Course Comparisons / Tennessee
Holston Hills Country Club vs. Cherokee Country Club: The Knoxville Choice
Knoxville's great golf argument is a family quarrel, and the family is Donald Ross. Cherokee Country Club was founded in 1907. Twenty years later, some of its own members left to found Holston Hills because they wanted a longer, tournament ready course, and they had Ross lay it out in 1927 on the old McDonald Farm. So the choice in Knoxville is not Ross against somebody else. It is the club Ross redesigned in 1920 against the club Ross built from open farmland in 1927, by members who had played his work at Cherokee and wanted more of it, at full size. Both are private. Both sit in Knox County. The argument has been running for nearly a century because both sides have a case.
Holston Hills: Ross, undisturbed
Tom Doak has said Holston Hills is the closest course around to what Ross originally designed. That quote does heavy lifting because it is probably true, and the reasons are in the record. The property was largely treeless farmland with subtle undulation, and Ross used the existing rises and ridges for targets and green pads. Nothing about the site invited reinvention later. The course was never badly in need of trees, lakes, or a signature hole, so nobody built any. Tom Doak's Renaissance Golf Design did light touch restoration work starting in 1997, light touch being the operative phrase. McConnell Golf acquired the club in early 2016. Kris Spence began a course wide bunker renovation in June 2024, working from Ross's original drawings and aerial photographs. A club that restores bunkers from the architect's own drawings is a club arguing that 1927 got it right.
Golf Digest has ranked Holston Hills 58th among America's top classical courses per University of Tennessee sources. The golf explains the ranking. Farmland Ross means options off the tee, greens set on natural high points, and approaches that reward the side of the fairway Ross intended rather than the side you happened to find. It is the purest Ross experience in Tennessee, full stop.
Cherokee: the older club on the river
Cherokee's story starts earlier and stranger. Founded in 1907 with a nine hole course, it hired Scotsman James Dickson as its first professional in 1908, and Dickson arrived carrying a letter of introduction signed by Old Tom Morris that still hangs in the pro shop. That letter alone would justify a visit. The course expanded to 18 holes in 1910, H. H. Barker worked on it in the mid 1910s, and then the club paid Donald Ross 560 dollars for new plans in March 1920 and rebuilt to his design that year. Five hundred and sixty dollars for a Ross redesign is the best bargain in Tennessee golf history, inflation be damned.
The course plays par 70 at 6,472 yards from the championship tees, on a bend in the Tennessee River with views of the Smoky Mountains. Cherokee is the intimate club, the river setting, the compact Ross where position beats power and the walk feels like the old game. In our Knoxville town ranking it holds the in town standard. That setting is its great card. Holston Hills plays across honest farmland. Cherokee plays above a river bend looking at mountains.
On the golf alone, Holston Hills wins, and most serious architecture voters in the Tennessee state ranking would not hesitate. It is the fuller Ross canvas, the tournament course the founders wanted, preserved with unusual fidelity. Concede Cherokee's best point without flinching. Cherokee has the setting, the older soul, the Morris letter in the pro shop, and a par 70 test that members can play every day of their lives without it going stale. As a club to belong to, plenty of Knoxville golfers would pick Cherokee and sleep fine.
Verdict. For one round and the architecture, Holston Hills, and take the founders' side of the family argument. For the river, the views, and Ross at intimate scale, Cherokee is the pick anyway, and its members have been making that choice happily since before Holston Hills existed to argue with.