Acres has developed alongside the golf course — tennis courts, swimming pool, and dining — gives the Senatobia club the complete private social facility character that serves the community beyond golf season.
Tate County's population center in Senatobia supports the private club membership that sustains Back Acres as both a golf venue and a social institution for the professional and business families who form the core of the club's membership community. Back Acres Country Club's position in the north Mississippi golf landscape — between the Memphis metropolitan area's golf market to the north and the Oxford University community to the south — gives it a regional identity within the hill-country corridor that runs from Tate County through Lafayette County. The club's founding in 1961-62, its 1967 expansion to 18 holes, and its continued operation as a private Tate County institution give it a community history that spans the full arc of Senatobia's twentieth and twenty-first century development.