Eagle Point Golf Club

From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten:

I played Eagle Point Golf Club, a Tom Fazio design, soon after it became ranked on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest but before it hosted the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship as a one-time substitute for Quail Hollow Club, which hosted the PGA Championship that summer. I walked it with caddies, Director of Golf Billy Anderson and one of the club's founders (and later president) Bobby Long (who was also green chairman at Seminole and a member of Augusta National.)

Just before we teed off, golf architect Andrew Green came over and introduced himself. We'd never met. He was designing a short-game facility for the club. Though it may seem strange that Fazio's firm wasn’t retained to do that, it helps to know that Andrew’s brother, Sam, was Eagle Point’s course superintendent at the time.

Eagle Point is a beautifully rolling, pine-lined Augusta National clone with huge immaculate greens (bentgrass back then, Champion G12 Bermudagrass now) and gorgeously shaped bunkers which, like at many Tom Fazio designs, seemed to have fully interchangeable parts. I didn’t dislike the look, but I didn’t go head over heels over it, either. Mainly because I’ve seen it all before. The ninth had a wind-blown Wild Dunes vibe to it, the 10th had the long-range view of a Galloway National hole, and the par-5 18th seemed patterned after the seventh at Quail Hollow.

When we got to the 13th hole, I remarked to Bobby Long that I liked how Fazio’s people had dug this huge irrigation lake, piled up all the soil into a massive hillside and planted mature pines all over it to make it look like it’s been there forever.

“Oh, no, you’re wrong,” Long said. “That hill has been there forever.” Billy then corrected him. “Mr. Long, this was a pasture. They did create that.” Long was surprised, then asked me how I could possibly know that when I’d never been on the property before. (I was tempted to ask him how he, as a club founder, had never found his way back to that corner of the property during construction, but I resisted.)

Walking up the last hole, Long asked me if I’d played Fazio's Alotian in Little Rock, and I remarked that I had with Warren Stephens, who was nice enough to then sponsor me at Augusta National. “You’re a member at Augusta National?” Long gasped. (I wish I could recreate in print the tone of astonishment in his voice.) No, no, no, I said. He sponsored me for a weekend of golf there back in 2005. “Oh,” Long said, as he looked at my Dockers khakis and mis-matched socks. Clearly, he was temporarily stricken by the fear that Augusta National had suddenly and drastically lowered its membership qualifications.