Forest Hills was planned and built for play in 1926, with Donald Ross commissioned to design an 18-hole course on Augusta’s Forest Hills property. Contemporary materials maintained by the club and university identify Ross as the original architect and 1926 as the opening year.
The course entered national golf history four years later when Augusta civic leaders staged the 1930 Southeastern Open as a two-course event shared by Forest Hills and Augusta Country Club; Bobby Jones won by thirteen shots and later described it as “the best-played tournament I ever turned out in my life.” A Georgia Historical Society marker placed at Forest Hills notes that thirteen of Ross’s original holes and the 1926 Golf House survive from the Jones era.
No primary-source documentation publicly available indicates that Ross returned for subsequent phases at Forest Hills after the opening period. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the Arnold Palmer Design Company undertook significant work: regional guides and a PGA.com feature state that Palmer/Ed Seay modified holes in 1984 (to accommodate Augusta University athletic construction) and that Palmer’s firm returned in 2004. The club’s own site, somewhat more conservatively, records a renovation by the Arnold Palmer Company in 2003. These dates frame the principal modern interventions on a Ross core.
Unique Design Characteristics
Because the club has not published original Ross plans online, hole-by-hole attribution must rely on on-course evidence and secondary descriptions. The club’s scorecard reveals a routing with alternating demands and a front-nine sequence (4–7) of short-long-par-5/long-3 that creates pacing akin to Ross’s era, while the back nine culminates in a distinctive par-3/par-5/par-4 finish. The long par-3 16th, playing over water to an elevated target, is widely described as a round-defining shot that must carry a pond to a large green—an element clearly present today and noted by reviewers, though its specific origin (Ross vs. later work) is undocumented in accessible sources.
The par-3 13th is the other back-nine one-shotter where water comes into play.
Several holes show green-site and bunker characteristics consistent with what survives at many Ross courses and are documented here by modern observers. On the opening hole (par 4), the green pitches from back to front with a protective front-right bunker; the fifth (par 4) uses a fairway bunker to influence the ideal angle before a green guarded on the right. Across the course, greens are repeatedly cited as the primary defense due to interior slope and contour, a present-day condition now married to TifEagle surfaces. While these descriptions come from recent writers rather than Ross plan sheets, they correspond to features visible in current play.
Without club archival drawings, identifying the “clearest surviving” Ross holes requires caution. The Georgia History marker’s note that “thirteen of the original Donald Ross-designed holes” remain suggests that a majority of corridors and green sites still trace to 1926, but a public list matching those holes to today’s numbering has not been published. Based on today’s yardages and topographic context, the front nine—particularly Nos. 1–3 and 5—retains the most classically scaled, ground-contoured tests described by multiple accounts, though this inference should be verified against original aerials and plan sheets.
Historical Significance
Forest Hills matters in Ross’s corpus for two entwined reasons. First, it anchored early tournament golf in Augusta before the advent of the Masters, hosting two of the four rounds of Jones’s 1930 Southeastern Open victory—a springboard to the only single-season “Grand Slam.” Second, its long collegiate role has kept the layout in sustained competitive use. Since 1979 the Augusta Golf Association and Augusta University have staged their signature men’s college event—now the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational—at Forest Hills, drawing elite national fields and producing champions such as Dustin Johnson (2007), Lee McCoy (2015), Dylan Meyer (2017, 2018), and Cameron Young (2019). This continuity has preserved Forest Hills as an actively measured test in contemporary play.
Current Condition / Integrity
As of 2024–2025, Forest Hills operates with TifEagle bermuda on all greens following an extensive resurfacing and reopening in November 2024 under Bobby Jones Links management. The project was presented as a performance upgrade to smoothness and speed rather than as a historical restoration, and it did not publicly claim to re-create Ross green contours.
Regarding Ross integrity, publicly available sources agree on a mixed condition: the Georgia Historical Society marker documents that thirteen original Ross holes survive; tourism and golf-media sources report that the Arnold Palmer Company redesigned “several holes” in 1984 owing to campus construction and returned in 2003/2004. Some golf-media features characterize the 2004 work as a “restoration to its original design,” but the club’s own site describes a renovation without using the term “restoration.” Absent primary drawings, it is safest to say that Forest Hills today blends a majority of Ross corridors and surviving green sites with later-era hole rework, modern bunkering lines, and contemporary agronomy.
Tree lines and turf have evolved with maintenance and collegiate event standards. Reviews and club materials emphasize that fairways play relatively open by modern parkland standards, with greens providing most of the defense through contour and pinning—now on TifEagle surfaces—while water hazards materially affect the two back-nine par-3s. These conditions reflect current set-up more than any documented Ross prescription and should not be read as a definitive statement of 1926 intent.
Sources & Notes
Forest Hills Golf Club, “Course Information” (scorecard, yardage, ratings/slopes; references renovation year).
Augusta University Athletics / Facility page for Forest Hills.
Georgia Historical Society, “Bobby Jones and the Beginning of the Grand Slam” historical marker. Accessed 2025. https://www.georgiahistory.com/… [notes Jones’s 13-shot win; states 13 original Ross holes and 1926 Golf House survive]. Note: marker text locates the win at Forest Hills; multiple other sources specify two rounds at ACC and two at Forest Hills.
Forest Hills Golf Club (Wikipedia), “Notable tournaments.” Southeastern Open used both ACC and Forest Hills; treat as corroborative only alongside local museum references].
Augusta Museum of History, “Celebrating a Grand Tradition.” [local history exhibit referencing two-course formats in Augusta events; supports split-venue understanding].
PGA.com, “Great Public Courses to Play Around Augusta During Masters Week” (Apr. 5, 2023). [notes Ross design; Palmer/Seay 1984 renovations; Palmer 2004].
GolfPass Travel Advisor, “Tradition the star at…Forest Hills” (Mar. 10, 2014). [describes par-3 16th over water; general course character]. Secondary descriptive source.
Golf Travel & Leisure, “Forest Hills Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia” (Apr. 19, 2018). [hole-specific observations on No. 1 and No. 5; notes water on two back-nine par-3s]. Secondary descriptive source.
Augusta Golf Association, “Our flagship event…the 3M Augusta Invitational…since 1979.” [documents tournament’s long tenure at Forest Hills].
Bobby Jones Links news release, “Forest Hills…reopens following major greens renovation” (Nov. 13, 2024). [confirms TifEagle greens and 2024 reopening; current management].
Visit Augusta listing, “Forest Hills Golf Club.” Accessed 2025. [notes 1984 Palmer redesign of several holes].
Club site, “Hole-By-Hole Tour” (yardages by hole; notes 2003 redesign by Arnold Palmer).