Stone Mountain Stonemont Course

Stonemont presents simple, classic features.

The Stonemont Course at Stone Mountain Golf Club outside of Atlanta is what you expect from stock, mid-century Trent Jones: a straight-forward, thick-waisted course full of tree-lined doglegs, big elevated greens pinched in front by bunkers and yes, the runway tees. There’s a welcome what-you-see-is-what-you-get simplicity to the course as many of the holes play simply back and forth and up and down the hills on a property that slopes up from Stone Mountain Lake, and only two holes that feature water.

Take this away from the Stone Mountain park area and I’m not sure it has any great cache, but it’s definitely the one you want to play between the two courses here. (82)

Stone Mountain—Stonemont Course

Atlanta/Stone Mountain

Architect: Robert Trent Jones

Year: 1969

Archive

  • How Elite is The Cascades?

    One of the first impressions I had playing The Cascades in the Allegheny Mountains of western Virginia was to think how this kind of course would never be built today. Actually that thought came to me around the fifth hole, a big par five that traverses a sidehill fairway and then rises blindly over a shoulder of the same hillside. Most contemporary architects would cut the hill down and use the fill to level the fairway and open up the view. The same would have been done to the wonderful par four second which pitches steeply left to right careening timid ...

  • Bringing the Sticks--Golf in Orlando

      It's one of the most frequently asked questions in golf. Whether for a conference, convention or family vacation, you're going to find yourself there, eventually asking it: Where should I play golf in Orlando? There's no clear cut answer, which is why it so frequently comes up. Orlando and its surrounds account for some of the most abundant and affordable public and resort golf in America. Unlike vast swaths of the Northeast (or South Florida, for that matter), private clubs here are the exception, not the rule, and outside of a handful (Islesworth, Lake Nona, CC of Orlando) they're rather undistinguished. The ...

  • Phoenix: We-Ko-Pa Saguaro vs. Talking Stick North

    One of the reasons Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s golf courses are held in such high regard—by architectural cognoscenti; by magazine ranking panels; by international developers—is that they’re so often, so obviously, brilliant. Sand Hills, Bandon Trails, Friars Head, their new work restoring the primitive look of Pinehurst No. 2—this is all art that golfers will revere into the next century. A second reason is that their courses are rare. To date there are only 19 Coore-Crenshaw original 18-hole designs in the United States. Just 10 of them are open for public play. Supply, demand and location suggest that most of ...

See more from Derek Duncan...