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 (many of the members stayed behind) 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 underwent another major restoration following the 2023 Tour Championship, this time by Andrew Green, that focuses on bringing back the course's Donald Ross heritage. Green used a 1949 aerial to inform the replacement of bunkers and the shape of greens, which are much larger and possess a wider variety of hole locations and slopes than before. Almost every hole was dramatically revamped, creating a course that poses driving options and requires the careful calibration of each shot rather than a mere test of straight hitting. The result is a massive jump in our rankings.

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

Druid Hills is one of the oldest courses in Atlanta, along with East Lake and Capital City Club. The course was built in 1912 by H.H. Barker (who also laid out Capital City) in the city's first wealthy suburb, a few miles east of downtown. A compact, hilly course with holes that climb up and down high points at the center of the property, the club has hosted the Dogwood Invitational since 1941, one of the top amateur tournaments in the southeast. Bob Cupp performed a major remodel of the course in the early 2000s that included the construction of an entirely new hole. Bill Bergin, an Atlanta-based architect, rebuilt the bunkers in 2017, creating deep bottoms and steep grass faces that give the design an intimidating look. The strength of the course are two short, side-by-side par-4s, three and 12, with gambling downhill drives that set up short pitch-shot approaches into tricky green, one of which (the third) must carry a creek.

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 in 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.

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.

Brookhaven is the club's "city" course, though when it was built by architect H.H. Barker in the early 20th century, it was far out in the country. The city has grown up around it, and playing here is a pleasant juxtaposition of green-grass nature and town, with the high-rises of nearby Buckhead and the upscale Brookhaven neighborhood on display from various points on the course. The golf is fitted onto a tight property and has seen its fair share of renovation and remodels over the decades, with the most recent in 2009 when Bob Cupp rebuilt and re-engineered the course with new holes, a new routing and a new look, somehow finding space for a large new driving range and room for continual clubhouse and amenity expansion. Brookhaven is a fun shotmaker's course with sporty, creatively contoured greens, great variety for such a small footprint, and a wonderful setup run from the par-5 12th through the par-4 15th. The exaggerated bi-level green at the eighth, however, continues to be a source of controversy.

Years ago, one of the most spirited debates in golf was over who really designed 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, and it seemed possible the club had brought in Finger to finish the job. The final word in that debate didn’t come until recently when architect Beau Welling, during a 2022 remodel of the course, found Byrd’s plans for the course and used them to restore a number of tee boxes that had shifted during previous renovations. Welling also reoriented and added bunkers, expanded and rebuilt greens and, importantly, redesigned the third and 11th holes, long considered the course’s weaknesses. The club also added hydronic systems under each green in order to heat or cool the bent grass as needed. Atlanta Country Club hosted the inaugural Tournament Players Championship in 1974 and the PGA Tour’s Atlanta stop from 1967 to 1996, and was among Golf Digest’s Second 100 Greatest courses until it fell out of the ranking in 2023. Welling’s remodel resulted in fourth place in the 2024 Best Renovation award; we'll see if it propels ACC back into the top 200.

One of the best public options in Atlanta, Chastain Park is in the Buckhead neighborhood on the north side of the city and plays along rolling hills with scenic views of the surrounding skyline. This Atlanta muny hosted the 1948 U.S. Amateur Public Links when it was known as North Fulton Park Golf Course.