ATLANTA — This week’s Tour Championship marks East Lake Golf Club’s penultimate year as the permanent host of the PGA Tour’s season-ending event—and the course’s future welcoming professional golf is uncertain.
The historic Atlanta country club has hosted every edition of the Tour Championship since 2004, but its contract is up after next year’s tournament, and in 2028 the PGA Tour will begin rotating among new venue hosts for a revamped, two-week Tour Championship to annually conclude future seasons with match play for the first time. Many of those will be courses the PGA Tour has never played at before or doesn’t visit very often.
East Lake won’t be out of the running altogether, though.
“Yes, East Lake is very much in the consideration set for future Tour Championship events for sure,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said Tuesday at his pre-tournament press conference. “We’ve had conversations with them. We’ll have more meetings this week.”
The PGA Tour has not mentioned any other specific courses that will be considered for Tour Championships. Rory McIlroy mentioned in his Tuesday press conference that the new two-week tournament could be “one week on the West Coast, one week on the East Coast,” which could theoretically put East Lake in the mix.
As the PGA plans its transition to a new two-track scheduling model in 2028, the tour earlier this year asked East Lake leaders if they would be interested in hosting springtime event on the new top-tier Championship Series. The club declined that opportunity, according to a letter to members from East Lake GM and president Chad Parker and chairman Larry Gellerstedt obtained by Golf Channel. For many golf observers, Atlanta seems like a natural fit to host an event around the Masters, given its proximity to Augusta.
East Lake also hosted the Tour Championship in 1998, 2000, and 2002 before taking over full-time duties in 2004. In 2007, the FedExCup launched, and East Lake has been where each year’s season-ending FedExCup Champion has been crowned.
“This is as high of an expression of professional golf as there is,” Tour Championship tournament director Alex Urban said of East Lake during a conversation with Front Office Sports this week. No matter East Lake’s future, being the first home of the FedExCup will be one of the course’s lasting legacies, according to Urban. “It’s a place where legacies of PGA Tour players were cemented and made,” he said. “There’s been some really big moments—and some still to come.”
As this week’s 30-player field fight for the $40 million purse and $10 million first-place prize, fans are piling into East Lake despite the August heat. The course has grandstands and sponsored fan activities everywhere you look—and even a new signature cocktail, the Fuzzy Peach (vodka, peach sparkling water, grenadine, lime, and a candy peach ring).
