[PHOTOS: Evan Schiller]
When the Tour Championship returns in two weeks to its familiar host venue, East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, it will look anything but familiar.
The club has just completed the most extensive restoration of the course since Rees Jones redesigned it in the mid-1990s when the PGA Tour was negotiating with the club to become a regular host of the event (East Lake has been the site of the Tour Championship continuously since 2004).
This time around the architect is Andrew Green, whose recent reinventions of Inverness Club (in 2018), Congressional’s Blue course (2020) and Scioto Country Club (2022) have helped elevate those clubs in the America’s 100 Greatest Courses rankings. He also orchestrated a major remodel of Oak Hill’s East course, host of the 2023 PGA Championship, in 2019.
Turning back the clock
Green’s work at East Lake, which wrapped up in the northern spring, is being called a restoration, but to viewers, it will appear as a transformation. No holes were re-routed (although numerous greens were shifted) – but little else remains the same.
While East Lake is a historic property – Bobby Jones grew up playing the course, and Donald Ross conducted its first major remodel in 1915 – the golf course felt and played more modern than vintage and bore only a glancing resemblance to the course Jones and Ross knew. The concept of the renovation was to take the course back to an earlier version, one that better embodied the design Ross left behind at East Lake.
Green used an aerial from 1949, more than a decade before architect George Cobb’s revised the course for the 1963 Ryder Cup, to guide the restoration. The photo shows Ross’ bunkering at a smaller scale than what was developed by Cobb, and later, Jones – a style Green interpreted as being deep-welled with steep grass faces based on his knowledge of other Ross courses. The bunkers, repositioned as much as possible to where Ross had located them, have a sharper top edge that give them enhanced definition, and they can cause issues when balls settle too close to the face.
Reading the greens
In the years after World War II, East Lake, like many clubs in America’s south-east, began maintaining two green surfaces on each hole, one with cool season bentgrass that could be played over the winter months, and another with Bermuda grass that goes dormant when it’s cold but thrives in the heat.
Sometimes the two putting surfaces were set side by side, and on other holes, the Bermuda green might be placed in the front section of the green pad and the bent at the rear, or vice versa. Green used these old arrangements to inspire his redesign of the green complexes, using the old double-green outlines to inform the shapes of the new greens, now planted with TifEagle.
The greens, which sit lower and more tightly connected to their surroundings, are also larger and feature expanded perimeter options for hole locations. The putting surface at the uphill par-3 second is more than 830 square metres, nearly 280 square metres larger than previously with a sinister back-left pin placement perched over a swale.
In addition to the retro-refurbished bunkers and greens, Green recontoured the fairways to create more movement and slide. In dry conditions, they’ll run faster with the switch to Zorro Zoysia. Tees have also been adjusted to emphasise more shot shaping, and the course underwent significant tree removal, which in effect draws greater attention to the lovely mature individual species that remain.
The distance has only slightly increased to 7,455 yards (6,817 metres), and the par is now 71 versus 70 because the downhill 14th will be played as a par 5 as it does for the members (the tour moved the tees up and played it as a par 4 during Tour Championships).
The key to scoring well at East Lake remains the same: keep the ball out of the bristly Bermuda rough. But the shots into and around the green will offer more variety with the expanded hole locations, as well as more options for recovery with added short-grass surrounds.
One of the most fascinating changes has been to the 16th green complex. The blind green was formerly turned right to left over a bunker with mounding towards the rear. The putting surface is now narrower and much deeper, and the entire right side and right rear over the green, not visible from the fairway, has been carved away, tumbling eight feet down into a chipping area depression. Players who hunt for pins on the right side have no room to miss and many will be pitching back up from a blind position.
