East Lake Golf Club

I had the incredible opportunity to play East Lake Golf Club during the PGA Tour’s Creator Classic qualifier, and I can honestly say it was one of the most memorable golf experiences of my life. From the moment I arrived, the history and prestige of East Lake were palpable. The course is absolutely immaculate, every fairway, green, and bunker is maintained to perfection. The layout challenges you in all the right ways while still rewarding solid play. It’s no surprise that this place is the permanent home of the TOUR Championship. What truly stood out, though, was the clubhouse. It’s a stunning blend of classic Southern charm and rich golf heritage. Walking through the halls felt like stepping into a museum of golf history, Bobby Jones’ legacy is alive in every corner. The staff was incredibly welcoming and professional, making the whole experience feel first-class from start to finish. East Lake isn’t just a golf course, it’s a pilgrimage for anyone who loves the game. Playing here was a dream come true, and I can’t recommend it highly enough !

Very beautiful course, we attended the PGA tour championship here. It was a very well organized event with vendor areas perfectly placed for a much needed rest as it was over 100 degrees out the day of the tournament. Great job East Lake!!

I went there for the PGA Tour Championship weeks ago, and the course is great. It's ideally located within the city and exceptionally well maintained.

Yes, it’s that good. If you’re fortunate enough to play, soak it up. Next level experience.

Amazing golf experience from tee to bar afterwards. Once you arrive on site the staff are very friendly and make sure you have everything you need. The range is awesome with lots of flags to hit to and the pitching area is great too. Course is amazing, great layout, condition was immaculate, and very challenging from every tee and skill level. Restaurant food and drinks were great and the pro shop had a bunch of items to purchase. Clubhouse was gorgeous with a old school feeling mixed with some modern decor and lots of history and memorabilia stored inside that you should definitely take a look at.

I have had the blessing of playing East Lake a few times. The course is incredible. Even just to walk the course is time well spent. This year the Tour Championship was incredible as well. Thankful to have been there myself.

Beautiful Course. PGA tournament. My dad use to caddie here when he was young. He is 85 now. My husband and grandson were there for the tournament. Enjoyed every moment.

This place was gorgeous. Everything was manicured to perfection. My wife and I were blown away

I wrote my first review for East Lake Golf Club from my perspective as a spectator. I'm writing this second review (an update) from my experience as a player. I got to play this course recently and it was a real treat; truly a magical round of golf. Not to toot my own horn, but I've been fortunate enough to play some great courses like Pebble Beach, Kapalua, Doral, etc. To date, East Lake has been the only course to give me the same fantastical sensations that I experienced when I played the Old Course at St. Andrews (https://goo.gl/Fudnf6). There was something dream-like about our round. I think there are a few factors that contributed to why I felt this way: 1. Like St. Andrews, East Lake is a walking-only course with caddies. (This was a big part of it.) 2. East Lake is steeped in golf history. Of course, not as much as St. Andrews, but the club is quite historic. More on that below. 3. I've walked this course many times as a spectator, starting with my first Tour Championship in 2002. Since then, I've learned to appreciate the course and have wondered if I'd ever get the opportunity to play it. 4. This course is private and exclusive. You either have to know a member or be invited by a member to get on (or play in a special event or tournament hosted by East Lake). As I understand it, East Lake's members are primarily companies. I've heard there are individual members like Arthur Blank and Matt Ryan, but don't quote me on that. One of my coworkers used to be an individual member, but I believe individual memberships were done away with in the 90s when Atlanta real estate developer Tom Cousins purchased the club. I was able to get on thanks to one of my childhood friends who works for a company that has a corporate membership. East Lake is unlike most other private golf clubs and country clubs. All profits from the club go to the East Lake Foundation which was created to revitalize the immediate surrounding inner-city neighborhood. East Lake is the home course of Bobby Jones. He grew up playing here. The clubhouse is like a golf museum and a tribute to Jones. You can spend a lot of time just looking at all of the trophies, paintings, pictures, etc. It has everything from the 1963 Ryder Cup (which was held at East Lake) to the Calamity Jane, the "trophy" given to the winner of the Tour Championship (most recently, Tiger Woods in 2018). We got A+ service from the moment we pulled up to the gate. Our car was valeted and our clubs were taken down to the caddies near the practice area. We each got lockers for the day. I was assigned the Hideki Matsuyama/CSX Transportation locker. The locker room has ginger snaps, an East Lake tradition. The locker room attendant had our non-golf shoes laid out for us when we returned from our round. He also thoroughly cleaned our golf shoes. A bit of trivia: East Lake's beautiful and maze-like clubhouse was designed by Philip Shutze, a Georgia Tech grad who also designed the Swan House in Buckhead (which is where I'm getting married). We had a delicious breakfast in the grill room before heading out to warm up. We started with the practice putting green followed by the practice chipping/bunker area and then the driving range. The practice putting green is definitely one of the nicest practice putting greens I've practiced on. It was perfect and also scenically-located in between the clubhouse and the lake. The caddies sized us up at the range. I have to admit that was a bit intimidating, especially since our caddie was a former PGA Tour pro caddie. His name was Jeremy "Jerry" Rodger. I noticed his Scottish accent right away. He told me he was from St. Andrews. I told him when I played at St. Andrews, my caddie was American; now at East Lake, my caddie was Scottish. He then told me he knew an American caddie at St. Andrews by the name of Oliver "Ollie" Horovitz. Coincidentally, Ollie was my caddie at St. Andrews. That blew my mind. Jerry told me there are less than six degrees of separation in golf. I believe it. Our foursome was assigned two caddies. Each caddie carried two bags. If a caddie doesn't like your bag for whatever reason, they'll move your clubs, balls, etc. into an East Lake bag for the round. Jerry didn't like the way my bag sat on his shoulder so he swapped bags for me. Ransom was our other caddie. As for the course itself, it played just as I imagined. It was immaculate from tee to green. I loved walking on the soft, spongy zoysia fairways. The greens were hard and super fast. Jerry and Ransom knew how to read them like the back of their hands. Their green-reading skills were impeccable. I parred the two par-3s on the back nine, Nos. 11 and 15 (the island green); I'm very proud of that. I ended up in way more bunkers than I'm used to. Walking towards the 18th green, I could only think of the gallery swarming Tiger before his comeback win. I enjoyed every minute of my experience at East Lake and it's a round I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Absolutely RUDE valet attendants. Pulled up and they DID NOT budge! I guess if one is not recognizable, you are not a priority. Haha. I dropped my children off to an event and they couldn't be bothered. I assume that membership has its privileges. Oh well...just observing and make this public. Happy Sunday, December 5, 2021.

