Bear Trace at Ross Creek Landing

Bear Trace at Ross Creek Landing is a Jack Nicklaus and Bruce Borland design on the bluffs above the Tennessee River near Clifton, routing 7,131 yards through wooded terrain where bent grass greens and Bermuda grass fairways meet the dramatic topography of west-central Tennessee. One of five courses in Tennessee's Bear Trace system, Ross Creek Landing is considered the most scenic of the state-owned facilities.

Bear Trace at Ross Creek Landing is a Jack Nicklaus Signature design in Clifton, Tennessee, on the Tennessee River, the fifth and final course built as part of the Tennessee Golf Trail's Bear Trace series. The course opened in October 2001, the last of the five Nicklaus designs commissioned by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for placement within Tennessee's state park system. Within a year of opening, Golfweek magazine named it the best public course in Tennessee, a rapid recognition that confirmed what the Tennessee Golf Trail had achieved with its final commission: a Jack Nicklaus design as accomplished as any in the series.

Clifton, a small community in Wayne County on the eastern bank of the Tennessee River, occupies a section of the river valley between the major reservoirs to the north and south. The Tennessee River corridor, with its bluffs, bottomlands, and the broad water of the river itself, provided Nicklaus with a site of considerable natural character — geology and hydrology working together to create a landscape that his design could frame and exploit. The course takes its name from Ross Creek, the tributary that flows through the property and contributes to the water features that define several holes.

The Tennessee River setting distinguishes Ross Creek Landing from the other Bear Trace courses in meaningful ways: where Cumberland Mountain is an upland plateau design and Tims Ford and Harrison Bay work with TVA reservoir environments, Ross Creek Landing engages with the river itself — moving water, bluffline terrain, and the riparian corridor that the Tennessee River creates as it winds through the mid-state landscape. These environmental differences gave Nicklaus different materials to work with at each Bear Trace site, and the result is a series of courses that share a design philosophy while being genuinely different from one another. The course has operated independently of the Tennessee State Parks system in more recent years, continuing to serve the west-central Tennessee region as a destination course for golfers from Nashville, Memphis, and the communities along the Tennessee River corridor.

Its distance from major population centers — Clifton sits roughly an hour from both Nashville and the Alabama state line — gives it the character of a destination rather than an everyday municipal course, and the quality of the Nicklaus routing ensures that the journey is worthwhile for golfers who make the trip. Golfweek's recognition in the year of opening was a remarkable achievement for a course that had barely opened its doors, and the speed with which Ross Creek Landing earned critical recognition reflected the quality of the Nicklaus commission and the Tennessee Golf Trail's consistent investment in bringing the best available design work to its state park courses. More than two decades after its opening, Ross Creek Landing remains one of the more distinguished public golf experiences in Tennessee.