Not Sweetens Cove’s Equal,
But a Tremendous Partner
The Course at Sewanee
Sewanee, Tenn.
Greens fee: $65 to walk nine
Date played: May 22, 2021
Being the weaker half of a two-man scramble team isn’t so bad. Expectations are generously low. If you slice a drive or flub a chip, nobody cares — but crush one off the tee, or sink a 30-foot double-breaking putt, and you’re treated like you hung the moon.
Sewanee’s fourth hole is the course’s best: a short par-4 that is reachable by driver, but only if the tee shot aims away from the green and over an imposing fairway bunker.
In what must be the most unlikely happenstance in all of Twenty-First Century golf course architecture, south-central Tennessee has fallen into a powerhouse pair of public, nine-hole golf courses: Sweetens Cove, in tiny South Pittsburg, and The Course at Sewanee on the campus of the University of the South. But their nine-hole layouts and their places on a map are where the similarities end: one curls up, down, and along the edges of Monteagle Mountain on a parkland design conceived by one of golf architecture’s biggest celebrities, and the other winds through a flood plain moulded by a first-time design team into shocking contours rarely seen west of the Atlantic Ocean.
Which of the two is the stronger design is, of course, a subjective question — but an inevitable one. Sewanee sits on better land; Sweetens Cove rests on greater creativity. Sewanee is a more traditional presentation; Sweetens Cove is like nothing else in the world. In the end, the choice is a Rorschach test: the answer says more about the person choosing than about the choice itself. There’s no bad answer. But there is a correct answer.
. . .
Alright, enough beating around the bush. To my tastes, Sweetens Cove is head and shoulders better than Sewanee. It’s not terribly close. But then again, Sweetens Cove is head and shoulders better than most golf courses; that doesn’t mean most other golf courses are bad, and God knows Sewanee isn’t. Far from it: Sewanee’s small handful of flaws feel more like good ideas gone not quite right, rather than boneheaded mistakes or afterthoughts.
A deep greenside bunker on the receiving end of a long, blind approach shot is a tough introduction at Sewanee’s first hole.
And boneheaded mistakes and afterthoughts have a soft place in my heart: my golf game had been full of them for the past two days, at The Goat Rope event at Sweetens Cove. After 45 holes in 36 hours, I wasn’t exactly ready for something new, but I was finally willing to accept it. Sweetens Cove has a way of making bad shots look not quite so bad; with wall-to-wall short grass, “you’re always playing golf,” as architect Rob Collins says. Sewanee is no such animal: although some of its challenges can be maneuvered around because of the fairways’ width, some of its surprises cannot be avoided — to the point of being borderline unfair, or at least too thought-out. The par-5 first hole (556 yards from the back tees, 525 yards from the white tees) is such a creature: after a tee shot into a broad, rolling fairway, the player’s approach is blind to a green sitting down behind a ridge — and guarded by a deep bunker, which also is blind. I don’t have a problem with blind shots, which I guess means I don’t have a problem with blind shots on a course’s first hole — but it’s a hell of a way to get acquainted.
If one punch in the face weren’t enough, the par-5 second hole delivers another, meandering 500 yards (from both the back and white tees) up the same hill that the first hole played down. By the time the player has dodged the creek running through the landing area and covered the steep approach to the green, the round’s first 25 minutes have been spent wailing away on drivers and fairway woods. As I limped off the second green, I glanced wistfully toward the clubhouse on the left — and the parking lot beyond (also a blind, downhill 4-wood away), wondering whether it was too late to go back for more golf balls.
Situated between the edge of a bluff and some thoughtful bunkering, Sewanee’s par-3 third hole turns a simple short iron into a moment fraught with anxiety.
Thankfully, Sewanee eases up after its difficult one-two opening combo. If Sweetens Cove offers two lessons about golf course design, they’re that fun and tough don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and that a hole doesn’t have to be long to be both those things. Perhaps not coincidentally, then, Sewanee’s best holes are its shortest ones. The par-3 third hole (177 yards from the back tees, 140 yards from the white tees) is a straightforward short iron slightly uphill, to a green tucked up against the edge of a bluff looking straight down the Cumberland Plateau; but between intimidating greenside bunkers in front and to the left, and the infinity-style green that seems perched on the edge of the world, an otherwise simple shot is made much more exciting (there’s also plenty of room to miss right, for the pragmatic and the cowardly).
