Town Rankings / Georgia

The Best Golf Courses in Alpharetta

North of Atlanta, where the suburbs give way to Milton's horse country, Alpharetta golf is private club golf, three of them, all gated, all serious about themselves. The Golf Club of Georgia holds its place at the top of the local conversation with two full courses. Atlanta National carries a Pete Dye signature from the 1980s. White Columns has the Tom Fazio polish. In October the fall color in the trees around here beats the golf some weeks, which the members admit privately and deny at the clubhouse bar.

That last fact shapes the local game more than any design credit. This is seasonal, social, championship club golf in the northern arc of a big city, and all three clubs compete for the same families moving up the Georgia 400 corridor. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value, though access here is uniform: private, estimates in the high tier across the board, and a member's invitation is the only tee time that matters. So this ranking is really about the golf and the grounds, and on the golf the two course club wins.

1The Golf Club of Georgia

The Golf Club of Georgia has two 18 hole courses, Lakeside and Creekside, private, with the Arthur Hills designed Lakeside opened in 1991 and playing around Lake Windward. The club hosted the Georgia Cup amateur event in its history and carries a strong junior and amateur championship culture, which shows in how the place is run: this is a club for people who play competitive golf, not only social golf, and both courses get used hard by a membership that measures itself.

Thirty six holes is the practical argument and it is decisive at this level. A member at the other two clubs on this list plays the same 18 until he can score it in his sleep; a member here alternates between a lake course and its sibling and gets variety without a second club. Lakeside is the headline, Hills working the water and the shoreline ground into the test. The concession: neither course, alone, is the single best 18 in Alpharetta by consensus, and a Dye loyalist will argue Atlanta National's best holes outgun anything here. Depth beats peak in a membership, though. The club you belong to is the course you play 100 times, and 36 good holes outlast 18 great ones.

2Atlanta National Golf Club

Atlanta National is a Pete and P.B. Dye design, opened in 1987, up in Milton, private, and unmistakably Dye: railroad ties, waste areas, island style features, the full vocabulary from the decade when Dye was the most imitated architect in America. It has hosted local USGA qualifying and carries a demanding slope from the back tees, which understates it. Dye courses of this vintage do not ask if you are playing well. They ask if you are brave, and they ask on holes where bravery is a bad idea.

On a best holes basis, Atlanta National can win this list, and its partisans are not wrong about the ceiling. It ranks second because the Dye examination, at full strength, is a lot to live with weekly, and because the Golf Club of Georgia's two course depth serves a membership better across years. The honest concession the other way: for a single guest round, the invitation most Alpharetta golfers would rather receive might be this one, because the Dye is the story you tell afterward. One round, take the story. A decade of Saturdays, take the depth. We rank for the decade.

3White Columns Country Club

Tom Fazio designed White Columns, opened in 1995, private, in Milton's horse country terrain north of Atlanta. Fazio's parkland through rolling, wooded ground is the most conventionally handsome golf on this list, the course as estate landscape, and the club has hosted Georgia amateur events and now sits in the Invited clubs portfolio. It is the full service country club of the three, the one where the golf shares the day with everything else a family club does.

Third place follows from the company. White Columns does everything well and argues loudest about nothing: it has no second course, no Dye severity, no signature event in its record to match the Georgia Cup culture up the road. What it has is Fazio polish, beautiful ground, and a membership content with exactly that trade. In a three club town of high tier private golf, being the polished all rounder is a fine living. It is just not the top of the ranking.

Late October, the maples around Lake Windward turn before the fairways go dormant, and the Lakeside course plays its Saturday member game inside a frame of color most Florida clubs would pay for. Alpharetta golf keeps its best season quiet and its gates closed, and the members like both arrangements fine.