Chattanooga Golf & Country Club – Tennessee – Best In State Golf Course

Founded in 1896 on the banks of the Tennessee
River, Chattanooga Golf & Country Club engaged Donald Ross in the early
1920s to set out the course that’s still in play today, albeit the modern day
layout was extensively renovated by Bill Bergin in 2005.

Extending to 6,694 yards from the back
markers, the course plays to a par of 71, with only three par fives
on the card at holes 4, 7 and 16. Configured with two returning
nines, the layout’s outward half is routed in an anti-clockwise
direction along the outside of the property with the inward half set
out around a small housing estate in the middle.

Highlights at Chattanooga include the
right doglegged par four 2nd, the run of riverside holes from the par
five 7th to the par three 9th, short par fours at the 11th and 17th,
and the par three closing hole where the home green sits adjacent to
the recently renovated clubhouse.

Bill Bergin kindly supplied this
exclusive comment regarding the new millennium renovation work
carried out on the course:

“The club asked me to restore their golf course to what would feel
like a 1920s Donald Ross course. It was not a pure
restoration. We used an aerial from the 1940s to gather some
information and then we modelled our bunker style after Worchester CC
and Interlachen CC. We rebuilt all greens and bunkers,
re-grassed all fairways and added numerous tees.

It was a major renovation with nothing of importance left untouched.
The course was lengthened by about 300 yards from the back tees and
shortened by about the same amount from the forward tees.

The course is only about 6700 yards long, but it has terrific yardage
diversity. We have two par fours under 325 yards and four over 450
yards. We have a 128-yard par three and a 222-yarder.

The short 17th is a unique hole, playing over an old logging pit, and
we have four holes playing along the Tennessee River. All of my
courses ebb and flow between challenges and opportunities and
Chattanooga is a perfect example of that philosophy.

Every time you play the course it feels and plays a bit
differently.”