This year's survey rated the top 330 MSAs in terms of access to golf (45 percent of the total score), weather (25 percent), quality of golf (15 percent), and value (15 percent). We put an increased emphasis on weather (temperature and precipitation) this year.
Auburn-Opelika shines in the weather category, of course. Average daily high temperatures dip below 60 degrees only in December and January, and only barely then. With a burgeoning metropolitan area already filling up with all the industry, shopping and social amenities that big-city Atlanta offers (100 miles away), an education system that ranks among the top in the nation, and home prices that are nearly 25 percent below the national median, Auburn-Opelika has become the fastest growing region in the state and the fastest growing golf metro area in the country. (It has quadrupled its golf supply in the last 10 years with two new semi-private courses, but wasn't on our list in 2002, the last time Golf Digest ranked the best cities for golf in America.)
As longtime golfer, lifelong Auburn resident, president and CEO of AuburnBank Bob Dumas puts it, "Would I say this is a golf town now? Most definitely. We're a little spoiled, and we want it to stay that way."
Still, for all its rapid growth, Auburn and Opelika remain true to their small-town birthright. It's still the kind of place where they'll make you the best-tasting fresh-squeezed lemonade on the planet one glass at a time, like they do at Toomer's Drugs. It's still the kind of place where a family says grace before digging into their biscuits and gravy at Chappy's Deli, and it's still the kind of place where when a stranger walks into the Winn-Dixie looking lost, four people will come up and ask him if he needs some help, and only three of them will be employees. Those intangibles don't exactly factor into our survey, but they ensure that we've selected a worthy winner.
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