GOLF Magazine called Wicker Point a "top-drawer private golf club experience" in its 2025 Best in State rankings, and the course had been open for less than eighteen months when the honor landed. That is the kind of headline that gets repeated at every open house and every dock party on this stretch of Lake Martin. What gets left out of the sentence is that owning a home in The Heritage does not put you on the golf course. It puts you next to it.
Two summers in, The Heritage has settled into a rhythm that looks nothing like the brochure and nothing like the construction-zone version of the neighborhood from three years ago. The Benjamin Lake Club opened to property owners by Memorial Day 2025, and it has now hosted two full seasons of actual Saturdays. Wicker Point Golf Club, the neighborhood's other marquee amenity, runs on a completely separate membership roll. If you live here, you already know which side of that line you're on. If you're just getting to know the neighborhood, the line itself is worth understanding, because it shapes what a typical weekend actually looks like depending on which key you're carrying.
The Address Comes With One Key, Not Two
The Benjamin is the amenity every Heritage property owner gets by default. The two-story clubhouse sits on an elevated cove view and includes a catering kitchen, an owners' bar, and a fitness facility. Outside, there's a saline pool with a poolside snack bar, eight tennis courts, eight pickleball courts, a beach, firepits, and community docks. None of that requires an extra step. If you close on a lot or a home in The Heritage, The Benjamin is part of the deal.
Wicker Point Golf Club is a different arrangement. It's a private club with its own board, and while initial Heritage property owners can apply, membership approval runs through the Wicker Point board rather than through the property closing. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because the two amenities sit close enough to each other that people who haven't lived here yet tend to assume they're one package.
| Amenity | How you get it |
|---|---|
| The Benjamin Lake Club (pool, tennis, pickleball, fitness, beach, docks) | Included with Heritage property ownership |
| Wicker Point Golf Club (18-hole course, clubhouse dining) | Separate private membership, board-approved |
So a Saturday in The Heritage splits into two versions. For every property owner, it starts the same way: a walk or golf-cart ride down to The Benjamin for the pool deck, a set of tennis, or a slow lap around the pickleball courts before the heat sets in. For the subset of owners who also hold a Wicker Point membership, the morning might start on the first tee instead, working through the course's back nine holes that run along the water before looping back for lunch at the clubhouse.
A Golf Course That Didn't Wait to Prove Itself
Wicker Point opened for play in September 2023. By February 2025, GOLF Magazine had already named it the best course in Alabama, a title that had belonged to Shoal Creek and The Country Club of Birmingham's West Course for close to five decades before that. In June 2026, Golfweek's Best modern-course rankings placed Wicker Point at No. 85 nationally, tied with Jupiter Hills Club's Hills Course in Florida and Long Cove, with an average panel rating of 7.23.
Course architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are known for taking their time and letting land dictate design rather than forcing a layout onto a site. The back nine at Wicker Point runs along Lake Martin's shoreline, with several greens set close enough to the water that the course reads differently depending on which direction the wind is blowing that day. For a private club to earn a best-in-state title in its first full year of operation is unusual enough that Wicker Point's own director of golf said as much at the time.
None of that changes who gets to play it. For Heritage owners without a Wicker Point membership, the course is scenery on the drive in, not a Saturday tee time. That's not a complaint about the neighborhood. It's simply the shape of the place, and it's worth knowing before you assume every amenity photo in a listing applies equally to every address.
The Boat Ride Math
The Heritage sits on Young's Basin, a section of Lake Martin that Russell Lands developed more recently than its older neighborhoods further south. From a Heritage dock, the drive times by water tend to run like this:
- About five minutes to Peanut Point, one of the lake's more recognizable landmarks
- Roughly twenty minutes to the Chimney Rock area, since the route runs south and around The Ridge
- A separate northern route toward River North Marina, Boondocks at Bay Pine, and Wind Creek
By land, The Heritage sits close to Willow Point, one of Russell Lands' original developments from the 1970s. By water, the two neighborhoods are on opposite sides of the lake, and getting from one to the other means passing under the Kowaliga Bridge. It's a reminder that proximity on a map and proximity on the water are two different measurements here, and residents plan their Saturdays around the second one more than the first.
Dinner Is a Drive, Not a Walk
The Heritage doesn't have its own restaurant row, but Russell Crossroads sits just down Highway 63, close enough for an easy evening drive. The town center includes Catherine's Market for picnic supplies and gourmet groceries, Fanny's for a casual breakfast or lunch, BRU 63 tucked inside Catherine's Market for coffee and a slower pace, and SpringHouse for the more formal end of the evening.
SpringHouse sits on a hillcrest with views over pastures and pine forest toward the lake, and the menu leans on regional and seasonal ingredients rather than a fixed rotation. It's the kind of place a Heritage resident might book for a birthday dinner or an anniversary, not a Tuesday night stop. Fanny's and Catherine's Market handle the rest of the week, the kind of errands that don't need reservations.
The Marina That Isn't Built Yet
Here's the detail that tends to surprise people who assume a neighborhood this far along has all its infrastructure finished. The Heritage still doesn't have its own full-service marina. Russell Lands has described one as a future planned amenity near the gated entry, intended eventually for owners who want a place to store their boats during the off-season. For now, residents rely on the community dock complex included with The Benjamin, plus the existing Russell Marine locations elsewhere on the lake for fuel, service, and dry storage.
That gap doesn't make The Heritage feel unfinished so much as it makes clear how recently this stretch of shoreline came into use. The golf course opened in 2023. The lake club opened in 2025. The marina is still a line item on a future map. Neighborhoods built out over fifty years tend to have every piece in place because there was time for all of it to happen. The Heritage is still filling in its last few blanks, and residents here have gotten used to checking which amenities are live and which ones are still marked "planned" before they build a weekend around them.
That's the real thesis behind a Heritage Saturday right now. The neighborhood reads as a single luxury address from the outside, but living here means understanding which amenities came with the deed and which ones came with a separate application, and which ones haven't been built yet at all. It's a more interesting place to live because of that layering, not despite it.
If you're weighing what a property in The Heritage would actually give you day to day, from The Benjamin's pool deck to a Wicker Point membership application to the boat ride out to Peanut Point, Ashley Chancellor at Lake Martin Realty can walk you through exactly what comes with which address. Find Your Lake Martin Home.
