Why the Georgia Golf Trail Belongs on Every Buddy's Trip Shortlist

​There is a reason the Masters happens in Georgia and not somewhere else, and it is not coincidence. Georgia has been a serious golf state since Bobby Jones picked up a club at the East Lake Country Club in Atlanta as a kid, won the Grand Slam by age 28, retired from competitive golf, and built a course in Augusta with Alister MacKenzie that the rest of the world now schedules its April around. Jones played his first round at East Lake. He also played his last round there. Read that sentence again. Then book the trip.
The Georgia Golf Trail brings the rest of the state together. More than 20 resorts, state park courses, and championship clubs spread from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the north all the way to the Atlantic on the south coast, all bookable through one network with travel-package pricing. Mountains in the north, big-water lake country and the Atlanta metro in the middle, marsh and Atlantic beaches on the coast. Three regions, three different golf trips, one state.

If you have not figured out Georgia as a golf destination, this is your starting point.

The Three Regions

North Georgia: Mountain golf nobody talks about enough. Drive 90 minutes north of Atlanta and you are in the southern Appalachians. Cooler air in the summer, dramatic elevation changes, mountain views from nearly every tee, and a roster that includes Brasstown Valley Resort and Spa in Young Harris (a two-hour drive from both Atlanta and Chattanooga, with Brasstown Bald, the highest peak in Georgia at 4,784 feet, visible from the course); Sky Valley Country Club with the highest average elevation of any course in Georgia at 3,500 feet; Valhalla Golf Club in Helen, set in a town that has gone full Bavarian with Octoberfest year-round; Old Toccoa Farm and the Currahee Club in Toccoa; and Arrowhead Pointe at Richard B. Russell State Park where you will not see a single car, house, or power line. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia get the press. North Georgia delivers the same thing for less and without the crowds.

Atlanta and Central Georgia: The big-name resort lineup. Stone Mountain Golf Club sits inside Stone Mountain Park east of Atlanta with two 18s, including a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design where putts famously break away from the mountain itself. Chateau Elan in Braselton is the wine country resort with three on-property courses, an actual chateau, and the kind of spa setup that rescues a buddies trip from itself. The Frog in Villa Rica is the locals' favorite, complete with metal frog statue at the first tee. The Creek at Hard Labor sits inside Hard Labor Creek State Park. And Reynolds Lake Oconee, the headliner of the bunch, runs six championship courses on a 19,000-acre community along the second-largest lake in Georgia. If you have only ever heard of one Georgia golf resort outside the Augusta National conversation, it is probably Reynolds. Worth the hype. Callaway Resort and Gardens, an hour south of Atlanta in Pine Mountain, rounds out the central region with one of the original 18 founding members of the Trail and a 2,500-acre property where golf is the headline but hardly the only attraction.

Coastal Georgia: Sea Island, Jekyll, and the marsh. This is the trip everybody dreams about. Sea Island is the marquee: three courses, a Forbes five-star resort, host of the RSM Classic on the PGA Tour every November, and the kind of place where a senior caddie has been on staff longer than your kids have been alive. Jekyll Island runs three public courses and a fourth nine on a barrier island the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers built as their winter retreat in the 1880s. The Club at Savannah Harbor sits on Hutchinson Island in the Savannah River, designed by Robert Cupp with consultation from Sam Snead. Sapelo Hammock down in McIntosh County serves up Spanish moss, live oaks, and tidal marsh views on every other hole. The King and Prince on St. Simons gives you a beach resort with a championship course attached, and Lake Blackshear over in Cordele runs the Georgia Veterans Memorial Golf Course, a four-star Golf Digest pick on a 8,500-acre lake. South Georgia state park courses round out the roster: Little Ocmulgee with its Wallace Adams course winding through loblolly pines, Meadow Links at George T. Bagby on Lake Walter F. George, and Brazell's Creek up in Reidsville.

The Off-Course Game

What separates Georgia from a lot of pure-golf trips is the rest of the state. The mountains have hiking, fly fishing, and a German-themed town in Helen that has to be seen to be believed. Atlanta gives you everything a major American city offers, including the College Football Hall of Fame, the World of Coca-Cola, the Georgia Aquarium, and a downtown food scene that has been genuinely good for over a decade. The coast gives you Savannah's historic district (one of the most beautiful and walkable downtowns in America), St. Simons Island lighthouses, beach time on Jekyll, and the kind of seafood that ruins you for chain restaurants forever.

Add the Masters factor. Augusta is in eastern Georgia, and while you are not getting onto Augusta National, the surrounding area has plenty of public access and the energy of a city that hosts the world's best golf tournament every April is real. Building a Trail trip around Masters week, either the week before or the week after, is a thing. Practice round tickets, a few rounds at Trail courses on either end, and you have built the kind of pilgrimage every serious golfer should take at least once.

Why It Works as a Trail

The Georgia Golf Trail is bookable as a single network through Georgia Golf and Travel. One contact, custom packages, courses paired with on-site lodging at most stops. For the buddies trip, it means somebody else handles the logistics. For the couples trip, the resort properties (Sea Island, Reynolds, Brasstown Valley, Chateau Elan, Callaway) handle the spa, the dining, and the non-golf half of the equation as well as they handle the courses.

The state runs from a 4,784-foot peak in the north to barrier islands and tidal marsh on the south. Average winter temperature in coastal Georgia stays mild enough to play year-round. Spring is all dogwoods and azaleas, summer is mountain country season, fall is when everything from Lake Oconee to the Savannah marshes shows off. There is no bad time to go and there is no shortage of variety once you do.

The Pitch

Georgia is not a golf destination the way Florida or the Carolinas are golf destinations. It is something else. It is the state that built the Masters, raised Bobby Jones, and quietly assembled three completely different golf trips inside one set of borders. North Georgia for mountain golf with views. Central Georgia for resort golf with the big names. Coastal Georgia for the trip you save up for and tell stories about on the way home. Pick the region that fits the group, or stitch together two and run a 10-day road trip from the mountains to the sea.

For the full Georgia Golf Trail member list and travel packages, georgiagolfandtravel.com is the booking hub, with Doug Hollandsworth and the Georgia Golf and Travel team handling the package quotes. 770-266-0331.

The next three articles in this series go deep on each region. Up first: North Georgia, the mountain golf nobody is talking about loudly enough.