Cherokee Town & Country Club
June 2023 – Cherokee is a really exclusive club in the Atlanta area that has a “Town” club near Buckhead and a “Country” club featuring two golf courses in Sandy Springs. Hence the name Cherokee “Town” and “Country” Club. I played the North with my work buddy and host, Sid.
I really enjoyed Cherokee. Conditioning was nearly perfect, clubhouse was great, access to booze was awesome (they just added cart girls this season), it’s a nice Joe Lee design and had lunch and drinks in the grill with our celebrity waitress, Fran Stalinovskovichdavidovitchsky (this is very funny if you’ve ever been to the grill there – she is a fixture at the club).
Cherokee is definitely the best club I’ve played in the Atlanta area to date. I talk more about the area in my The River Club review and how I’ve not yet been able to get on any of the top tier Atlanta clubs but Cherokee is approaching that status. Sid also has friends at East Lake so hope to mark that one off soon. I also talk about Atlanta as a buddies’ golf trip destination there. I will reiterate here, that if you’re connected and can get on to some of the privates, Atlanta is great.
If you’ve been around the Golf Scrapbook blog, you’ll notice I try and do a few things with the blog. It was really an afterthought to the scrapbook idea but wanted to review courses from the perspective of a bogey golfer (who of late has been playing even worse than that), give golf trip ideas away, spout on about whatever is in my head at the time of writing the review, and add photos that I take. You can say my reviews are pretty lazy and I am a subpar photographer so sometimes I eschew the review and point you to a different blog – if you’re prepping for a round and that’s the sole reason you came here. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot about Cherokee on the blog-i-verse.
Cherokee is not found on any Top 100 rankings and since most of the blogs are about some low handicapper playing the top 100 courses in the world or country, courses like Cherokee get overlooked. So, before I get into my piss poor review of Cherokee (even though I only played it about a week before writing this I don’t remember much) here are the blog sites I read:
- Breaking Eighty: He does a damn good job talking about Georgia golf but nary a mention of Cherokee.
- UK Golf Guy: Who unsurprisingly mostly reviews UK courses and only has about a dozen US course reviews.
- The Fried Egg: Does it a little different but here and there I will find a review of a course I’m writing up that has a lot of great photos and content.
- Golfadelphia: This guy plays a shit ton of travel golf and reviews just about every course in the Philadelphia area (my hometown).
- Golf Gurus: Multiple guys from Utah who travel a bunch, take nice photos, and have a nice format to their reviews and talk about courses well outside the Top 100. Sometimes I don’t agree with their grades but a pretty good blog nonetheless.
Another go-to is Jimmy’s Top 100 about a guy who sought out to play all top 100 courses in one year. He got some Golf Digest love for his effort and succeeded. In one of his write-ups (I think Somerset as I am playing there later this year) he mentions he’s a member at Cherokee. But since neither his nor any of these blogs offer a review of Cherokee. I’ll give it a go. Mind you I really don’t remember which photos are of which hole.
I Google-Earthed Cherokee and added a few filters for the scrapbook. Here’s the routing.
This is the opening hole. Figured out I can zoom in on the map portion of my photos on my iPhone X and may actually get these correct. One is 385 yards from the Founders tees (Burgundy/Blue combo) and is a slight dogleg right. I played so piss poorly that I think I tossed the card with my score on it – I only parred the 9th and 18th with a ton of three putts in-between.
This is one from the green looking back.
Two is a 170-yard par three. Green cants toward the water.
From my drive on five. I skipped taking photos on holes 3 and 4. Five is a 544-yard left bender.
Six is a 385-yard par four – I remember my drive found this tiny sliver of life between the fairway bunker and cart path but I hit a Babe Ruth (dead Yank) left into the trees on my approach.
Eight from the tee – Uphill and 379 yards. The number one handicap. No photo of 7 – 149-yard par three.
Nine from the tee. Bends left, 519 yards from this tee and my first par in 45 consecutive holes (played Stone Harbor CC the previous weekend and went par-less in Cape May Courthouse).
Ten is just 328 yards from the Blues (where the Founders put us on this hole) and is ranked the easiest hole on the golf course. Pretty tame and short hole and followed up my par with a triple here – with (from my memory) five strokes within 30 yards of the green.
Had the iPhone pocketed for a while. This is 13. Just 345 yards but narrow. Love the elevation changes here and how these are used by Joe Lee throughout – especially the green complexes.
I know I’m pretty sporadic with the camera. This is 15. It’s 495 from the Burgundy’s and you shouldn’t have any issues clearing the pond here.
Fourteen is probably the signature hole here. It’s 176 yards and my five iron plunked right into the water.
Here’s fifteen from the tee. It’s a 495-yard par five and again the pond doesn’t really present any major challenge off the tee.
Sixteen is a tough 381-yard par four. It’s the number two handicap.
Eighteen is a short par-five (just 465 yards from the Blues/Founders). It’s a very pretty hole and I finally racked up my second par of the day.
Golf Scrapbook 