Imagine a lonely, battered outpost in an urban wilderness, sharing
its surrounds with razor wire, graffiti scrawls and gunshot sounds echoing day
and night. This is what historic East Lake Golf Club looked like.
To be sure, the skeletal version of our story is a familiar one,
that of modern day golf’s top restoration artist, architect Rees Jones,
restoring what a tired but virtue-laden course. The meat of our story, however,
has nothing to do with bunkers, greens or doglegs. East Lake is more a story of
survival, of resurrection, of hope.
By 1914 Donald Ross had rendered his formidable design skills on
East Lake, providing the course golfers know today. The course would nurture the
talents of not only Bobby Jones, but a slew of other youngsters who would go on
to be champions.
Many thought the 1962 Ryder Cup was the final hurrah for East
Lake. By the mid-1960s, as the area’s demographics changed, many members had
moved to Atlanta’s fast-growing northwest suburbs. An old guard held East Lake
together gamely but inevitably, over the next 25 years, the club’s fortunes
dropped. The surrounding neighborhood sunk even lower. “Little Vietnam,” as it
was known, was 650 federally subsidized, low-income units crammed into 50 acres.
Violence and drug dealing were the norm.
Enter Tom Cousins. A prosperous Atlanta real estate developer,
Cousins had played East Lake as a kid in the 1940s, and the feeling of reverence
he acquired for Bobby Jones and the club in that time never left him. In the
late 1980s, Cousins began a charitable foundation, which dispensed dollars to
the usual causes, but down deep he really wanted to see his money make a
difference. When East Lake became available, Cousins hatched an idea.
