Golf courses blanket East Tennessee
If you’re looking to play a round of golf in the Knoxville area, your biggest challenge will be determining which one to choose.
More than 60 courses dot the Knoxville and Smoky Mountains area, offering a wide range of difficulty and prices.
“I think public golf-wise, we offer several very good golf courses,” said Eric Rebmann, president of the Knoxville chapter of the PGA.
“We have a great range of golf courses in the Knoxville area. We have a great range in prices to play golf. There are courses you can play for $55 to $60 and others you can walk for $16 to $18. And there are many others in between.”
Rebmann, a teaching pro at Egwani Farms Golf Course in Rockford, came to Knoxville in 1982 to play golf for the University of Tennessee.
At that time, only a limited number of public courses existed.
Rebmann says that has changed drastically in the past 25 years.
“It’s come a long way since then,” Rebmann said. “It seems like mostly on the middle- and upper-end price spectrum.”
That’s not to say there’s a shortage of deals for the lower-end golfer.
At Knoxville Municipal Golf Course, a golfer can play a round for less than $30 with a cart, and less than $20 without a cart.
Egwani Farms is more in the middle price range. Greens fees on the weekends are $65 and on weekdays $56.
“It’s medium (in price),” Rebmann said. “We like to think Egwani Farms is one of the better-conditioned layouts in the area for public golf, and we try to do as good a job as we possibly can with customer service.”
Knoxville has a number of par-3 courses. One of the most popular is the Wee Course at Williams Creek.
One of the oldest courses is Pine Lakes Golf Course in Rockford in Blount County. It’s a medium-range course in price and difficulty.
“Probably the best public course when I came to Knoxville was Pine Lakes,” Rebmann said. “There were a few others around at that time, but nothing like there are now.”
Willow Creek Golf Course in Farragut hosted the Nike Tour stop in 1994 and is still an affordable and quality course.
Several private clubs have outstanding courses, including Fox Den, Tennessee National, Cherokee and Holston Hills.
For the golfer wanting to venture to outlying areas, Upper East Tennessee has experienced a boom of golfing venues in the past decade, along with the Crossville area on the Cumberland Plateau. At least six courses are situated in the Crossville area. As Knoxville expands west, many course are being built in residential housing communities near the lakes.
Regardless, the everyday golfer can find something in his or her range.
“This area affords everybody an opportunity to play golf where they can financially do so,” Rebmann said. “You can find quite a variety of courses all through the spectrum.”