If you don't play golf, and you get invited to play here. Go buy a set of clubs and play! This course is something special! The history of this club is long and amazing, but to sum it up. They've done a ton to revitalize the community around the course. Now to golf. Wow, playing with caddy is so much fun and these guys know their stuff. Not only that, but they will tell you about the celebrities they have caddied for and those stories are phenomenal. The PGA tour Championship is played here, too. Lots of fun to watch in person and on TV.

A truly great golfing experience! First class golf course with first class amenities. The staff is awesome and the club house is beautiful.

I've never played East Lake and likely never will. This review is based on being a spectator at the PGA Tour Championship, the culminating event in the FedEx playoffs. East Lake is a beautiful, almost immaculate golf course. Maybe it isn't always that way, only showing its best colors when the PGA tour comes to town, but I suspect it is the rest of the year, too. The layout, the greens, the fairways - all great. Walking the course would be a quite a nice way to spend a few hours even if there weren't all those professionals smacking golf balls around you. The other aspect to comment on is how the club handles the championship event, with all the people, the concessions, the security, the viewing stands and managing the spectator experience. Here, I can compare East Lake to a few other events I've attended, such as the French Open tennis tournament. East Lake Golf Club excels in this respect, too. Watching and following the play is easy and enjoyable. There are plenty of concessions and facilities around the course so you don't have to leave the action long to get what you need. Decent food and drink. Fox Bros BBQ and Goose Island IPA were my choices. If you like to watch golf even a little bit, go to the 2016 PGA Tour Championship at East Lake.

Disclaimer: I am not a golfer. I took a few lessons but just couldn't get past the idea of wearing bermuda shorts and was angered by the fact that they no longer make saddle shoe-style women's golf shoes. However, my dad and my brother are golfers. And they loooooooooove East Lake. So much so that it was here that we took my dad (or, rather, since he's a member, he took himself) for Father's Day brunch. The clubhouse area is lovely: a complete shrine to Bobby Jones and every facet of his life. It's all very old and traditional: this isn't a place to go for those looking for something flashy and in-your-face impressive. But for someone who loves golf, especially the history of golf, East Lake is like a museum. The food was pretty solid but seemed to be pretty typical country club fare. My parents have hosted events here and have always been very pleased so I would definitely recommend it for that, especially if you've got nice weather and can spend time appreciating the true beauty of this place. Which lies, understandably, on the course itself.