If there is any disappointment to Sewanee’s third hole, it is that the par-3 fifth hole (200 yards from the back tees, 156 yards from the white tees) is a virtual carbon copy: another slightly uphill shot to an infinity green perched on the edge of the bluff with bailout space to the right and trouble on the left (albeit native grass, rather than bunkering). And this is where Sewanee’s position in its race against Sweetens Cove starts to wither. At Sweetens Cove, all nine holes are distinct and memorable; and as good as Sewanee is, that’s just not true here. Again, at the long par-4 sixth (427 yards from both the back and white tees) and seventh (417 yards from the back tees, 381 yards from the white tees), the designs feels a bit mailed-in: more about taking the routing out to the corner of the property and setting up the last two holes than about finding the best nine holes that the terrain had to offer.
A centerline bunker to a broad fairway makes the eighth hole arguably Sewanee’s best tee shot.
And even with that setup, the eighth hole (371 yards from the back tees, 362 yards from the white tees) frustrates: it starts off beautifully, with a drive into a wide fairway split by a small but eye-catching centerline bunker; from the bunker, the fairway veers left, toward a green no more than a short iron away — but surrounded by six bunkers (six!). It’s reminiscent of Bethpage Black’s options-starved 17th hole, but at least Bethpage’s target is large enough to allow high-handicappers to aim for the green’s middle and still have a chance of avoiding the sand. Sewanee’s eighth, though, is more hit and hope. Throughout the rest of the course, Sewanee lends itself to different styles of play; the eighth abandons that approach, though, and allows entry to the green through the air alone.
That’s not to paint Sewanee as underwhelming. The short par-4 fourth hole (264 yards from the back and white tees) is as good as anything at Sweetens (the hole is drivable, but not by aiming at the green: behind a bunker on the fairway’s right side, a sharp right-to-left slope will kick a tee shot from the fairway’s edge down toward the front of the green), and the par-3 third hole is tremendous. Sewanee’s lowest moments are merely forgettable, and even its “weak” links contain plenty of great elements (the eight hole’s terrific tee shot, for instance — or even the first hole’s blind approach shot, once the player is aware of the greenside bunker). And even where the course tilts toward mediocre (for example, at the sixth and seventh holes, which run together as much figuratively as literally), the terrain’s rolls and bounces inject guesswork into even ostensibly straightforward shots on the ground.
It’s very good — maybe even excellent. But it’s not Sweetens Cove’s equal. It just isn’t.
. . .
To avoid redundancy in an 18-hole round, Sewanee’s nine holes have several different teeing options and go by names to avoid confusion. “Pumphouse,” named for the one situated between the first and second fairways, serves as the course’s second and 11th holes.
I grew up Episcopalian, which means I grew up hearing a lot about Sewanee. “Oh, you’ve gotta go to Sewanee, it’s so beautiful,” said the same people who’d just served wine to a 10-year-old. I never made it to Sewanee until I’d turned 40, and even then not for communion — at least not the type with wine and wafers. There is something about the place that befits both religion and golf, though, if your worldview distinguishes between the two.
And admittedly, criticism for being less than perfect is a decidedly un-Episcopalian practice. But any golf course so close to Sweetens Cove — especially one designed by an architect with the stature of Gil Hanse — would face nit-picking. And Sewanee certainly has more nits than Sweetens Cove.
Sewanee is nonetheless enjoyable, and a worthy complement to Sweetens Cove — more along the lines of Mississippi’s Quail Hollow with better execution. Ironically, Sewanee might deserve to slide into a Sweetens Cove golf trip now more than ever. Five years ago, before Sweetens Cove rose to fame, visitors to South Pittsburg might have resisted tearing themselves away to hit up nearby courses. Today, though, Sweetens Cove is one of the toughest tickets in public golf; anyone traveling from out of town probably will be unable to get on for more than one day, and will need a nearby course to help fill an itinerary and justify a long trip. Sewanee is undoubtedly that course. It probably doesn’t compel an all-day car ride the way Sweetens does, but now, it doesn’t have to.
Being a really good golf course, after all, is good enough.
. . .
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