There is a particular kind of place that stops a golfer mid-swing. Not because they've lost concentration, but because they've suddenly remembered why they came. The Keep at McLemore Resort, perched atop Lookout Mountain in Rising Fawn, Georgia, is exactly that kind of place.
Sports Illustrated named it the best new course of 2025. A Bill Bergin and Rees Jones mountain design that, in their words, "plays above the clouds." It is a designation that feels less like a ranking and more like a geographic fact.
The Keep reclines atop Lookout Mountain, a quiet, ancient, craggy behemoth at the southern tip of the Appalachians, stretching some 70 miles south of Chattanooga across Georgia's remote northwest corner.
You arrive expecting Georgia. What you find feels considerably more elemental than that.
Located 45 minutes south of Chattanooga, the mountaintop headlands course measures 7,722 yards from the tips and features five cliffside holes overlooking McLemore Cove. An unfathomably deep, forested valley nestled between Pigeon Mountain and Lookout Mountain. "It's not an ocean, but as natural attractions go, it's a one-of-a-kind setting," wrote Sports Illustrated's Joe Passov. Some say the views feel more like Wyoming than northwest Georgia.
Which is to say: you will question where you are, in the best possible way.
Architect Bill Bergin described the project as "a rare opportunity to take advantage of a site with such dramatic elevation and natural character," with a focus on crafting a layout that delivers "unforgettable moments along the cliffs and valleys of Lookout Mountain and McLemore Cove."
The design philosophy is almost defiantly minimal.
The architects were not reshaping the land; they found land that did not need reshaping. They were not creating new features because the features already existed.
That restraint is rare and, here, deeply felt. The mountain did most of the work.
Every hole carries panoramic, 50-plus-mile views, according to The Keep's head professional. Holes 1, 17, and 18 sit literally on cliff edges.
Stand on any of them long enough and the photography becomes reflexive. You will reach for your phone before you even realize you've done it. The Keep is, among other things, one of the most naturally photogenic stretches of turf in American golf.
Rees Jones himself declared during the 2021 U.S. Open that The Keep "could host a major."
Whether or not that day comes, the course needs no such validation. It already has something rarer: a sense of genuine place.
The Keep pushes the contemporary big-ballpark approach to golf design to the edge in a stunning departure from stereotypical mountain golf.
McLemore is the kind of resort you plan a full weekend around, not just a tee time. The Cloudland hotel, the sister Highlands Course, cliff-edge dining...it is a destination that rewards lingering. Drive the winding roads up, stay two nights, and let the mountain rearrange your sense of scale. You will leave wondering why more of American golf doesn't look like this.