Heritage Golf Links - Tradition Nine

First time playing this course and I was very impressed. The lay out is challenging and scenic. Be prepared for the no flat greens. Speed of the greens was nice. Not slow and not to fast. I hope you enjoy the course as I did.

The course has a nice layout but the pace of play completely ruins the experience. 3 hour front 9 and 5.5 hours for 18. No marshals on the course and even when I have seen marshals nothing is done to speed up pace of play. BEWARE tee boxes are normally moved up on EVERY hole on the weekends. This is a feeble attempt to speed up pace of play instead of spacing out tee times better and actually enforcing pace of play on the course, and is very frustrating for golfers who want to play the true back tees on an already short golf course. I want to continue keeping this my home course but pace of play must improve.

Greens are very, very soft (approaches leave big craters in the green) and don't have much pace. Would be nice to see the greens firmed up sped up.

Pace of play was horrendous. The staff has got to do a better job of managing the tee times and enforcing pace of play. It doesn’t matter how nice the course is, if the pace of play continues to be 6 hour plus rounds and waiting 15-20 minutes in each tee box, I will take my game to another course. It’s a shame too, I really like this course and want to make it my home course, but the pace of play ruins it.

5 hour round guaranteed. For the price in peak times they should do better.

I really like this course. Really challenging but fun. The only real negative is that there seems to be little order for evening tee times. People in the evening just show up, pay, and run out to the first tee. We showed up on time and teed off maybe 25 mins late. That said, we still got 18 holes in and we left the first tee at 5:30 and played part of that as a fivesome because of the hold up. So if you play in the evening, be prepared for a frustrating and hectic start, but after that it should be OK.

This is a challenging course, but not overly so. I recommend sticking with the Heritage and Legacy nines rather than the 3rd nine which lacks diversity. The greens were in fantastic shape, rolling true but on the slower side from a pace perspective. The tee boxes need some serious TLC, but otherwise the track was in good shape.

Practice facility is very strong with a massive practice green, separate chipping green, and plenty of practice tee area.

The staff were very nice, and the food/beverage prices were incredibly low. I had a chicken salad sandwich for $3 and 2 snacks for $1.

Greens fee was very reasonable at $50, and I certainly felt I got that much value and then some.

The best part of this course is the location. Living inside the perimeter puts me 50 minutes away from other nice tracks like the Georgia Club, the Frog, and Ashton Hills. Heritage is a nice public track within 15 minutes of Brookhaven.

Round took close almost 6 hours. It was cart path only, but that is way too long.

Really fun course with a lot of beautiful, interesting, and challenging holes. I used every single club in my bag. The Tradition 9 is really fun too and it was empty because people don’t like playing a par-35 side. But you should do it. It’s great. Heritage was probably my favorite of the nines though. Super friendly staff too. Great starter paired me up with a member who was fun to play with.

Overall this is a great course and is in super shape. The weekend pace is not as smooth as during the week but that’s expected. My friends and I play here often in spring and summer and it is a great value.

Pro shop staff was amazing and cart associates quite friendly! Great job

Great course for an amazing value. They are making repairs where needed and upkeep looks good.

Great course fun and challenging. Had to come really early 7:30 tee time and it went perfectly we didn't waste any time going fast through the course cruising along at a really good pace. In the pat times I have gone this place is always packed and is a nightmare to get around having to wait all the time. But that morning i was the first out and made everything a lot more enjoyable. A lot of hills so you never really get a good lie makes it interesting. Greens were strong and fast I was impressed. most fairways and tees were decent nothing too messed up to complain.

I wish I could keep this pithy, but HGL has a number of issues that need addressing, so I'll do it point by point per the rating system of GN. Also, I used to play here frequently as a pseudo member when it was managed by Affiniti Partners, but this place has fallen far from that lofty standard of 2010-2012ish.

Pace of Play -- pretty much always awful on the weekends and Friday, especially Heritage since it is the first nine you normally play when doing 18. Legacy thins the herd I guess as maybe several groups defect to Tradition for an easier time on their second 9. Still that is just a crutch. HGL needs to hire a marshal to go with the starter to protect their pace of play on the main 18 at least until twilight. There seems to be no commitment to such and it's just "cram as many players as you can and consequences be darned!"

