River Club - Suwannee, Georgia

I played this course on October 3, 2006 as a part of the ND Club of Atlanta annual tournament. It is a new course designed supposedly by Greg Norman. I cannot confirm this as I did not see him there. We played some kind of screwy scramble where all teammates play the longest drive and then play out your ball from there. Since this is easily my worst club, it worked in my favor. That and the 19 additional strokes I was given. I played with Chris Ledlie, Chris Boyle and Andy Sinn.

Very nice layout with lots of water and lots of well maintained traps. Not unusually long for someone of my ability. It is somewhat narrow, but I felt like there was nothing inherently unfair about any of the holes. Usually there was an adequate landing zone on each hole as long as you could keep it in play. There were no holes where you could outdrive the fairway. It is built into a neighborhood of $1.5-$1.6 million homes. They are ginormous and quite attractive. Fortunately, most are set back far enough that you are not a threat to hit them. The greens were in excellent shape and all the employees I dealt with were top notch. They immediately grabbed my clubs when I arrived and prepared them for the round. They also had a very nice driving range, putting green, and practice traps.

Only real downside is the distance. The course is about 30 miles north of 285 off of Peachtree Industrial in Suwannee. This is a very far distance for me to play golf. As you might imagine it took almost an hour to get home at 5:30pm. I don't know the actual cost since it was part of a tournament so I cannot comment on this.

Overall, the course was very nice and I would recommend it if I lived in the area. I would put the course on par with a local country club or somewhere like that. I don't know how long it has been open, but for October play, the course was in excellent shape. I am not sure I would drive that far as there are other closer courses which are probably comparable in cost.