East Lake Golf Club has been a fixture on the golf calendar for 20 years as the final stop of the PGA Tour season. But the property itself has a fluid history and roots that reach more than a century deep. With another Tour Championship set to start Thursday at the oldest golf club in Atlanta, here’s a timeline of East Lake’s evolution along with a look at the people and events that have shaped the club into what it is today.
1908: A star-spangled ribbon cutting
East Lake shares a birthday with the United States. On July 4, 1908, the course and the clubhouse open. Among those in attendance for the ribbon cutting and a six-year-old Bobby Jones and his father, Robert Purmedus Jones.
1913: Ross arrives
Tom Bendelow — known as the “Johnny Appleseed of American golf” for sprinkling some 600 courses in his wake — designs East Lake’s original course. But his work at the club does not endure. In 1913, Donald Ross is brought in to revamp the layout. In Ross’s rerouting, each nine returns to the clubhouse, something neither did in Bendelow’s design.
1925: Up from the ashes
After a fire consumes the original clubhouse, the club hires the noted architect Philip Shutze to design a new one: the two-story Tudor-style clubhouse he conceives becomes part of the game’s iconography. It serves as a shrine to Bobby Jones, replete with memorabilia from Jones’s legendary career, including a replica of his Calamity Jane putter.
1930: A homegrown legend
Bobby Jones, who learned the game at East Lake and won his first kids’ tournament on the course, makes history by completing the Grand Slam in 1930, winning the the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, British Open and British Amateur. That same year, Donald Ross completes work on a second course at East Lake, known as the No. 2 Course.
1948: End of an era
Bobby Jones plays his last competitive round. Fittingly, it’s at East Lake.
1950: Another championship first
For the first time, a USGA championship is staged in the southern U.S. The event is the U.S. Women’s Amateur. The winner is Beverly Hanson. The host course is East Lake.
1963: The King as Ryder Cup Player-Captain
With all the chatter these days around Keegan Bradley as a potential Ryder Cup player-captain, it’s worth remembering that the last time a U.S. golfer performed that double duty was at the 1963 Ryder Cup at East Lake. The golfer was Arnold Palmer. The result was a shellacking. The U.S. beat Great Britain 23-9.
Prominent real estate developer and philanthropist Tom Cousins buys East Lake. But his goal is not to make it his personal playground. In addition to restoring the course itself (Cousins hires Rees Jones to handle a 1994 renovation), his aim is to revitalize the surrounding community, which, over the decades has slipped increasingly into economic despair. Cousins soon establishes the East Lake Foundation, which, drawing in large part on proceeds from the club, supports mixed-income housing, cradle-to-college education, and a range of community wellness programs. Among other recognition, Cousins is given the USGA’s Bob Jones Award in 2001 in honor of his contributions to the game.
1998: A Hal of a performance
After its inaugural playing the year before at the Champions Club in Houston, the Tour Championship is held at East Lake for the first time. Hal Sutton, a former major winner who has been mired in a decades-long slump, wins.
2001: A U.S. Amateur
The country’s most prestigious amateur championship comes to East Lake, and Bubba wins. Not that Bubba. Bubba Dickerson.
2005: A permanent site
East Lake is named as permanent host of the Tour Championship. Two years later, with the birth of the FedExCup, the event becomes the culmination of the big-money playoff series. The winner is — shocker! — Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods at East Lake in 2005.
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2011: Haas makes a splash
His ball partially submerged in a water hazard by the 17th green (the 8th hole in East Lake’s current routing), eventual winner Bill Haas plays one of the most memorable shots in Tour Championship history, splashing out to three feet to save his par.
2018: Tiger returns
Multiple surgeries and a five-year victory drought later, Woods gets back in the winner’s circle with a dramatic showing at the Tour Championship. The victory is also the 80th title of his Tour career.
2024: Green redoes the greens, and more
Andrew Green, a veteran of multiple Ross restoration project, including Inverness, Scioto and Oak Hill, is enlisted to bring the course back to how it looked and played in Jones’ day. Putting surfaces that had shrunken into ovals, mostly sloping back to front, gain renewed personality, with more rumples, flanges and ridges that open up compelling hole locations. Bunkers take on a more natural look, with grass faces and wispy eyelashes. Hazards are pinched around the fairways, bringing back strategic challenges that modern technology had made obsolete. The reborn East Lake debuted last year and will get its second turn in the spotlight this week.
July, 29, 2025: A life in full
Tom Cousins, who spearheaded multiple restorations of East Lake and founded the nonprofit that helped revive the surrounding community, dies at 93.
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