By Jack Krost

Prestigious Golf Course had an Amusing Beginning

Back in the 1890s, there was a privately owned amusement park at East Lake. It had a swimming beach and a steamboat that cruised the lake. There were picnic tables and stands to buy hot dogs, popcorn and peanuts. There also was a penny arcade, with peep shows that presented moving pictures by turning a crank to flip through photographs. Among the featured presentations: the 1889 World's Fair in faraway Paris, Pike's Peak, and (ahem) young ladies in revealing bloomers.

Around this time, there was a growing interest among Americans in sports. There wasn't much bungee jumping or snow boarding in those days; lawn tennis and calisthenics were more like the sports of the time. Atlanta had its share of social clubs then but no sports clubs. So in 1898, a group of Atlantans joined the trend and formed the Atlanta Athletic Club, with a clubhouse on Edgewood Avenue. And the first director of the club was Georgia Tech football coach John Heisman, later of Heisman Trophy fame.

The club offered swimming, tennis, basketball and track, but alas, no golf. So clubs members decided to do something about that, and in 1904 they purchased the lake property, then on the outskirts of Atlanta. The golf course made its debut four years later.

Club members enjoyed their golfing, but eventually they came to realize there was a problem with the course: when they were done with a round of golf, and perhaps had a bet on the line with some beers at stake, they would be far from the clubhouse and have to trudge around the lake to get back. That wouldn't do, so the club hired a golf course architect to rectify things. Architect Donald Ross went back to the drawing board, and came up with a routing plan in which each nine holes concludes at the clubhouse. So now, if you make a bet at East Lake Golf Club, you'd better be prepared to back it up.