Golf courses were scarce in Northeast Georgia right after World War II, but Gainesville had a public nine-hole course and it was a good one. When it became apparent that course was going to be under water when Buford Dam was built, Jesse Jewell promoted the idea that a country club would be formed; and that country club would acquire land for a new golf course if the City of Gainesville would take the money it got from the government for its old course and hire the best golf course designer they could find. That's pretty much the way it worked out: the fledgling Chattahoochee Country Club acquired the land, and the city hired Robert Trent Jones to design a course on it. There was agreement from the beginning it would be a public golf course, but it was that working-together bit of history that leaves us with debate about who should run it today. It's a great golf course.
But the fact is the old Gainesville Golf course was also designed by one of America's best golf course designers, Donald Ross. How it came about that Ross designed a nine-hole course in Gainesville seems lost in the fog of history, but he did. Ross became a legend for his design of Pinehurst, in North Carolina, and even today there is a group that memorializes him and insists he was the greatest golf course designer of them all. Tommy Aaron's father ran that great little nine-hole Gainesville golf course, and today it lies under Lake Lanier, deep in the cove out from Longwood Park.
This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/6/193963