The Course at Sewanee

Constructed with the help of mules and the school’s football team, the Course at Sewanee was originally designed by a novice, the Vice Chancellor of Sewanee: The University of the South. Golf was beginning to boom in America and the university saw the game as a vessel for moral formation, discipline, and gentlemanly conduct. Although the Bishop was an avid golfer, he did not have any kind of experience with designing or building golf courses, so the original course was quite rudimentary. He had the burly football players man the mule-drawn plows in order to create the natural lay-of-the-land design atop the Cumberland Plateau, a southern section of the Appalachian Mountains.  

Just under a hundred years later, the university would hire Gil Hanse and his design partner, Jim Wagner, to overhaul the golf course with strategic and undulating greens, artful bunkering, and built-in variability with various new tee boxes. The course’s original routing remains and provides an invigorating walk around the rolling terrain. Today, you’ll find one of the very best nine-hole golf courses in the country that also allows for an 18-hole routing by playing various other tee boxes on the second go around. Gil’s reimagined course is thrilling to play with loads of shot variety and interesting greens that make you want to keep looping the nine holes. Sewanee is a course worth seeking out to play.

Take Note...

The Great Reveal. The par-3 third has always played directly towards a cliff's edge on the mountain, but overgrown trees restricted the expansive views for many years. During the 2013 redesign, Hanse cleared a gap in the trees to increase air flow for the the putting surface, which also opened up a jaw-dropping view that stretches for miles. 

The “Iron Men." In the 1890s, the university was a pioneer in American intercollegiate athletics and boasted the preeminent football program of the South. In 1899, the Sewanee Tigers would win all 12 of their games (11 by shutout) with a scoring differential of 322-10 for the season. This earned the team the nickname of the “Iron Men” and they would later be voted as the greatest team of all time by the College Football Hall of Fame. No wonder they used the young men’s strength to help build the golf course several years later. 

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