Sweetens Cove Golf Club

The verdict

Sweetens Cove is proof that nine holes on an unremarkable site can become a destination if the design is brave enough. Built by the partnership of architect Rob Collins and shaper Tad King on the remnants of a struggling course in South Pittsburg, it opened in 2014 with almost no budget and no fanfare, and within a few years it had become one of the most acclaimed modern courses in the country. The pair took inspiration from the boldness of golden age design and pushed the greens to an extreme, vast, heaving, multi tiered surfaces that turn a short course into an endlessly fascinating examination.

For the traveling golfer this is a bucket list nine, a course you walk in a loop or two and replay in your mind for years. It is public, walking only, and unpretentious, with a story to match, the underdog course that earned national acclaim and later drew an ownership group that included Peyton Manning, Andy Roddick and Jim Nantz. The genius is in the green complexes and the many routings, which let you play the nine a different way each time, and folded into a Tennessee golf trip it is the round that golfers talk about long after they leave.

The holes worth the trip

The greens are the whole story at Sweetens Cove, and they are like nothing else in everyday American golf. Collins and King built surfaces of enormous scale and movement, with deep tiers, swales and fall offs that make the approach and the putt the heart of the challenge. A green can be sixty or more yards deep, so the same hole plays completely differently depending on the flag, and reading the contours correctly is the difference between a tap in and a putt off the surface. It rewards creativity and punishes the timid, and it never plays the same way twice.

The routing is the other marvel. The nine is laid out so it can be played in numerous combinations, with alternative tees and angles that let a golfer take on a hole from several directions, so a single loop can feel like a new course on the second time around. The rugged, rumpled fairways feed into the greens in ways that reward the ground game, and the lack of trees and water on much of the property means the wind and the firm turf are the defenses, in the spirit of the great open courses that inspired it.

At a par 36 of about 3,300 yards over nine holes, Sweetens Cove is short on the card and inexhaustible in practice. The defense is the greens, the contours and the imagination required to handle them rather than length, which is exactly why architecture lovers travel so far to play it. Walk it twice, play it a different way each loop, and it becomes clear why a tiny Tennessee nine became one of the most influential courses of the modern era.

Where to stay nearby

Sweetens Cove sits in the rural Sequatchie Valley, so most visiting golfers base themselves in Chattanooga about forty minutes east, where the hotels, dining and riverfront attractions make a comfortable anchor for a golf trip. Chattanooga gives the easiest air access and plenty to fill the evenings, and it puts a clutch of fine courses within an easy drive.

The nine pairs naturally with the best of southern Tennessee golf. Combine a couple of loops at Sweetens Cove with the Pete Dye amateur shrine of The Honors Course near Chattanooga and the Tom Fazio championship golf of The Golf Club of Tennessee over toward Nashville for a trip that spans the spectrum of the state's golf.

Looking for a base? See our recommended hotels and resorts near Chattanooga.