Growing up in Stone Mountain, Ga., golf course architect Tripp Davis had plenty of reasons to visit the Atlanta Athletic Club, 23 miles north in Johns Creek. He competed in multiple Atlanta Junior Golf Association events on its two courses and attended the 1981 PGA Championship there, which was won by Larry Nelson, a U.S. Open champion two years later. Now an Oklahoma resident, Davis will return in July when the club’s Riverside Course, which he renovated three years ago, hosts the 2025 U.S. Girls’ Junior.
“If you told me, ‘Hey, 40 years from now you’re going to go back in and redo the Riverside Course,’ I would not have believed you,” said Davis. “It’s a dream-come-true kind of thing.”
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It’s also another historic moment for the Atlanta Athletic Club, which will become the first-ever site to have hosted a U.S. Girls’ Junior, U.S. Junior Amateur, U.S. Amateur, U.S. Women’s Amateur, U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open. Founded in 1898, the club was located in Atlanta’s East Lake neighborhood – where Bob Jones learned the game at what is now known as East Lake Golf Club – from 1904 until 1967, when it moved to its current location in the city’s northern suburbs. Forever linked with Jones, the club also boasts a strong legacy in women’s golf.
“I think we’re the only club that has three past champions of the U.S. Women’s Amateur as past or current members: Alexa Stirling Frazier, Dorothy Kirby and Martha Wilkinson Kirouac (honorary chair for the Junior Girls’ championship),” said West Streib, longtime member and co-chair of its host committee. “Plus, you think about how Bobby Jones got involved in golf back during the early 20th century, and Alexa Stirling was a big part of that.” Bailey Tardy, who finished T-4 in the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open and earned her first LPGA Tour victory in 2024, grew up in the club’s robust junior program.
“I’m a father of two young girls, and they’re getting kind of involved in golf,” said Streib. “I had a chance to play the U.S. Junior Amateur when I was 16, so I just hope and dream that they aspire to pursue it at that level. But if not, that’s OK. This championship is a chance for all our kids to see the best in the world right at your doorstep.”
Competitors will encounter a revitalized Riverside Course that reflects the strategic philosophy of Davis, who also renovated two other 2025 championship venues: Oklahoma City Golf & Country Club in Nichols Hills, Okla., which hosts the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball in May, and Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio, Texas, site of the U.S. Senior Amateur in August.
“I’m not really one who likes to build golf courses that are just going to beat you up,” said Davis. “I like for you to have options. I like for you to have to think. I think in the women's game, which extends to the girls as well, they play a purer form of golf, in my opinion. This course is going to give them a lot of ways they can play it.”
To create that flexibility, Davis focused on reforming the overall landscape of the Riverside Course to better fit with the ground. “There has been a lot of earth moved over the years, and we kind of stripped down all the mounding and more artificial earth work,” said Davis. “We wanted the course to sit on the ground naturally. That was a significant part of the process.”
Another point of emphasis for the project, which began in late 2021 and finished 11 months later, was to create a match-play flow to the course. “We wanted to start out where even the first few holes can flip matches a bit,” said Davis.
