Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Bobby Jones played his first round of golf here and his last, and the course that raised him now crowns the PGA Tour's season every September. East Lake Golf Club at 2575 Alston Drive SE, five miles east of downtown Atlanta, was established in 1904 when the Atlanta Athletic Club - whose athletics director was John Heisman, of trophy fame - bought a former amusement-park tract in DeKalb County and had Tom Bendelow lay out the city's first golf course. The 18-hole course and clubhouse opened on 4 July 1908 with six-year-old Bobby Jones and his father in the crowd; Donald Ross completely reworked the layout in 1913, and his routing survives beneath everything since. Jones - the amateur who won the 1930 Grand Slam and remains the club's presiding spirit - learned the game on these fairways and stayed a member for life; the Philip Shutze clubhouse functions as a museum of his career. George Cobb tuned the course for the 1963 Ryder Cup, but the surrounding neighbourhood's decline drove the Athletic Club to sell and relocate in the late 1960s, leaving the original course to a member group and, eventually, near-dereliction. The rescue became a national model: developer Tom Cousins bought the club in 1993, had Rees Jones restore the Ross design and the clubhouse to its 1926 condition, and created the East Lake Foundation, which used the club as the engine for rebuilding the surrounding community - mixed-income housing, schools and services that transformed one of Atlanta's most troubled neighbourhoods. The Tour Championship arrived in 1998 and made East Lake its permanent home from 2004: the FedEx Cup finale brings the tour's top 30 players each year, its charitable proceeds flowing substantially to the Foundation. Ahead of the 2024 edition, architect Andrew Green completed a comprehensive restoration guided by newly discovered 1949 aerial photography, returning the course to its Ross-era character. The club remains private, but tournament week opens the gates - a chance to walk the fairways where American golf's greatest amateur learned the game, inside a neighbourhood his club helped rebuild.