Playing Sweetens Cove for the first time this Saturday

I'm playing there next month. Post back after your round and give a report.

I’m thinking about scheduling a round later this summer. Interested to see what you think.

There’s an episode of The Golfer’s Jounal Podcast about Sweetens Cove. Might be a good listen before you go.


Definitely report back!

If you can make it to Huntsville, I’ll get ya to Sweetens Cove, brother.

Have heard some really good things. Jay Revell wrote a pretty good piece on his experience. Super talented writer.

I ended up making a side trip last Monday while driving from Atlanta to Huntsville. It’s an awesome experience, just pure golf, with no frills.

The “clubhouse” is one of those sheds in the Lowe’s parking lot. The bathroom is a por-a-let. The parking lot is gravel. There’s no driving range. But the course is just amazing. Plenty of room to drive it off the tee, but there’s a lot of strategy in play... lines you should take if you want a better angle in, or lines you can take if you want to be aggressive and be rewarded for.
The whole place is capped in sand, so it plays pretty firm and fast, but the ball sits up nice and the turf is really good.

The greens are huge and the slopes are so cool. You can use them to funnel shots in, but they will get you if you miss in the wrong spot. You won’t get mad though. You’ll just laugh and be amazed with how cool the whole experience is.

If it had one weakness, I’d say it’s that of the 5 Par fours, 3 of them are either driveable or drive and pitch. They’re all great holes, but it felt like it needed one more hole where you’re hitting a full iron in. The blind Par-3 didn’t bother me at all. The green on that one is legit 80 yards long and a huge target. It’s a throwback hole.

Before you go, I’d suggest you read up on C.B. McDonald and Seth Raynor, who were “Golden Age” golf course architects who did places like Chicago Golf Club, National Golf Links, Fisher’s Island and Shoreacres Club. That’ll give you an understanding of what they were going for at Sweeten’s.

I played 18 in just over 2 hours, and that was waiting every shot behind a four that wouldn’t let me through on the first go round and playing a bunch of second shots around greens just to mess with the slopes.

It immediately moved into my personal Top 5 golf courses, and probably tied with Pasatiempo as the most fun I’ve ever played.

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The Par 5s, to me, were just meh, although #1 ate my lunch both times.

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Really? I thought the first hole is one of the better Par 5’s I’ve ever played. The tee shot is awesome (I bailed out just short of the right fairway bunker both times), which lead to a semi-blind second. The bunkers up near the green are crazy cool and the green itself is a Redan/Punchbowl Combo. I’m not sure it get much better than that:

Yeah, you could still see some of the punch marks when I played, but they had healed enough to where the ball was rolling good. Agree with you on 9 being a fantastic hole. If I knew how to upload a video, I took one messing around on 9 green. From the middle, I knocked one up the slope about 40 feet. It rolled back to my feet and then down to the bottom about 60 more feet, breaking completely across the green from back to front and then back to the middle on its way down the slope. insane!