Atlanta Athletic Club - Private Golf Courses In Atlanta

Friday, August 18, 2017

Atlanta Athletic Club - Private Golf Courses In Atlanta

The Atlanta Athletic Club (AAC), founded in 1898, is a private athletic club in Johns Creek, Georgia, a suburb 23 miles north of Atlanta. The original home of the club was a 10-story building located on Carnegie Way, and in 1904 a golf course was built on Atlanta's East Lake property. In 1908, John Heisman (the Auburn and Georgia Tech football coach for whom the Heisman Trophy was named) was hired as the AAC athletic director.

While it was downtown, its team placed third in the 1921 Amateur Athletic Union National Basketball Championship defeating Lowe and Campbell Athletic Goods 36-31 in the third place game. At the time colleges, athletic clubs and factory-sponsored clubs all competed in the same league.

In 1967 the AAC sold both properties and moved to a big site in a then-unincorporated area of Fulton County that had a Duluth mailing address and would eventually become Johns Creek in 2006. The vacated East Lake site became East Lake Golf Club and was refurbished during the 1990s. It is now the home of The Tour Championship, currently the final event of the PGA Tour golf season.

The AAC hosted the 1950 U.S. Women's Amateur and 1963 Ryder Cup at East Lake, the 1976 U.S. Open, the 1981, 2001, and 2011 PGA Championships on its Highlands Course, and the 1990 U.S. Women's Open on its Riverside Course. The AAC used both of its current regulation courses to host the 2014 U.S. Amateur, with stroke-play qualifying on the Riverside Course and match play on the Highlands Course. The Riverside course, renovated by Rees Jones in 2002, was recognized among the top 10 new private courses in 2004 by Golf Digest.

The AAC has hosted many non-golf events including the first two Southeastern Conference men's basketball tournaments in 1933 and 1934. In 1984 and 1985, the AAC hosted the U.S. Open Badminton Championship. During the 1990s, the AAC hosted the AT&T Challenge, Atlanta's ATP professional tennis stop.

The AAC has two 18-hole golf courses, a health center, indoor and outdoor tennis, a par-3 course, Olympic-sized pool, as well as dining.

Famous members of the AAC include golfers Bobby Jones, Charles R. Yates, Alexa Stirling, basketball player Mark Price, football player and coach Dan Reeves, Daddy Barcomb, football player Matthew Stafford, and Michael Nicklaus, youngest son of Jack Nicklaus. In the 2004 film Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius the AAC was used to film many of the golf scenes.