Real/Fictional:
Real (2017)
Designer:
Galen Geier
Course Characteristics:
Originally founded as the Atlanta Athletic Club in 1898, the club located in downtown Atlanta and had no golf course. Four years later the club had over 700 members, including John Heisman, the Georgia Tech football coach for whom the famed Heisman Trophy was later named, who directed the club's athletic program of swimming, tennis, basketball and track. With the increasing interest in golf, the club acquired property in the East Lake area in 1904 and engaged Tom Bendelow as the original course architect. The course opened for play on July 4, 1908. Young Bobby Jones, then 6, was present at the opening reception in the company of his father, "Colonel" Robert P. Jones, who was an active member and later served as president and a director of the AAC. Bobby himself served as president from 1946-47. In 1913 the course was completely reworked by the classicist Donald Ross. In 1963, the AAC moved to the suburbs and sold the East Lake property to developers. Five years later a group of 25 members purchased the original course and clubhouse and began operation as the newly-formed East Lake Country Club. Following a long period of deterioration in the surrounding neighborhood, a charitable foundation purchased East Lake in 1993 with the intent to restore it as a tribute to Bobby Jones and the club's other great amateur players. In 1994 Rees Jones, son of the famed golf course architect Robert Trent Jones, restored Donald Ross's original golf course layout and, using the original Philip Shutze architectural drawings, the clubhouse was brought back to its 1926 design and condition. The Tour Championship was first played at East Lake in 1998 and has been held at East Lake 21 times since then. It has been the permanent home of the Tour Championship since 2005. In the fall of 2016 East Lake Golf Club announced that it would permanently reverse its nines.
Other JN6 Courses by the Designer:
Drimlochs Golf Club
Medicine Bow Par 3
Ham Hoc Tour Players Club
Sonora Country Club
The Woodlands Country Club
Piedmont Golf Club
Britannia Golf Links
Crooked Stick Golf Club
Hang em High GL
Hole 1
Hole 8
