Rees Jones is quick to concede he and co-designer Bill Bergin didn’t have to dig deeply into their toolbox of artistic imagination when laying out their newest creation at McLemore called The Keep.
The magnificence of the course in northwest Georgia, about 40 minutes south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, was already there, embedded in the topography along the eastern edge of Lookout Mountain waiting to be discovered. Like stumbling across a Rembrandt in the attic, they simply had to clean it up and unveil it.
“If we wandered around all of Lookout Mountain looking for the most ideal site, we couldn’t have found a better one,” Jones said. “The holes were there to be found. There’s nothing quite like it in the game of golf, in my mind. Most of your mountaintop courses are in the valley looking up to the severe terrain. In this case, we’re on top of the mountain with unlimited views.”
The result is a spectacular layout with numerous cliff-edge holes that is drawing comparisons with many of the iconic courses around the globe. Names such as Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines, Old Head and Cabot Cliffs are often mentioned, the difference being those are oceanside layouts while The Keep is considered a headlands course, where the mountain meets the sky at the southern edge of the Appalachians.
Jones firmly believes The Keep will become the new standard once the course opens in mid-September.
“I think what we're going to find is that, at some point, this becomes the bar where everything else is now being compared to this,” Jones said. “When you first come to play, you're going to need two things: You’ve got to bring your camera and your ‘A’ game.”
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