FIRST PERSON East Lake’s renewal saved Atlanta jewel

Tom Harding moved to Atlanta’s East Lake community in 1980, joined East Lake Country Club in 1982 and served as its chief engineer from 1989-2001 as its transformation began. His house is near the club’s northeast corner.

Before I joined East Lake, I would sneak through a hole in the fence and walk the course. I was amazed. It’s as if the souls of the people who have gone there since 1892 are imprinted on this land. Even when the course went into decline, people from England, Scotland and Japan would pull into the driveway wanting to see where Bobby Jones played, and they would leave in awe.

In the 1980s, you could buy a house next to East Lake for $25,000. Our neighbors were salt of the earth. We looked out for each other. But the East Lake Meadows housing project overshadowed anything positive that was happening.

At night on my porch, I heard automatic gunfire from the drug traffic at the Meadows. Neighbors suffered burglaries, robberies and murder. That reputation meant few people came out to play golf here.

The club’s owners then — Paul Grigsby, Tommy Barnes, Harvey Robertson and Bill Leide and a dozen or so others — saved the club from becoming a cemetery or worse. Bill Blalock championed the cause of the club members day to day and often paid for course improvements out of his pocket. Atlanta should revere them like the people who saved the Fox Theatre, because East Lake is Atlanta’s heritage.

The course condition deteriorated partly because the infrastructure, put in prior to the 1963 Ryder Cup, went into decline. The greenskeeper attached the sprinkler heads, one hole at a time. If the lake was down, the pump couldn’t get enough water to keep the grass watered.

The drains under the greens were filled with silt, so planting bent grass was like working in a swimming pool full of compacted wet soil. It often died despite everyone’s best efforts. Members would have “poa annua parties,” where we pulled the weeds out of the greens. Everyone was so infatuated with East Lake that they were more than willing to make the place better.