Southern Hills Golf Course

Cookeville sits on the Cumberland Plateau — that broad, elevated spine of middle Tennessee where the land opens into rolling hardwood forests and the air runs a few degrees cooler than the valley towns below. It's a region with genuine golfing roots, and Southern Hills Golf Course is a fixture in that local landscape, the kind of public layout that anchors a community's relationship with the game across generations of players.

A par 72 over 18 holes is a canvas that suits all kinds of design temperaments, and on the Plateau the terrain itself does much of the work — elevation changes, tree-lined corridors, and the seasonal drama of a genuine four-season climate. Expect bentgrass or bermuda conditions that shift noticeably between spring's soft fairways and summer's firmer, faster surfaces.

For travelers passing through on I-40 or heading toward the Upper Cumberland's lakes and state parks, Southern Hills offers a straightforward reason to pull off and play — honest public golf in a part of Tennessee that earns more attention than it typically receives.