# TPC Southwind: A Course Profile

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/tpc-southwind-profile/

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Course Profiles / Tennessee


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Two grain silos and a windmill still stand on the property, left over from the dairy farm this course was built on. Everything else about TPC Southwind is aimed at the strongest fields in golf. Ron Prichard designed it, with tour pros Hubert Green and Fuzzy Zoeller consulting, and it opened in 1988 in Memphis. A year later the PGA Tour arrived, and it has never really left. The Memphis event, now the FedEx St. Jude Championship, has been played here since 1989, and it currently holds a FedEx Cup playoff slot, which means the course gets examined every August by players with their seasons on the line.

That weekly tour test shapes the golf. Southwind plays par 70 at 7,244 yards, and par 70 on tour is a particular kind of pressure. There are only two par fives to attack, so the scoring has to come from long par fours played precisely, and the misses get punished by water and by rough that the tournament setup keeps honest. Television viewers know the finish. Members know the whole card is like that.

## Two par threes that carry the reputation

The 11th is the famous one, a par three widely described as a smaller version of the island green 17th at TPC Sawgrass. The comparison flatters and burdens it at the same time. It is its own hole, shorter and meaner than it looks, and in tournament week it produces the held breath moment that every playoff course needs.

The 14th is the one the pros respect more. At 239 yards it consistently ranks among the toughest par threes on the PGA Tour, a full long iron or hybrid to a target that offers no comfortable miss. Plenty of tour courses have a signature hole. Fewer have a par three that the field quietly circles on the practice tee sheet. Southwind has both, four holes apart, which is a large part of why the event keeps its place on the schedule.

The course was refreshed in 2024, when all 18 green and tee complexes were rebuilt and resurfaced. That kind of work rarely makes headlines outside the industry, but it matters for a course whose greens take tour traffic every year. It also tells you the club intends to keep the tournament rather than coast on having it. Southwind was also one of the first courses in Tennessee certified in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program, a quieter credential that fits the farm ground it came from.

We rank it where the tour record says it belongs in [our Memphis ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-memphis-tn/) and in [the Tennessee state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-tennessee/). Memphis golf starts here.

Prichard's design deserves a word of its own, because Southwind is not a generic stadium course stamped out of the TPC mold. The consultation with Green and Zoeller, two major champions with opposite temperaments, shows up in a layout that asks for shot shapes rather than raw carry. Water appears often enough to shape decisions without turning every hole into a pond photograph. The course rewards the player who works the ball into the safe side and then gets aggressive with a wedge, which is exactly the skill set a playoff event should test in August heat. Memphis in August is its own hazard, and the course leans on it. Late tee times in the playoff play in heavy air, and a par 70 card feels longer than 7,244 yards by the time the 14th tee arrives.

## The honest concession

Southwind is private, a TPC network club, so the public golfer's relationship with it is mostly televised. Estimates for membership sit in the higher tiers and are only estimates, since the club does not publish them. If you judge courses by whether you can book them, this one fails your test before the argument starts.

The other honest knock is that a course tuned for an August playoff can play stern the rest of the year. Par 70 with that length asks a lot of a member field, and the same water that makes Sunday interesting makes a casual Saturday expensive in golf balls.

Who suits it: the strong player who wants to measure a round against the same questions the tour answers every summer. Who it frustrates: anyone who needs par fives to make a score, or who wants their golf gentle. The silos and the windmill remember the farm. The 239 yard 14th does not care what the land used to be.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.