The Fall Line Golf Club: East

The Fall Line property in central Georgia sits amid a sandy transition zone that spans from Columbus to Augusta. The club’s vast, 5,000-acre site—as rural as it gets in the Southeast—provided near limitless opportunities for the Australian firm of Ogilvy, Cocking & Mead (with Mike Cocking as lead architect), inspiring the concept of two complementary courses, one designed with British heathland accents and one with Melbourne sand belt influences. Opened first, the heathland-inspired East Course ventures through sparse forests of scrub pine with broad, inviting fairways that cascade across long inclines of land. A detour from holes 11 through 15 take play into a highland meadow that provides outward views of the surrounding central Georgia ridges and valleys before the routing ducks back into the pines. As with its ancestral inspiration, playing the ball along the ground on the zippy Zeon zoysia fairways is half the fun as balls can careen onto the wild greens from a variety of angles, and the six par 3s each present unique looks and challenges. The routing is also enigmatic, with no repeating pars until the 12th and 13th holes (both par 4s), keeping the shot options fresh hole to hole.