Photograph courtesy of East Lake Golf Club
As part of the buildup to the PGA Tour’s ultimate contest, officials with the Tour Championship have described East Lake Golf Club’s course renovation by celebrated designer Andrew Green as a pivotal moment and new era not just for Atlanta and the Tour—but for the game of golf itself.
“This year’s competition will be fierce and dramatic,” says Alex Urban, Tour Championship executive director, of the contest pitting the PGA’s 30 best players against each other in East Lake, beginning with practice rounds Wednesday. “Tournament week is the first time players will see the new design.”
But casual fans and East Lake aficionados shouldn’t expect to find drastic changes at the historic links established in 1904—Atlanta’s oldest golf course, in fact—where Donald Ross created his original, celebrated 18-hole design in 1913 and legend Bobby Jones later learned the game. The routing of the holes and general footprint is the same. (For the Tour Championship, the course was lengthened by less than 100 yards and will play as a par 71—up from a par 70). What’s changed is the way the sculptural features of the course—the bunkering, the greens, the tees, the fairways—occupy the landscape. And how all of that helps imbue a fresh sense of place, connection to the course’s urban surroundings, and feeling of a green oasis, according to Chad Parker, president and general manager of East Lake Golf Club.
Photograph courtesy of East Lake Golf Club
“If you look across the golf course—the open vistas, the skyline views, the lake, the clubhouse—[Green] tried to highlight those features as little glimpses through this corridor, or along this tree line. But it wasn’t like we clear-cut everything so you can see the clubhouse from everywhere, and we didn’t plant a lot of flowers and those type of things,” Parker explains. “You’re putting on the fourth green, you turn around, and you see the Bank of America [Plaza] top—I mean, it’s clear where you are. You know you’re in Atlanta. Somehow it feels bigger, but more intimate, if that’s possible.”
Parker says the renovation cost roughly $30 million, funded with a combination of Tour Championship proceeds, regular capital planning and club operations, and membership fees. How Green—the award-winning president and principal architect of A.H. Green Design/Green Golf & Turf—developed his vision for the revived course is sure to become the stuff of East Lake legend.
Green, whose business is based near Baltimore, made a random discovery on the internet while doing unrelated research one day: a 1949 aerial photograph of East Lake Golf Club showing Ross’ design in remarkable detail. That provided guidance for figuring out the former course’s overall topography, green shapes, and bunkers that had been cleaved away in previous redesigns. Where exactly Green found the inspirational photo is a question of lore—“I’ve been here 28 years, and I’ve never seen it,” Parker notes with a laugh—though it was likely part of flyover data documented by the U.S. government in the middle part of last century, perhaps during scouting missions for future interstates.
Photograph courtesy of East Lake Golf Club
Photograph courtesy of East Lake Golf Club
Green’s reverence for—and deep knowledge of—the club’s history, plus his resume and willingness to abide by a relatively tight timeline, made him an easy hire for the course overhaul, Parker says. The work started in September, following last year’s Tour Championship. Green would fly in for weekly Tuesday morning meetings to oversee progress, and by the end of May, the bulk of the job was finished. One notable exception was an expansion of the iconic Tudor-style clubhouse’s western elevation, which added a new porch with four more architectural arches that was still under construction as of last week. Parker says those changes will make for a more picturesque view of the clubhouse as players come down the hole 18 fairway.
East Lake has hosted the Tour Championship since the late 1990s, and it’s been the Championship’s permanent home since 2005, with players vying each year for the FedEx Cup and hefty purses (a cool $25 million of this year’s reported $100 million purse goes to the winner). As for the grass itself, Parker says the renovation was past due and “down to the bones,” with the irrigation system replaced and about 110 acres of fresh sod put in. (True-blue golfing wonks may notice that fairways have been converted from Meyer Zoysia to Zorro Zoysia grass, and greens from Mini-Verde Bermuda to TifEagle Bermuda grass—changes that play firmer and increase ball speed.) Parker says the result is a course that’s more challenging now, but not in a negative way.
Photograph courtesy of East Lake Golf Club
“It can be difficult if you’re in the wrong places. But it’s not like a golf course that has a lot of water or calamity, if you will, if you mishit a shot,” he says. “The way it’s designed, especially around the green complexes, it makes it more fun to play, because you do have options to recover when you get in trouble. That makes it more fun, challenging, and stimulating.”
The throwback, modernized course scores glowing reviews from Ilham Askia, president and CEO of the East Lake Foundation, a neighborhood nonprofit that generates more than half of its annual budget from Tour proceeds.
“It looks absolutely amazing and should provide professionals and amateurs an unbelievable golf experience,” says Askia. “If Bobby Jones and [pioneering women’s golf champion] Alexa Stirling were to return to East Lake Golf Club today, I feel like they’d recognize, appreciate, and love this new beautiful course.”
Photograph courtesy of East Lake Golf Club
What’s new beyond the links?
Alex Urban, Tour Championship executive director, says East Lake’s comprehensive changes have allowed officials to fully reimagine the fan and hospitality experience in 2024.
One addition is The Georgian presented by PGA Tour Superstore. It’s an air-conditioned venue with expansive patio seating positioned on a pivotal section of the course (on holes 8 and 9) that includes food and beverage and views toward the hole 1 tee and famed East Lake clubhouse.
“While on the patio, fans can witness anywhere between 12 and 15 golf shots throughout the front nine,” says Urban.
Elsewhere, course changes allowed the TOUR Championship to implement a new fan hub—The Landing on hole 17’s fairway—along the final three-hole stretch of golf. Within that space, according to Urban, are five different fan venues. One of them with local flavor is called Coca-Cola Cafe, a new pitstop where fans can gulp Coca-Cola Floats this year—including boozy versions for attendees aged 21 and older.
The Tour’s neighborhood impact
For more than 25 years, golf has played a transformative role in revitalizing the historic East Lake neighborhood. Tournament funding each year is channeled toward local initiatives ranging from health services and education to economic wellness programs and affordable housing—which was the plan from the outset.
Neighborhood nonprofit East Lake Foundation was founded in 1995, around the time prominent Atlanta developer Tom Cousins and family purchased and renovated the golf club after years of decline. (Violence was so prevalent in the neighboring East Lake Meadows housing project that it earned the nickname “Little Vietnam,” and some residents reportedly slept in bathtubs to avoid being killed by errant bullets piercing their apartment walls.) Alongside his wife, Ann, Cousins’ vision was to establish a private membership golf club with a nonprofit goal of community investment at its core—and thus the club’s motto, “Golf with a Purpose” was born, according to East Lake Foundation president and CEO Ilham Askia.
Today, the East Lake community is one of five Tour Championship beneficiaries, and since the inaugural tourney in 1998, the Tour has raised more than $40 million for the foundation. One concrete example of the tournament’s impact stands within a long drive of some holes.
The golf club is situated across the street from Drew Charter School’s campus. With support from the Tour, the foundation helps fund Drew’s College and Career Readiness Program, Academic Recovery Program, and Golf Program, and since the inception of the high school, the graduating class has never dipped below a 97 percent graduation rate, according to Askia.
The Tour also boosts East Lake’s mission to help address the area’s affordable housing crisis. As one recent example, the foundation broke ground last year on the Trust at East Lake, a 40-unit project offering for-sale townhomes at below-market prices that’s being built in partnership with the Atlanta Land Trust.
“The Tour Championship’s investment in the foundation helped subsidize the [project],” says Askia, “to ensure that all 40 townhomes would be offered at an affordable rate for homebuyers.”
