Best golf courses near Atlanta, GA

The design collaboration by amateur star Bobby Jones and golf architect Robert Trent Jones (no relation) was meant to recapture the magic that the Grand Slam winner had experienced when he teamed with Alister Mackenzie in the design of Augusta National. But Trent was an even more forceful personality than the flamboyant Mackenzie, so Peachtree reflects far more of Trent’s notions of golf than Bobby’s, particularly in designing for future equipment advances. When it opened, Peachtree measured in excess of 7,200 yards, extremely long for that era. It boasted the longest set of tees in America (to provide flexibility on holes) and the country’s most enormous greens (to spread out wear and tear). As it turns out, Trent was a visionary, and decades later other designers followed his lead to address advances in club and ball technology.

The North Course at Cherokee Town & Country Club in Atlanta is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Georgia. Discover our experts reviews and tee time information

Tom Bendelow actually laid out the original course at East Lake, back when it was known as Atlanta Athletic Club, and that was the layout upon which Stewart Maiden taught the game to the now-legendary Bobby Jones. Donald Ross basically built a new course on the same spot in 1915, which remained untouched until changes were made before the 1963 Ryder Cup. When Atlanta Athletic moved to the suburbs in the late 1960s, the intown East Lake location fell on hard financial times until being rescued in the 1990s by businessman Tom Cousins, who made it a sterling fusion of corporate and inner-city involvement. Rees Jones redesigned most holes beginning in the mid-90s, making the course more reflective of his views of championship golf. After the PGA Tour reversed the nines for the 2016 Tour Championship (flipping the unpopular par-3 finish into the ninth hole), the club made the new routing permanent for regular play. East Lake will undergo another major renovation following the 2023 Tour Championship, this time by Andrew Green, who will highlight the Donald Ross heritage.

The South Course at Cherokee Town & Country Club in Atlanta is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Georgia. Discover our experts reviews and tee time information

Fueled by $28 million in donations and naming rights, Bobby Jones Golf Course is a remarkable re-imagination of an exhausted and dangerously tight course in Atlanta. The Bob Cupp design offers a reversible nine-hole course, elite practice facilities, weekly camps and clinics for kids, instruction and clubfittings and a restaurant with striking skyline views.

Dunwoody is an example of the benefits of smart renovation. The club was established in the 1960s in the countryside north of Atlanta as the suburbs were quickly expanding that direction. It was a nice neighborhood country club with a perfectly fine course designed by Willard Byrd, who was one of the top regional architects working in the southeast in the 1960s and 70s. Over time, like all courses, the trees thickened and the golf features dulled, making the golf ordinary. Enter Atlanta-based architect Bill Bergin, who remodeled the course in 2013 by thinning excessive trees, expanding putting surfaces, creating more room in the fairways and giving the bunkering a more distinctive look with vertical grass faces and strong horizontal top lines. Though he couldn't cure the awkwardness of the unfortunate fifth hole, a 6-iron/8-iron par 4 that bends 90-degrees right, his work breathed new life into the wonderful, rolling piece of land with a kind of centralized core routing that later became increasingly rare in the Atlanta market. Once sleepy, Dunwoody Country Club is now a sleeper and well worth seeking out when in the region.

For over a decade, the most spirited debate in golf was over who really designed the really fine Atlanta Country Club. Both Willard Byrd of Atlanta and Joseph S. Finger of Houston claimed the honor. Both lobbied Golf Digest hard for the architectural credit, but neither provided much supporting documentation. Both architects are deceased now, and from what we can piece together, Byrd landed the original contract in the early 1960s, but was still more land-planner than course architect in those days, so the club brought in Finger to finish the job. We give them both credit for this hilly, strategic design, a solution neither architect would likely have accepted. Atlanta resident and former Jack Nicklaus associate Mike Riley remodeled the course in the early 2000s and his work helped put the course back in the America's 100 Greatest Courses ranking in 2003 after it had fallen off in 1997. Now architect Beau Welling is working with the club, and the results of his renovation will be revealed in late 2023 or early 2024.