Nashville, TN Golf

kobe123 · January 10

11 hours ago, bcjim said:

Crazy. Just hit up Harpeth Hills. Its close to Brentwood and no initiation fee or food minimums. Been 20y and I still miss that place. Met many interesting people there incl a lot of musicians and industry types.

Put a pool and some lawn darts in the backyard for the family with the 40K you save. 🤣

Saving 40K is generous, the way clubs are going you'd save 75K+, lol

Best deal is Legends, but it has an extensive wait list.

J4Camp · January 10

I think the cheapest club in the area might be Temple Hills, but it's lacking in the actual clubhouse and country club experience.

Old Natchez is on the lower end, but you are looking at $35-40k initiation and $600/month.

Governors Club is $45k with $900 monthly dues

Last I checked Westhaven I think they were $45-$50k

Everything else goes up from there and you'll be waitlisted.

Brentwood CC, Richland, Golf Club of TN (Don't bother unless you have half a million to throw down), same for Troubadour which I think you need land/property to even be a member.

Great area, but the golf scene isn't great unless you're a member somewhere or have friends at clubs. Hermitage is a great public track and they have two 18s, but its about 35 mins from Brentwood.

Nashville Golf and Athletic is a decent track, but its strictly a golf club.

Cant speak to Legends Club as I haven't been over there lately.

TNwanabe · January 11

10 hours ago, smashdn said:

I don't know if this is a thing or not, but maybe have your current club manager get in touch with whichever club here you are interested in and see if your standing at your current club can help you out in any way. Maybe get you some rounds with current members or move your family up the waitlist a shade.

This is a great idea. Hopefully it will work for you. Unfortunately, everywhere I contacted last year had long waiting lists and or were ridiculously priced. Got the Metro pass and can walk for $8 at any of the metro courses. Harpeth Hills is amazing for a metro. It could be a PGA course if it was kept at that level. Mccabe is very busy but is a fun course. The others are pretty good too. Not private club level maintenance but good enough.

vandyfan · January 11

15 hours ago, TNwanabe said:

This is a great idea. Hopefully it will work for you. Unfortunately, everywhere I contacted last year had long waiting lists and or were ridiculously priced. Got the Metro pass and can walk for $8 at any of the metro courses. Harpeth Hills is amazing for a metro. It could be a PGA course if it was kept at that level. Mccabe is very busy but is a fun course. The others are pretty good too. Not private club level maintenance but good enough.

Totally agree with this, especially if you have flexibility when you play. Harpeth Hills probably has better land and routing than almost any private club I have played in Mid TN. Ted Rhodes, Two Rivers are solid tracks.

FuzzyKnuckles · January 17

Did anything ever happen from those rumors years ago that Snedeker/other investors were going to restore/renovate Harpeth Hills and make it a real high level public track?

vandyfan · March 19

On 1/17/2024 at 1:44 PM, FuzzyKnuckles said:

Did anything ever happen from those rumors years ago that Snedeker/other investors were going to restore/renovate Harpeth Hills and make it a real high level public track?

I hear this rumor every year so maybe there is something to it. The city has allowed some outside investment with Percy Warner golf course and now they are working on Shelby. To me, Harpeth Hills is fine how it is though I would welcome any improvements to it. If they can somehow make Shelby a serviceable golf course that will be pretty amazing. As with anything, I am dubious as to whether metro can keep these courses up 5 years down the road so I would be wary of investing a bunch of money into Harpeth Hills only to watch it slowly erode away. The biggest issue HH has, to me, is the bunkers seem to have as many rocks as they do sand in them (especially the bunker right of the 10th green). Other than some tree removal (most notably on #1 which is a hole that I think should be re-designed, re-worked) and bunker work, I am not sure what I would change at HH?

Edited March 19 by vandyfan

vandyfan · March 21

Just played Harpeth Hills yesterday and for $28 walking I don't know what else you could want* out of that golf course. Awesome routing, elevation changes, some great holes and not really any stinker holes out there. Greens rolled really well. Pace of play was surprisingly decent (played 3 hr and 45 minutes in a walking foursome on a packed course). Again, for $28 in Nashville I am really curious how any course could do much better. They are also regrassing the range so they might actually have a real range to hit off in the future. Unrelated to the actual golf course playing experience it is insane that they don't have an online booking system which we have discussed numerous times here. I would think that they could recoup whatever the cost of setting up such an online system by requiring credit cards and charging for rounds that people don't show up for with a 24 hour cancellation window. Just my two cents. Overall, just a really great golf course that I would probably pay $65 to play and it goes for 1/2 of that. Contrast it with, say, Franklin Bridge which is in a little better condition with a worse routing and design and it is routinely $100+. Yes that is a muni vs a (privately owned) public but their tee sheet is always completely full so I use it as a proxy for Nashville public golf.