East Lake is the permanent home of the PGA Tour Championship. Located in Atlanta with spectacular views of the downtown skyline, It is the home course to the legendary Bobby Jones and the oldest course in Atlanta. Historic yes, but also philanthropic. Proceeds from the operation support the East Lake Foundation. The purchase of the club and course reconstruction was led Atlanta businessman and avid golfer Tom Cousins which explains why it is truly a "golf club" and sincere to the game being a caddie required walking course. The vision was for the club to be a catalyst for change and spearhead neighborhood transformation. As a pure golf club playing here is not only challenging but engenders a more gentile experience of privileged gentlemen golfers and is a first class operation. A par 72 6,469 yard course from the blue markers with gentle elevations, doglegs and well placed sand traps it plays ell for the more experienced golfer as and offers particular challenges for the weekender like myself.

Played East lake last week. Very disappointed with course conditions especially greens. Driving range was great, if the would have had grass to hit off of, Irons off of dirt wasn't what I was expecting. Front side greens were slow bumpy and SANDY. Many had sections roped off due to being unputtable. Fairways were Ok but not the lush fairways. For the cost it was not in the least what I expected. Concession cost was really high. Service and caddies was outanding. But I went for the golf not the ammenities. Stay away until it becomes playable.

How do you do a review of Heaven on earth? I speak of course from a golfers perspective. I have had the opportunity to play on some pretty outstanding Southern California gold courses as well as a world class golf resort in Miami and one in Orlando. In California I have played Torrey Pines, Pelican Hills, Trump National, Emerald Bay, PGA West and many other fine courses. In Arizona I have played TPC Scottsdale, In Nevada, Primm, In Florida, Doral and private country clubs in California, Arizona and Georgia and Kentucky. I have also played a gorgeous resort course in Cabo San Lucas. Why do I mention all this? Not to brag, but to make it clear to the reader that I have played some extremely nice courses over the years which will make this review all the more impressive. In spite of these world class courses, East Lake is head and shoulders above them all. This is the home of the famed Bobby Jones. It is here where he got his start and here where he ended his fabled career. This course is so amazing, the PGA tour has decided to make it the permanent home of the now famous year end Tour Championship. If the PGA ever decided to call for a 5th "major", this would likely be it. The winners purse for this years tour championship was $11.5 million, including the year end prize of $10 million for the Fed Ex cup. To play at such a storied course was just phenomenal. The fairways were in top shape. Every blade of grass perfectly cut. It felt like I was walking on tight carpet. The greens were hard, fast and very true. The best greens I have ever putted without a doubt. Add to that the fact that there are no carts allowed. It is an all caddie environment. I have never golfed with a caddie, so it was quite a treat. These caddies were very knowledgeable, so that made it easy. Well, not easy, but easy decision making. It was an awesome experience to say the least. Almost spiritual! If you are not a golfer, then you will never understand, so don't sweat it. If you are a golfer, then you know exactly what i am talking about. This was an experience I will treasure forever.

This is just a unique experience. I had the pleasure of playing here courtesy of work and this place is wonderful. There is a ton of history in the clubhouse and the course was in great shape. Playing golf with a caddie carrying your clubs is something everyone should try. There are no cart paths and deep bunkers, but the caddies are there to give great advice. I want to go see the Tour Championship played here now.

If you like great conditions, impeccable service, a club steeped in history, and a challenging but fair golf course, then this is your place. If you don't like those things, you have issues my friend. Played thirty six here the other day. Love the course. Love the clubhouse. Really enjoyed every minute of it. Kyle was one of the best caddies I have ever had. The course reminds me of some of the other great golf venues I have played (think Kinloch and Pine Valley having offspring). Couldn't have been happier. I won't offer up any tips on how to play the course because, really, when are you going to play here? And when my buddy and I got done and asked for a cab back downtown...they called us a limo for the same price. Just old-school classy done the right way. And by that I mean their goals of improving the community and spreading golf to all. And, yes, you can skip a ball across the water on nine and still make par. Outstanding.

On #16, the wind is always blowing harder than you think from left to right up by the green, or maybe it's just what I think, as I always end up in that greenside bunker. No matter what. Always. That wind, it tricks me. Or maybe it's because of the fairway slope. Or maybe there's a golf ball magnet hidden in that bunker....

Great day on the course. Bags and shoes were taken care of. Items bought at the shop were put in our lockers. And of course the course was great. They're currently putting in some drainage and other things to get ready for the FedEx Cup, but the greens were awesome.

One of the finest private golf courses in the country to play. Home to Bobby Jones and the original site for The Atlanta Athletic Club.