Callaway Gardens – Mountain View (Public)

Pine Mountain, Ga.;
706-663-5044; www.callawaygardens.com

STAFF: Bud Robison is the Director of Golf; Matthew Harris is the General Manager.

PAR/YARDAGE: The Mountain View course is a par 72 with four sets – Blue (7,057 yards); White (6,630); Green (5,783) and Red (4,883).

COURSE RATING/SLOPE: 73.7/139 (Blue); 71.9/134 (White); 68.2/126 (Green); 69.4/120 (Red),

ABOUT THE COURSE: The home for a decade of an annual PGA Tour event, Callaway Gardens’ Mountain View course remains a popular tournament site for the Georgia PGA, GSGA and junior golf organizations, with the PGA Tour returning in November for a second stage qualifying event. The Georgia PGA will again host its Match Play Championship on the Mountain View course later this month, with the state’s top club professionals taking on one of Georgia’s most respected layouts. Mountain View, the feature course of Callaway Gardens’ 45-hole golf complex, is a wonderful, traditional-style layout designed by Dick Wilson. Advances in modern technology have taken some of the teeth out of the 7,057-yard back tees for pros and top amateurs, but the 6,630-yard white tees remain a very strong test for the vast majority of the resort’s visitors. Mountain View is as straightforward as courses of its caliber come, with only two holes where water hazards are seriously in play and just two with significant doglegs. The keys to playing well at Mountain View are avoiding the pesky Bermuda rough that lines the fairways and hitting precise approach shots to the very well-guarded greens, which typically offer targets of modest size and can be testy to putt despite the absence of significant amounts of slope.

With none of the par 4s having serious length, longer hitters will have a succession of short iron approaches, but two of the par 3s and several of the par 5s will provide opportunities for long irons, hybrids or fairway metals. Two of the par 3s are over 210 yards from the tips, with only one of the par 5s within easy range in two for the pros who will visit the course in the next few months. The dogleg right second is just over 500 yards, but a tiny green surrounded by sand and trees near the putting surface that must be negotiated make it a hole where a quality short game is as vital as prodigious length. The par-5 15th, one of the two featuring water in play, is the course’s most famous (or infamous) hole, with a real risk for those going for the green in two. Simply a solid, playable and thoroughly enjoyable test of golf in a pastoral, natural setting.