Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from Global Golf Post‘s Monday magazine.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA | When players start arriving for this week’s Tour Championship, they will drive into the front gate of what is unmistakably East Lake Golf Club. The Tudor-style clubhouse; the centerpiece lake that bisects the front and back nines; the holes set in all the same places on the 178-acre rectangular plot in the middle of a once-blighted but revitalized neighborhood east of the downtown skyline – it will all look immediately familiar to the players who have finished their PGA Tour season here year after year.
But once the golfers set foot on the course, they’ll be in uncharted territory. This East Lake golf course isn’t the same East Lake golf course they left last August when Viktor Hovland sailed past Scottie Scheffler to win the FedEx Cup. The routing is the same, but everything else – the greens, tees, bunkers, fairway contours and grasses – is completely different.
It could be very disorienting for someone such as Xander Schauffele, who seemed to have East Lake figured out with the low 72-hole score three times in seven starts while never shooting over par in 28 Tour Championship rounds. He’ll be starting his course knowledge this week from scratch just like everyone else.
Architect Andrew Green, the hottest name in today’s course-makeover game along with Gil Hanse, gave East Lake the same treatment he delivered at Congressional Country Club. He reinvented a course on top of an existing footprint and took it from stale to fresh. The architectural pedigree at East Lake includes Tom Bendelow, Donald Ross, George Cobb and Rees Jones, but it is now a Green design using Ross as his muse in an effort to update a classic layout in the manner he did at Oak Hill, Wannamoisett, Scioto and Inverness.
Green completed the entire renovation and has the course tournament ready in one year.
“This restoration marks the beginning of a new era for East Lake Golf Club,” said Chad Parker, the club’s president and general manager. “The golf course is challenging, interesting and visually stunning. I am very proud of the immense effort by our team to complete this project given the timeframe allotted. I want to thank everyone involved in the planning of this project and most importantly, our membership for the faith they had in our decision to do the work.”
A little history lesson on East Lake’s evolution. It was originally designed in 1904 by Tom Bendelow, who took three years to get the course complete. Only six years into operation in 1913, however, the club hired Donald Ross to completely rework the original design and create the basic routing that still exists more than a century later. Before it played host to the 1963 Ryder Cup, George Cobb was brought in to renovate it. Then after years of neglect before Tom Cousins bought the club and led its revival, Rees Jones was hired to restore the course in 1993 and to touch it up before the Tour Championship era and the 2001 U.S. Amateur.
Immediately after the 2023 Tour Championship, Green set to work on reimagining East Lake using as inspiration a previously unknown aerial photo from 1949 before any renovations were made to Ross’ design. The photo offered surprising detail that provided guidance on green and bunker shapes as well as the overall topography of the original layout.
Green’s mission was to preserve the rich heritage of Bobby Jones’ home club while incorporating modern enhancements to challenge today’s golfers. “There’s a tremendous obligation to make sure that all the great things that have been done for this community are protected and enhanced by this project,” he said.
Every green complex is completely new and bears no resemblance to what was left there by Rees Jones. Some are larger, some smaller, some squared off in corners and some relocated from their former positions. All of them are filled with interior undulations and surrounded by new bunkering and shaved run-off areas.
The par-4 fourth green is shifted well to the right of its former location, changing the direction of the approach, and the par-5 sixth moved 50 yards right to create – along with the tee boxes moved in the same direction – a more sweeping uphill boomerang-shaped par-5. The eighth green is moved closer to the tee and will likely be used as a drivable par-4 one day during the Tour Championship. Several others are pushed back to create a little more length (it maxes out only 100 yards longer than the previous layout but will play as par 71 instead of 70).
Players will find a new array of grasses to handle. Fairways have been converted from Meyer Zoysia to Zorro Zoysia, which plays firmer and will lead to increased roll. The green surrounds and runoff areas are Prizm Zoysia while the greens themselves have been converted from MiniVerde to TifEagle Bermuda.
Like at Congressional, Green took out hundreds of trees across the property, making the course feel more open and roomy, with views from one end to the other. With the absence of trees where there used to be on the perimeter of many holes, Green has sprinkled the rough in landing areas with hummocks to try to keep players honest. The diminished canopy will pose a challenge for Tour Championship patrons trying to find shade to escape the relentless sun on days forecast to be in the 90s.
The topography, bunkering and green changes are apparent at every turn, allowing for the terrain to play a greater role in the strategy of each hole.
“We really wanted to try to get the player to feel like they’re playing more over the natural ground. And that meant that we shaped or reshaped fairways to be more natural.” – Andrew Green
“We really wanted to try to get the player to feel like they’re playing more over the natural ground,” Green said. “And that meant that we shaped or reshaped fairways to be more natural.”
The green that will greet players on No. 1, for instance, is two-tiered – low on the left and high on the right – that basically converts what used to be the summer and winter greens from the Ross era into one heaving putting surface.
The green at the par-3 second is massive – about 50 yards deep – with interior ridges and tricky little roll-offs that will test the players.
Nos. 3, 4 and 5 used to feel a little like playing the same three adjacent par-4s in a row, but now each has its own distinctive movement and characteristics. The fifth used to be a dogleg left in Ross’ design, so Green moved the tee box well to the left of its previous position on the straightaway hole and brought the dogleg back and enhanced a massive oak at the elbow.
The tee box at the seventh offers a stunning downhill view toward the Atlanta skyline in the distance, with trees cleared out revealing the natural spring and creek that feeds the lake between Nos. 6 and 7.
The par-3 ninth – originally the finishing hole – has been shifted for a sharper angle over the water (the tee box is positioned where the former eighth green used to be) into a target much shallower than before, with a steep shaved run-off between the deep bunker on the left front to another bunker back right.
Every hole on the back features dramatic new elements that will require players to learn new lines of attack. A few of them in particular stand out.
The 12th, for instance, has the fairway much more aligned along the adjacent road and opening up to an approach from the right into the adjusted green site instead of the left as it was before. Several modifications were made to the 14th hole, including tee expansion, fairway recontouring and bunker positioning, to allow it to be played as a par-5 for the Tour Championship instead of a long par-4.
The peninsula green on the par-3 15th no longer has a bailout bunker on it and no grandstand behind it, making it appear even smaller than it is. The finishing par-5 18th has had the lake adjusted both toward the tee and green, requiring a more exacting layup or longer approach into a rebuilt green complex fraught with interesting new perils for missing in the wrong place.
“This course restoration will provide a worthy test for players at every level of the game, from PGA Tour players to East Lake members.” – Alex Urban
Two of the most compelling historical elements were built into Nos. 16 and 17. Green restored the original trench bunker on the left on 17 and took away the cross bunker in front of the green, allowing players to take a run at driving it when the tee plays forward.
On 16, the citadel green is even more prominent than it was before, with a cliff-like shaved falloff on the right side that will make a couple of the pin placements quite the challenge to attack. The drastic shading is visible in the 1949 aerial photo, and Green read a Bobby Jones description of missing it right as the “pit of despair.”
“I’m doing that!” Green excitedly said when he put the pieces together. His remake certainly delivers.
The scope of the renovation is striking and is sure to garner a lot of reaction when the top 30 players on the PGA Tour get a look at it this week.
“This course restoration will provide a worthy test for players at every level of the game, from PGA Tour players to East Lake members,” said Alex Urban, the Tour Championship’s executive director. “Fans onsite and around the world will witness these changes first hand at the Tour Championship when the course is put to the test by some of the best athletes in the world.”