When visitors to Atlanta used to ask friends to recommend a public course in the metro area, the suggestions they received were varied and often uninspired. The opening last year of Long Shadow Golf Club, an affordable walker-friendly layout less than an hour east of the city, is beginning to change that. It was designed by Mike Young, an unsung Georgia-based architect who’s built twenty courses across the Southeast but had yet to express his full vision until now. Long Shadow unfurls across a vast expanse of rolling farmland, its holes peppered with burly, steep-faced bunkers and well-contoured greens of amazingly diverse shapes and sizes. The biggest thrills come on the back nine, with a high-meadow romp that crescendos at the long par-three seventeenth, where a cavernous bunker fronts a massive punchbowl green.

Long Shadow Golf Club

2731 Eatonton Road, Madison, Georgia.

Architect

Mike Young, 2007.

Yardage

7,346.

Par

72.

Green Fees

$49–$59.

Contact

706-431-6638, longshadowgolf.com.