Culture of Marion County, Tennessee

Sweetens Cove Golf Club

A nine-hole public course that became one of the most talked-about golf destinations in the country

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Last updated: April 23, 2026

Sweetens Cove Golf Club sits in a pastoral valley about seven miles north of South Pittsburg. What began as a struggling municipal course became, after a radical 2014 redesign, one of the most celebrated golf destinations in the United States. The course's rise from near-bankruptcy to national acclaim is a story rooted in unconventional design, social media, and the particular character of its Marion County setting.

Before the Golf Course (1951)

In the late 1940s, the Thomas family purchased 135 acres on Sweetens Cove Road for approximately $6,500. Bob Thomas Sr. later sold the land to the city of South Pittsburg on the condition that it be developed as a golf course. In 1951, the Sequatchie Valley Golf and Country Club opened as a municipal nine-hole course. For decades it served local golfers, though it was known more for its limitations than its appeal: hardpan fairways, flat greens, and a drainage ditch running through the property. By the 2000s the course was in decline and looking for a new direction.

Rob Collins and Tad King

Rob Collins grew up on Signal Mountain, near Chattanooga, and studied art history at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He had no formal training in golf course architecture. Collins and Tad King formed King-Collins Design in July 2010. The firm's approach drew heavily on the principles of Alister MacKenzie, the Scottish architect behind Augusta National: bold bunkering, massively contoured greens, conjoined fairways, and designs shaped by natural terrain rather than imposed on it.

In 2011, Bob Thomas Jr., son of the original landowner, contacted Collins and King about renovating the old Sequatchie Valley course. It was a chance to put their philosophy into practice on a real site, and the team agreed to take it on.

Opening and Near-Collapse (2014)

Construction broke ground in 2011. Collins and King stripped the old course back to its bones and rebuilt it around the valley's natural contours. The project ran over budget, and partway through construction the primary investor pulled out. Collins used his personal savings to finish the work.

Sweetens Cove Golf Club opened in October 2014. On opening day, Collins was out of money. He laid off his crew and the course superintendent. The bank pursued repossession of the maintenance equipment. The course that had taken years to design and build appeared ready to close before it had truly begun.

What saved it was social media. Golf writers and course-architecture enthusiasts who had visited during construction began posting about Sweetens Cove on Twitter and Instagram. The word spread quickly. Collins later told the Sewanee alumni magazine: "We would have died an instant death without Twitter and Instagram." Within months, golfers from across the country were making the trip to a valley in Marion County that most had never heard of.

What Makes It Distinctive

Sweetens Cove is a nine-hole course, but it is played as eighteen holes from different tee positions on each loop. The routing offers multiple options, so players can experience different sequences and angles across rounds. The greens are large and dramatically contoured in the MacKenzie tradition, with artistic bunkering that rewards creative shot-making over raw power.

The experience is deliberately stripped down. There is no driving range and no formal putting green. The "clubhouse" is a small wooden shed. There are no tee times. Instead, players gather around 8:30 in the morning, receive a briefing, take a whiskey shot, and are assigned starting holes. The course releases 45 to 60 walk-on passes daily, and they are typically claimed within minutes.

This informality is central to the course's identity. The lack of country-club trappings, combined with a design that rewards strategic thinking, has attracted golfers who value craft over luxury.

Rankings and Press

National recognition came quickly. In 2019, Golfweek ranked Sweetens Cove #21 nationally on its "Best Courses You Can Play" list and #1 in Tennessee. The same year, it appeared at #49 on Golfweek's Top 200 Modern Courses list. Golf publications including Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, and PGA.com have covered the course at length, and it has been featured in national media beyond the golf world.

New Ownership (2019)

In 2019, a new ownership group acquired the course. The group brought together figures from sports, entertainment, and business:

The high-profile ownership raised the course's visibility further while maintaining its walk-on, no-frills character.

Sweetens Cove Spirits

The first-tee whiskey shot tradition inspired a separate venture. The ownership group launched Sweetens Cove Spirits, a bourbon brand with master distiller Marianne Eaves. The flagship release consisted of 100 barrels of 13-year Tennessee bourbon, yielding approximately 14,000 bottles at barrel proof. The product line has since expanded to include a 5-year bourbon, the original 13-year cask strength, a Speyside cask blend (labeled "22"), and a 6-year expression called Dunwoody.

The Place

The cove has been a settled farming community since the early 19th century. It also contains a historic Primitive Baptist church and the Bean-Roulston Cemetery, burial ground for Confederate dead from the June 4, 1862 Battle of Sweeden's Cove. The golf course sits within a landscape that has been farmed, fought over, and quietly inhabited for nearly two hundred years. Read more about Sweeten's Cove →

What the rise of the course has meant for Marion County

Sweetens Cove Golf Club is one of a small number of Marion County cultural destinations that draws a national audience. Along with the National Cornbread Festival, the Lodge Museum of Cast Iron, the Children's Holocaust Memorial at Whitwell, and the restored Princess Theatre in South Pittsburg, the course belongs to a short list of county attractions that have become genuinely destination-scale rather than purely local. The course's ownership group has been deliberate about keeping the on-site footprint small, the green fees accessible, and the daily walk-on format intact, and the no-tee-time, no-range, no-country-club character remains a differentiator that keeps the course conceptually attached to its Marion County setting rather than to the wider luxury golf-destination industry.

Related

The modern era (Sweetens Cove's rise to national prominence) →

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