“On the road to Augusta” is the caption on the side of the club cap at Cherokee Run Golf Club near Conyers, Georgia.

The caption is correct as Cherokee Run is around a 35-mile drive from Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport and located off the I-20 that links the Georgia capital with Augusta, and from Cherokee Run it is a 120-mile drive to the front gates at Augusta National.

The I-20 is an interstate my colleagues and I have plied many, many times and too many occasions to remember.

Even though it leads to the home of the Masters, it is also one of the dullest stretches of bitumen in the States.  Don’t get me wrong as it’s an excellent road but there’s really nothing to see and you can’t do it more than two hours for fear, and moreso during Masters week, of being stopped by the police for speeding.

Though on this Tuesday I was heading in the opposite direction and two days post the 2012 Masters that had been won by American Bubba Watson who defeated South African Louis Oosthuizen in a two-hole play-off.

You’ll remember Watson’s extra-ordinary second shot from pine straw well right of the 10th fairway, and the second play-off hole, where the left-handed American hooked his shot nearly 90-degrees and landing his ball some 10-feet (3 m) shy of the hole. Oosthuizen had been short with his second and chipped his third to the back of the green and narrowly missed his par putt to give Watson two putts to win. He lagged his first to a foot and tapped in to become the Masters champion.

After all that excitement it was an easy two days ahead of jetting out of Atlanta mid-evening on Tuesday and a game of golf was a great way chilling out.

Club History ….

Though it’s eight year’s since I visited the course this year marks 25th anniversary of Cherokee Run’s opening but it’s not been all plain sailing for the course designed by Arnold Palmer.

In choosing a golf designer, and given the closeness to Augusta National, it was not out place to seek Palmer’s design team to design the course that opened in in 1995, and where a year later the adjacent Georgia International Horse Park hosted the equestrian and mountain bike events for the 1996 Olympic Games.

Palmer was on hand for the official opening and played the with members of ‘Alabama’,  a county and southern music band, who in the 1980s had some 30 No. 1 hits and also were one of most awarded bands in country music history. See the photograph above of Palmer with Alabama’s lead singer, Randy Owen.

 

The noise and fanfare present at the opening turned to despair a decade later when the management company that leased the course sought and were granted the local City of Conyer’s permission to sublease the course but for whatever monetary reasons the course then fell into disrepair and ended-up in the federal bankruptcy court.

It was finally in 2010 when the City stepped-in to take over the running of the course and as Stan Awtrey, a former sports writer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and writing for GolfGeorgia.com, indicating the course ‘was on life support’ and with the greens ‘either dead on their last legs’.

Bringing the course back to life meant closing the course for three months during which time some 500 trees were removed to add much-needed sunlight ahead of its re-opening in December 2010.  The course took a few years to get back onto it legs but on my visit it looked in pretty good condition.

The Golf Course …. 

Cherokee Run boasts the normal mix of four par-5s, a pair on either nine, four par-3s and also two on each nine along with a dozen par-4s and with the course also boasting five tees.

 

The Black measures 7,016 yards, Blue 6,564 yards, Augusta Green 6,083 yards, Gold 5,286 yards and 4,986 yards off the Burgundy or Ladies tees and playing to a par-72 off each tee.

The par 5s vary from the shortest – the 435-yards 14th – to the longest being the testing the 503-yards 18th.

As for the par-4s they range from the shortest being the 267-yards 17th hole and the No. 18 index hole while the longest par-4 is the 427-yard nine and the rated the No. 1 index.

That leaves the par-3s and thankfully just two, and they’re the second and the sixth and off the Black tees, are over 200-yards.  Off the Augusta Green tees the second is 175-yards, the sixth 165-yards, the 12th at 141-yards and the 15th still a challenge at 131-yards.

Cherokee Run is an undulating, heavily wooded golf course with plenty of downhill shots and also plenty of holes to uphill fairways along with the raised greens. It’s a challenging with accuracy a premium and with water coming into play on seven holes, including twice at the uphill 18th.

The 18th hole boasts no fewer than 14 bunkers and two more than any other hole.  It’s a great finishing hole needing to clear a creek to an uphill fairway. Trees block out any decision in wishing to take on the green so it’s all about picking a place on the dog-leg to land your second but also taking out the nine bunkers placed on the right side to catch any errant second shot.

You’re left with third shot guarded by water at the front of the green, and a green guarded by two bunkers very clear in place to catch anything long.

Even getting to the last hole there’s really no short-cuts but on this particular day, and two days after spending a week at the Masters, Cherokee Run was certainly not short of excitement.