Black Creek Club

The course at Black Creek Club is a Brian Silva layout which he designed with more than a passing nod to the work carried out by Seth Raynor during the Golden Age of golf architecture. There’s a fine mix of original and replica holes here, with all the old favourites – Redan, Cape, Short and Punchbowl – making an appearance at some point.

The course is the centrepiece of a substantial residential development on the outskirts of Chattanooga, with one of the founding members, Doug Stein – the contractor who built the Honors Course and later renovated Lookout Mountain – the man behind the vision of fashioning a new millennium layout in the style of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor.

There are lots of quirky old-fashioned design traits on display here, like square-shaped greens and deep grass-faced bunkers, and they’re combined with lots of inventive modern touches from Brian Silva. For sure, this isn’t a typical “golf community” layout, having been described by one commentator as “much more than a just a paint-by-numbers template.”

Highlight holes include the downhill 421-yard 1st, played to a Double Plateau green; the 458-yard 12th, a tough par four that features a shallow, creek-protected green; and the 243-yard 17th, where the 70-yard-long raised putting surface is split in two by an enormous swale to form a Biarritz green.