Masterful planning in a magnificent spot

The Chattahoochee River flows through Atlanta’s north suburbs, creating a natural buffer amid sprawl abutting more sprawl. Atlanta Athletic Club owns approximately three-quarters of a mile along the waterway. The first and 10th holes of the club’s Riverside Course plunge south toward the river. Until last year, the two holes represented a gigantic golf tease.

The holes traveling to the river didn’t lead to enthralling holes along the river. Atlanta Athletic Club’s greatest natural asset was underutilized. Members knew it. Guests knew it.

Underutilizing a natural feature, whether it’s a body of water, varied topography or sandy soil, can be tolerated. Golf will still be played; most of it will still be enjoyed.

Floundering infrastructure begets less forgiveness within the upper echelons of private golf. Sopping fairways, irrigation leaks, breaks and mishaps, and bunkers overpowered by water all peeve members and guests. Employees waste hours attempting to fix what will inevitably fail again. Violent weather swings, which are common in Johns Creek, Georgia, exacerbate failures caused by age and wear.

The process of improving the Riverside Course commenced with a desire to modernize infrastructure. It ended late last October with members experiencing a journey nature likely always intended. Funded by a membership driven by excellence, coordinated by a highly organized director of agronomy and guided by a passionate architect living a career dream while physically living in a hotel 2.9 miles from the club for most of 2022, Atlanta Athletic Club reinvigorated its Riverside Course.

Finally getting the layout down by the river that the members really wanted required thinking about turf, drainage and irrigation before scenery, strategy and shot values. That’s important to remember. Trying to replicate what Atlanta Athletic Club achieved in an era when supplies such as sod and pipe have never been more difficult or more expensive to obtain requires focus and commitment to a damn good plan.

Atlanta Athletic Club formed a committee to address the Riverside Course in June 2020, around the same time signs of a golf surge stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic started emerging. The surge quickly spread to markets throughout the Southeast, the epicenter of the subsequent construction and renovation frenzy.

But let’s get this out of the way: Atlanta Athletic Club’s decision to address the Riverside Course and the COVID-19 golf surge are unrelated. The vision and wherewithal to enhance facilities has kept Atlanta Athletic Club in existence for 125 years. The club moved to its current campus in the late 1960s, giving it an early start on acquiring fabulous land in what later became one of America’s bustling suburbs. The Robert Trent Jones Sr.-designed Riverside Course opened in 1967; Rees Jones renovated the Riverside Course in 2003.

“With infrastructure and drainage needs we had on Riverside, we just needed to do this,” says John Stakel, the club treasurer and Riverside renovation committee chair. “The primary purpose was infrastructure related. We then said, ‘While we’re at it, let’s do the things that will make this course stand the test of time.’”

The club already had one key part of a renovation team in place: director of agronomy Lukus Harvey. Hired in 2015, Harvey’s entire career has been spent at facilities where big things happen. His first job out of Ohio State involved working as an assistant superintendent during the construction and grow-in at Calusa Pines Golf Club, an earthmoving marvel in Naples, Florida. Harvey was immediately ready to move Atlanta Athletic Club forward, similar to how he helped get big things done in prior top turf roles at PGA National Resort & Spa and Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in southeast Florida.

With a major championship looming in 2021 on the Highlands Course, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, and daily play increasing on the two 18-hole courses and the 9-hole, par-3 course, Harvey relied on past experiences to navigate a looming renovation. The more he delved into planning and plotting, the more he leaned on superintendent Trent Inman to lead the daily duties of maintaining two championship courses. Inman left mid-construction last year to take the head turf job at nearby Dunwoody Country Club and Harvey hired experienced superintendent Shaune Achurch to fill the vacated position.

“I have a lot of weaknesses, like we all do,” Harvey says. “But I think being able to delegate is one of my biggest strengths. Having worked at some other big facilities, you learn real quick to let go. That’s something I’m very comfortable with.”

Renovation discussions intensified when the club compiled a list of 35 potential architects midway through 2020. The Riverside renovation committee scoured résumés, read articles and listened to podcast interviews featuring potential architects. Even a club with more than 1,200 members doesn’t have the time to interview 35 people, so the committee trimmed its list to 10 architects. Six were invited to walk the course and present a formal plan to the club. The club then cut the list in half. Of the three finalists, Oklahoma-based Tripp Davis, a Georgia native who grew up 25 miles from the club, emerged as the best fit to fulfill the club’s visions. The committee informed Davis of its decision during a virtual meeting in December 2020.

Davis adheres to a light workload compared to many of his peers. His philosophy is simple: devote as much of himself as possible to each project. Nobody at Atlanta Athletic Club knew when they selected Davis to guide the Riverside Course renovation that he would keep a room at a nearby Residence Inn for nearly eight months in 2022, from Jan. 8 to Aug. 28. Hundreds of thousands of Marriot points. A once-in-a-million opportunity to work on lovely land owned by a club that helped mold Bobby Jones.

