Bobby Jones Golf Course
Courtesy dave sansom
Chuck Palmer remembers moving to Atlanta in 1982 and looking for a place to play golf.
Seeing Bobby Jones’ name on a golf course, Palmer made his way over to Northside Drive near Buckhead only to be disappointed.
“You would think with the name, it would be halfway decent. It was awful,” Palmer recalls.
Even Jones didn’t care for the place, once writing to a friend that it was “best left undescribed.”
Palmer’s moment along with the spirited assistance of many others eventually proved transformational for the Bobby Jones Golf Course, which has been at the forefront of a wave of deep-pocketed restorations and renovations of municipal facilities across the country, providing daily-fee access to golfers of all levels.
For all of the attention devoted to new high-end designs at resorts and private clubs, the National Golf Foundation estimates 92 percent of golfers play at daily-fee or municipal courses, which make up approximately 75 percent of the courses in the United States.
In many areas, daily-fee golfers are underserved and local governments have prioritized other things, but a number of projects similar to Bobby Jones Golf Course – The Park in West Palm Beach, Florida, The Patch in Augusta, Georgia, Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia and The Evans at Canal Shores in Evanston, Illinois, among them – have demonstrated the viability and profitability of investing in a course and its community.
Perhaps no place is a better example than the Bobby Jones Golf Course.
“Two things are most important about what has been done here: the inclusivity of golf – the idea of you can have a really nice product – and how you welcome the customers and guests and allow them to enjoy the experience is just as important,” said Josh Deal, general manager of the course and vice president of operations for Bobby Jones Links, which operates more than 40 courses.
“Our driving range is the melting pot of golf. You can see guys with [private] Cherokee Town and Country Club bags next to junior golfers next to a lady golfer next to a guy in scrubs on a break from the hospital. It has become the people’s country club in Atlanta.”
The effort to restore and reinvent the course began in 2011 when Marty Elgison, a lawyer for the Jones family, first met with original course designer Bob Cupp about finding a way to improve the deteriorating course.
The Murray Golf House at Bobby Jones Golf Course
courtesy dave sansom
Three years later, Elgison met Palmer, who was then president of the Georgia State Golf Association, which was looking for a new permanent home and a spot to house the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame. That coincided with the Georgia PGA section looking for a new home, and a plan was hatched to bring those entities together under one roof at a renovated Bobby Jones Golf Course.
A master plan was created and in 2015 architect Jim Chapman was hired to design a clubhouse known as the Murray Golf House, a centerpiece of the project.
The project’s success hinged on getting the support of enough people to bring the vision to life.
“We realized doing this with the city would be a challenge. A lot of donors were concerned given the city’s history and they were reluctant to invest in a renovation project,” Palmer said.
The city of Atlanta transferred ownership of the property to the state of Georgia in 2016 and the Bobby Jones Golf Course Foundation immediately entered into a 50-year lease with the state. The group ultimately raised $36 million from private sources to underwrite the project.
“Everything we do falls under the pillar of serving youth, being welcoming to new and young golfers and working with adaptive and veteran golfers,” Deal said.
The golf course, which Cupp redesigned to be a reversible nine-hole layout to allow for a large practice area, opened in 2018. More than 50,000 rounds were played on the nine-hole course last year in addition to rounds played on an adjacent five-hole short course named Cupp Links to honor the designer, who died in 2016 during the course’s construction.
Cupp Links
The Bobby Jones Golf Course, Palmer said, is the largest user of the Youth on Course initiative, which allows youngsters to play for $5 with the remainder of their green fees being reimbursed by the state golf association.
To accommodate all levels of play, the nine-hole course features eight sets of tees (numbered 1 through 8) allowing it to play anywhere from 3,500 to 7,400 yards for 18 holes.
The driving range, which is Trackman-equipped, sold approximately 79,000 buckets of balls last year and there are four putting greens open to the public, including a putting course named for Georgia Golf Hall of Famer Dan Yates.
The Murray Golf House is now home to the Georgia State Golf Association, the Georgia PGA and the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame. It’s also the site of Boone’s restaurant, named for the father of Augusta National member Jeff Knox, who frequently played as a marker in the Masters.
“It [has been] an extraordinary success,” Palmer said. “The location matters but it’s also the facility we provided. We have a first-class superintendent, head pro, general manager.
“We said if we are going to have these organizations in our building, we wanted the brightest people in our building.”
When The Park was being developed in West Palm Beach, the general manager and an instructor were hired away from the Bobby Jones Golf Course to help get it up and running, Palmer said.
Both The Patch in Augusta and the under-construction Cobbs Creek project near Philadelphia have incorporated aspects of what began in Atlanta, and Bobby Jones Links operates The Patch.
“We feel like our success has inspired others to do similar projects,” Palmer said. “It’s great for golf to see these public courses that were neglected, to bring those courses back and do things to breathe new life into them.”
Deal sees it come to life every day.
“A lot of what you are seeing, which is beautiful, is coming out of Marty and Chuck’s vision,” Deal said. “We have a blueprint for what is happening in the municipal golf world.”
