Atlanta Athletic Club: Riverside Course

The Atlanta Athletic Club's second championship course, Riverside was designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. when the club relocated from East Lake to the banks of the Chattahoochee River in the late 1960s. A full 2022 renovation by architect Tripp Davis rebuilt every hole, green and bunker while preserving the routing's place alongside the river.

When the Atlanta Athletic Club sold its original East Lake property and relocated north of the city in the late 1960s, it commissioned Robert Trent Jones Sr. to build a 27-hole golf complex on a new site alongside the Chattahoochee River in what is today Johns Creek, Georgia. Jones's work opened in 1967 and was eventually organized into two eighteen-hole courses: the Highlands, which would go on to host the 1976 U.S. Open and multiple PGA Championships after extensive Rees Jones renovation work, and the Riverside, which drew its name from its setting along the Chattahoochee.

For its first five decades the Riverside Course lived in the competitive shadow of its Highlands sibling, serving as the day-in, day-out member course while the Highlands hosted national championships. That relationship changed in the early 2020s, when the Atlanta Athletic Club engaged Tripp Davis, ASGCA, to completely re-envision the Riverside Course. Davis and his firm, Tripp Davis and Associates, were tasked with three objectives: update the course infrastructure from tee to green; accentuate the riverside terrain in a more natural, less manicured way; and elevate the layout's playing interest for both members and competitive players.

Construction, carried out by Landscapes Unlimited, began in 2022. Davis rebuilt and reshaped every hole, rebuilt every green site and every bunker, and in the process redesigned the routing, creating several new holes that tie more closely to the river corridor and the property's natural landforms. The fully renovated Riverside Course reopened for member play in November 2022.

Industry coverage recognized the project as among the most notable American redesigns of the decade, with Golf Daily naming it among its nine most significant redesigns since 2020. The Riverside Course remains the Atlanta Athletic Club's second championship course alongside the Highlands, and the completed Davis renovation has positioned it to share in the club's ongoing championship aspirations rather than simply serving as the companion layout to the club's tournament venue.