“It was exceedingly gratifying to come to work here every day,” Davis says in a reflective moment during a visit to the club last fall. “I had to pinch myself. I’m sure a lot of us have those moments in our lives where it still hasn’t registered.”

Nearly nine months before Davis, associate Kyle Downs, shaper Jason Gold and an experienced crew from Landscapes Unlimited converged at Atlanta Athletic Club, drainage and irrigation pipe started arriving on the grounds. A wicked winter storm paralyzed Texas in February 2021, and Harvey and club officials noticed the chaos it caused to material procurement and delivery. The club wanted to get ahead of potential snafus caused by unpredictable supply chains and escalating costs by securing prices and delivery dates swiftly after the membership approved the project.

“With the pipe and some of the hard materials, we saw a big price increase coming,” Harvey says. “We did our research. We have leadership on the board involved in some of those worlds, not directly in golf but different industries, and they saw supply-chain things coming.”

One of Harvey’s key takeaways from his initial projects at Atlanta Athletic Club, including renovations to the Highlands Course and practice facilities, was how Atlanta-area traffic congestion and patterns create delivery efficiency challenges. “Even during the best of times, trucking is difficult in this market because there’s not enough time in the day for a trucker to run two loads,” he adds. “We learned to get stuff here ahead of time.”

And tons of stuff would be coming to the club. During an early November 2022 tour of the renovated Riverside Course, Harvey was asked what exactly the project entailed. “Everything,” he says. He pauses for emphasis: “Eh-ver-ee-thing.”

What does the all-encompassing term mean in the case of the Riverside Course?

• Designing and installing a new irrigation system
• Installing more than 40,000 square feet of linear fairway drainage
• Rebuilding and redesigning greens, and resurfacing them with TifEagle Bermudagrass
• Sand capping fairways and sodding the surfaces with Zorro Zoysiagrass
• Sprigging 55 acres and sodding another 30 acres of TifTurf Bermudagrass rough
• Seeding 26 acres of peripheral fescue
• Repositioning and rebuilding tees
• Reducing bunkers from 120,000 square feet to 70,000
• Rerouting six holes to make better use of terrific real estate

Harvey’s team started eradicating Riverside Course turf in October 2021. Construction commenced on Jan. 3, 2022. Ninety-five percent of the materials required for the renovation were on site by last January, according to Harvey. Atlanta Athletic Club officials didn’t disclose the total cost of the renovation, but the club likely saved seven figures by ordering and receiving materials before steep and sudden increases in raw materials, shipping and labor costs hampered construction of all forms.

“We had piles of pipe, fittings and sand,” Stakel says. “We got lucky, but sometimes you make your own luck. We locked in the vast majority of the raw materials almost 10 months prior to the first shovel being in the ground. It was fortuitous for us. I want to thank Lukus for everything he did there.”

The Riverside Course boasts around 1,000 yards of riverfront real estate. Davis comfortably positioned the fourth green, a potentially reachable par-5 fifth hole, tees for the par-3 sixth, a slithering par-4 13th, and a short, option-filled par-4 14th along the Chattahoochee River. The holes are masterful and memorable, neither overwhelming nor pushovers. They are positioned in a peaceful plot capable of putting a mind in a peaceful place.

“We have 1,225 folks out here playing golf with a very wide range of skill sets,” says Kevin Costello, president of Atlanta Athletic Club. “What we really needed was a course that can play to all those skill sets, whether you’re a champion or a duffer. And it was an absolute necessity that we needed to honor the land out here. It’s beautiful. We have a course that flows naturally with the land and frames it up to everybody who plays the course.”

Finding space to maximize its location forced Davis to concoct a new routing. The previous iteration included two par 5s in the first three holes. Davis eliminated the par-5 third hole and transformed the basin into a short par 3 followed by a 398-yard par 4 with a new green along the river.

The previous third hole had a lake in a landing area, into which Davis coincidentally plunked a shot while attempting to qualify for the U.S. Amateur as a 15-year-old. Four decades later, Davis removed the lake. Don’t consider it a personal vendetta, though. He removed two other lakes from the course because he wanted the ridges and river to garner more attention than human-created features. He also wanted to make the course more user-friendly. The result is a stark contrast to the penal Highlands Course.

“We looked outside the box,” Davis says. “That was one of the good things with the membership and working with the committee: they gave us the freedom to look outside the box and at possibilities to make the golf course even better with not being tied into anything existing.”

On an early November 2022 visit, Davis inspected parts of the course with Harvey. The course by the river near his childhood home had reopened and Davis was spending more time at his adult home. Harvey was also spending more time at home. They hit all their targets despite working at a time when uncontrollable factors are amending budgets and schedules.

“Projects are always fun, and they are rewarding,” Harvey says. “But this one was really, really tough … and it’s not going to get any easier.”

The people responsible for hiring them to handle massive jobs were preparing to spend less time at home. The club they loved has become even more of an escape.

“We’re here, we’re done, we’re excited,” Stakel says. “It went exceptionally well.”