Stop over-booking and duping people into playing Tradition if they want to move it along. Why not market a cheaper ($15 less) Tradition to Heritage round of 18 starting late morn \ midday that will cross over to the "back" as the morning times on Heritage are turning to Legacy? And otherwise limiting early morning and late afternoon on Tradition to 9-hole and twilight play? Then start your early afternoon 18 rounds on Legacy turning onto Heritage later. There's gotta be a way to do it, or just limit Tradition to 9-holers and beginners.

Course Layout \ Conditions -- to dovetail with the PoP issues, it might behoove you guys to tell your super to stop setting the course up with ridiculous hole locations that have no business on this tricky layout, at least not with any frequency. With nary a flat lie on the golf course, what good is it to tuck pins on shelves and humps on greens that really should have been re-designed the week after the course was opened? I love the challenge of the greens when they are in good shape and rolling smoothly, but there are too many high-handicappers on this course to be using certain portions of these greens, or tucking pins on the side of a shelf of a multi-tiered green. Certain spots should just be off-limits for pins on Fri-Sun.

For example, front right on the down slope of Heritage 1, extreme left edge on Her 3, just under the top of the spine on Her 6 where it is severely sloped, back left on Her 7 where you're just begging for pull hooks into the bunker, that stupid false front shelf on Her 8 behind the bunker (I know it's a risk / reward hole, but come on, you could hit a Jason Day high-ball with an 8-iron from 180 and have no chance of stopping it anywhere near the hole even after a heavy rain), extreme left front side of Leg 1 where to the right is a 6 foot drop-off, right behind the edge of the false front on the bottom tier of Leg 3 where you will putt right off the green from the middle tier etc. I could go on but I think you get the idea.

It's fun to have maybe one or two of those locations in a round but when you put several into the Saturday set-up and many back to back, how in the world do you expect foursomes to play in less than 5 hours??! It's just insanity. Stop setting it up on the weekend like it's a US Open Sectional Qualifier!!

Oh, conditions...I realize the course is mostly Bermuda so you get a pass on patchy grass in the fairways as it takes time in the spring for it to come into its ideal lushness and thickness. The greens could be a bit faster, but by in large, they are healthy and seem ready for a summer of heavy traffic. Obviously the poa annua makes it a challenge to keep them smooth all day, but they seemed a bit too furry for late April. Also, the Heritage side always seems 1 to 2 feet slower than the Legacy side...not sure if there is any way to get them closer in speed since there is more stress on the Heritage greens due to less ventilation and more greens with shade.

But if there is anything you can do to impress upon people to fix ball marks such as little signs near the greens as you walk up or having the starter add it to a short opening spiel like "Pin position 2 today, 90 degrees and fix your ball mark plus one more!" would be nice and might help. Sucks that so many crappy golfers disregard this and abuse the course (yet still play agonizingly slow), but again, if there is more attention paid to the little things (free pitch mark device instead of two draft beers with a greens fee!), and a roaming marshal, it might help to incentivize some folks to be more mindful.

Value for Your $ -- perceived value is dwindling fast as rates seem to be creeping up AFTER the spring ramp up to the Masters. Seriously? I know it's almost summer and people will pay a premium to beat the heat in the morning, but you had early afternoon times advertised on GN last Saturday for $73!!?? Are you kidding? Unless you get the greens in better shape, stop tucking pins and grow some grass, you might want to re-think that. The sweet spot for this course (when it's in great condition) is $55-65 in morning and $50-30 (declining towards twil) during the afternoon. Especially with the PoP issues you will have invariably from being pretty much the only good public course around for miles. But I bet you know why you've lost some afternoon business to Smoke Rise)...at least you don't have to hammer a putt from 30 feet up a slope to get it to the hole, or putt through 4 pitch marks or wait 5 minutes on a 4some to putt out to a US Open hole location.

Perhaps I'm delusional and asking too much, but I rarely paid more than $55 (for a non-member guest) when Affiniti managed this place and it was in great condition, had great staff who made you feel at home in the grill room and a Superintendent, who had the place looking pretty darn immaculate (although David did like the sneaky hard pin placement almost as much as this current guy...is that you David??)

Surely this place can make a good profit with an average of $55 peak-time rounds without having to overbook it and make everyone miserable with tedious and torturous hole locations on huge greens that are challenging on any day with 10 pins in the middle, 4 in the back and 4 in the front. Get the course in excellent shape, price it fairly for a fun day and I'm sure you'll make very good money from the golf-hungry masses of Atlanta.