At Sweetens Cove, the course has multiple pins on each green and even a few spots to go “cross-country.” Here, a golfer hits from a makeshift platform that turns number 6 into a par-3. (photograph by Simon Bruty)
Around 5 p.m. on the first Sunday of November, the sun began to dip behind the mountains that surround South Pittsburg, a sleepy hamlet in southeast Tennessee, and the golden light illuminating the two groups still playing one of the most scenic, trendy and imaginative golf courses in the country started to fade. It was the kind of tableau that a golf purist might hold up to a nonbeliever as all that is beautiful, sacred and right about the game.