Chateau Elan Golf Club

Denis Griffiths designed Chateau Elan Golf Club in 1989 on a piece of Braselton, Georgia land north of Atlanta — the centerpiece of a French-themed wine-country resort that founder Donald Panoz developed in the late 1980s. The property includes three eighteen-hole courses (Chateau, Woodlands, and the Legends, a private course), a winery, a lodge, and a spa, in the destination-resort hospitality model that defined Southeast resort development through the 1990s. The Chateau Course is the championship-rotation routing of the three, and the PGA Tour's Sarazen World Open Championship was played at Chateau Elan from 1994 through 1998.

The Chateau Course plays around 7,030 yards par 71 from the championship markers, with bermuda fairways and a slope in the low 130s. Griffiths — a Robert Trent Jones Sr. associate who established his own design office in the 1970s — routed the eighteen holes through Georgia piedmont rolling terrain with natural creek crossings. The fifteenth hole is a 542-yard par-5 with a tee shot played over a creek; the seventeenth, a 198-yard par-3 across a natural pond, is the routing's most-discussed one-shotter. The fairways play firm given the Georgia clay subsoil that drains quickly.

Chateau Elan is open to resort guests and members at premium daily-fee rates. The French wine-country theming gives the resort a different visitor demographic from the broader Southeast resort properties — the lodging, dining, and spa programming are organized around the wine and the resort hospitality model rather than around the courses alone. The Legends course (private) hosts a separate membership.

North Georgia climate gives Chateau Elan a playing season of March through November, with the firmest conditions in October. Summer humidity and afternoon thunderstorms compress mid-day rounds through July and August. The mature tree canopy across the property keeps the routing cooler in mid-summer than the surrounding suburban Atlanta courses.