ATLANTA – Reigning FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland arrived Tuesday at East Lake Golf Club, the same course where he shot 9-under 61 to win the Tour Championship a year ago, and expressed shock at the restoration work that was completed in less than a year.
“It looked completely different than it did before,” Hovland said. “It’s almost like you couldn’t imagine it.”
Xander Schauffele has never shot over par in 28 Tour Championship rounds, including three times in the lowest 72-hole score at East Lake, but he has never won the FedEx Cup. East Lake has become a personal cash machine, so when asked if part of him wanted to throw himself in front of a bulldozer and stop construction, he smiled and said, “100 percent. My caddie would, too. He probably would have gone first.”
He added: “To me it has the same name; it’s East Lake Golf Club. It’s on the same property, has a similar square footage. But that’s about it. I think the only thing that’s the same is the direction of the hole.”
Just hours after Hovland sank his final putt to secure the title last August, Andrew Green, who oversaw renovations at Oak Hill, Inverness and Congressional, oversaw the restoration of the course at East Lake, Atlanta’s oldest golf course and where legendary golfers Bobby Jones and Alex Stirling learned the game.
Tom Bendelow designed the original course at East Lake, then known as the Atlanta Athletic Club. Donald Ross built a new course on the same site in 1915, which remained untouched until George Cobb made changes before the club hosted the Ryder Cup in 1963. Thirty years later, Rees Jones completed a renovation before the course became the permanent home of the Tour Championship, the culmination of the FedEx Cup playoffs, in 2005.
As inspiration for his restoration, Green discovered a previously unknown 1949 aerial photograph of East Lake in digital archives. This photograph showed Donald Ross’s original design in surprising detail and provided clues about the green shapes, bunker shapes and overall topography of the original design.
“We combined that with a series of photographs we had just before George Cobb’s work, before the Ryder Cup, and now we have a complete picture of what things looked like on the ground,” Green said. “At the heart of everything we do is finding ways to respect that past and that heritage.”
Green – who also worked on Wannamoisett, a popular Ross design in Rhode Island – took the East Lake team on a trip to the club in the summer of 2023 to check out its greens. They threw down a cellphone as hole locations and rolled balls on each green. This was the beginning of a collaboration in which Green had the final say.
“Decisions were made on the field with tape measures,” said Chad Parker, general manager and CEO of East Lake Golf Club. “If the ball lands here, it will and the player will be rewarded, and if it doesn’t, it may end up in the rough.”
The greens are undulating, and the size, shape, contour and surrounding run-off areas of each green complex have been improved to give the course a distinctive style and variety. For example, the putting surface on the uphill par 3 2nd hole is over 840 square metres, almost 280 square metres larger than before, and the eerie pin position at the back left is over a depression.
The fairways have been converted to Meyer Zoysia, which plays firmer and results in more roll, allowing topography to play a greater role in the strategy of each hole. All greens have been converted to TifEagle Bermuda, which is designed to provide putting surfaces with improved speed, consistency and overall playability. Many of the bunker shapes were inspired by Donald Ross’s original 1913 design, with the moat bunker on No. 17 being the most notable.
Water was also a focus of the restoration. Green’s team was able to restore a stream between the sixth and seventh holes, and the 14th hole was redesigned.th Hole that included a tee box extension, fairway recontouring and bunker positioning, resulting in the hole being converted from a par 4 to a par 5 for the tournament. Overall, the course was lengthened by less than 100 yards for the Tour Championship, which plays as a par 71 at 7,490 yards.
“It’s basically a new golf course compared to what it was before,” said world number one Scottie Scheffler.
When the final strip of turf was finally laid on June 15, time wasn’t exactly on Green’s shield, so the greens might be a little firm. But one of golf’s grand dames is new again, and whether they’re ready or not, the top 30 in the FedEx Cup will look to pick her apart while chasing a record $100 million bonus pool.
“Oh, there’s definitely nerves, for sure. But I think that’s just part of it,” Green said. “For me, it’s about providing a canvas and letting the tour and the guys who do this week in and week out for these players find the best way to find a challenge, but then also allow them to be successful.”