*Gripes if I really want to nitpick - tee boxes are being re-done on numerous holes so you tee off in some wonky places, especially on par 3s (#11 has the white tee still tee off a mat). Bunkers are a little inconsistent but there is very new sand in several bunkers that I would expect will eventually make its way around the course which is encouraging.

eddiebigeddie · March 23

On 3/21/2024 at 11:53 AM, vandyfan said:

Contrast it with, say, Franklin Bridge which is in a little better condition with a worse routing and design and it is routinely $100+. Yes that is a muni vs a (privately owned) public but their tee sheet is always completely full so I use it as a proxy for Nashville public golf.

Is Franklin Bridge really that high now? My sister lives across the street from the big parking lot and I’ve played it a time or two right before Covid and it was like $35-45 max. Crazy to think they’ve raised the price that much in last 3 years.

golfpractitioner5 · March 23

3 hours ago, eddiebigeddie said:

Is Franklin Bridge really that high now? My sister lives across the street from the big parking lot and I’ve played it a time or two right before Covid and it was like $35-45 max. Crazy to think they’ve raised the price that much in last 3 years.

The cost to play there is ridiculous now. I've played there twice over the last year and both rounds for 5 hours or longer. Each round cost $100. It is not worth that much. So man people drive from Williamson County over to Rutherford County, where I live, to play public golf now due to cost.

eddiebigeddie · March 23

6 minutes ago, golfpractitioner5 said:

The cost to play there is ridiculous now. I've played there twice over the last year and both rounds for 5 hours or longer. Each round cost $100. It is not worth that much. So man people drive from Williamson County over to Rutherford County, where I live, to play public golf now due to cost.

I believe the 5 hr round thing. My dad tells me everytime they go visit my sister that the parking lot and driving range are full no matter time of day or weather. Also said they added lights to the range too. It’s a decent course but def not $100 a round. I’m fortunate that the #1 public course in Ky (2023) is 15 min down the road from me and cost anywhere from $45-70 depending time of the year and it’s 100% nicer than Franklin.

vandyfan · April 9

I am obsessed right now with Park Mammoth in Kentucky so I am just evangelizing all over golfwrx about it but if you haven't played it I HIGHLY recommend it. It is about 80 miles from Nashville so not an easy ask for anyone with kids (like me) but man it is so, so good. I said this on another thread but it is, to me, a better golf experience than Sweetens and Sewanee (and I love both of those). Open off the tee but angles very, very much matter. Very interesting greens that are wild but stay out of the Sweetens zone of insanity. Overall a golf course that gives you options on almost every hole and opportunities to recover abound. It should be the template for golf course design going forward except for maybe "championship level tests" of which I think there should be few of those golf courses sprinkled throughout the country (which I will stay away from because they are not fun).

Very fun golf course and the people of Bowling Green, KY are lucky to have it. Currently very easy to get a tee time there (much easier than Nashville weekend tee times).

vandyfan · April 9

On 3/19/2024 at 11:44 AM, vandyfan said:

Other than some tree removal (most notably on #1 which is a hole that I think should be re-designed, re-worked) and bunker work, I am not sure what I would change at HH?

I thought about this some more and I have totally changed my stance (not surprising). @FuzzyKnuckles, I am now all for an AGGRESSIVE tree removal project at Harpeth Hills, though I know very little about GCA it seems like, at a minimum, it would open up options and grass would grow better in certain spots. I imagine it is expensive to take down trees, remove them and then re-sod but I can still dream. Here are my main offenders:

Hole 1, wayyy too tight down by the creek. Basically means no one ever risks going into the creek and there is only one way/avenue to play this hole. Take all these out:

Hole 2: A lot of useless trees (to me) where grass can never grow.

Hole 5: Several annoying trees, to me. The trees on the left I understand but the two sentry trees in the fairway are ridiculous. I don't mean annoying like "oh this is too hard" but more, again, they stifle all the grass around them and narrow the corridor for no real reason.

Hole 9, all these trees are pretty dumb to me. Many people can carry the first 4 trees (if they are playing the correct tees) and the best angle into the green is actually from the center of that yellow circle.

Hole 10: Leave the high grass down the left if you want but with high grass AND trees, no one ever takes the left shortcut which makes this hole one dimensional (there is a theme here). I left in two "strategic" trees if there is such a thing:

Hole 14: This hole is already tight and the green (in the summer) is ludicrous. What is the point of these trees other than to just penalize?

Hole 16, might need the removal the most desperately.

Hole 17 just has two kind of dumb trees that, again, block the best angle to the green. I don't understand why you would orient the green like this with almost now way to come into in this direction?

smashdn · April 9

Stealing another of @vandyfan's pictures to show something.

What is the reward for flirting with the bunkers on the left, either playing close to them or carrying them, if you are blocked out by the trees you have circled? Those bunkers should be protecting the "line of charm," which I think initially they did before the green fronting trees. If the trees were gone you would want to be on the left hand side of the fairway so you could play down the length of the green and not over that greenside bunker. Not only would I get rid of the trees circled in yellow, but I would ditch most any of the trees down that left hand side and maybe expand the fairway left ward, maybe even to the point where the bunkers are almost more centered in the fairway and build a little curve into the whole hole.