Tom Cousins, a successful Atlanta real estate developer and philanthropist who led the revitalization of East Lake Golf Club and received the USGA’s Bob Jones Award in 2001, died on July 29 at age 93.
“Tom was a thoughtful and visionary leader who was incredibly deserving of the Bob Jones Award, our highest honor,” said USGA CEO Mike Whan. “His work leading the East Lake Community Foundation for so many years extended well beyond the boundary of Jones’ home course. It changed the trajectory of an entire community and positively impacted thousands of lives.”
Tom Cousins was born on Dec. 7, 1931, in Atlanta, and graduated from the University of Georgia in 1952. In 1958, he started his real estate business, Cousins Properties, and jump-started a commercial transformation of metro Atlanta over the next three decades. He developed several downtown Atlanta parcels into gleaming office and entertainment complexes, including the Peachtree Tower skyscraper and the longstanding Omni Hotel and Arena. In 1968, Cousins bought the NBA’s St. Louis Hawks and moved them to Atlanta. It was the NBA’s first team in the Southeast. He later bought an expansion NHL franchise to the city, named the Flames.
Yet it was Cousins’ redevelopment of Atlanta’s East Lake neighborhood, which includes the historic East Lake Golf Club, that brought him acclaim in golf circles. The esteemed home course of Bob Jones had fallen on hard times, as had its surrounding residential and commercial blocks. Cousin and his family formed the East Lake Community Foundation in 1995, purchased the club and restored it to its former glory.
Just as importantly, Cousins partnered with the Atlanta Housing Authority and community leaders to build mixed-income housing, an elementary school and a YMCA in the East Lake neighborhood. He bridged the gap between the community’s residents and golf, launching a First Tee chapter and building an 18-hole short course on the former site of a troubled public housing complex.
“It has been a struggle,” said Cousins upon receiving the Bob Jones Award at the USGA’s 2001 Annual Meeting. “But I am glad we didn’t give up. It succeeded beyond my wildest imagination. We are proving that urban neighborhoods once given up as lost causes can be brought back to health and vitality.”
East Lake Golf Club hosted the 2001 U.S. Amateur won by Bubba Dickerson and since 2004 has been the annual host site of the Tour Championship, the PGA Tour’s season-ending event. The club was founded in 1904 and was where Bob Jones was taught the game by the legendary Scottish instructor Stewart Maiden. Donald Ross designed the second iteration of the course in 1915, which remained virtually untouched until alterations were made in preparation for the 1963 Ryder Cup.
Following a Rees Jones renovation in the 1990s after Cousins’ purchase, golf architect Andrew Green oversaw a restoration of East Lake in 2023 that focused on bringing back the lost elements of the Ross design. The work has been well-received, with East Lake now ranked No. 4 on Golf Digest’s Best Courses in Georgia.
Whatever the trajectory of East Lake Golf Club itself, it’s the now-thriving community around it that will forever be the legacy of Tom Cousins.
“I am really humbled by it,” said Cousins of the Bob Jones Award. “I am just a part of a dedicated team within the East Lake Community Foundation, with the purpose of changing people’s lives for the better.”
Greg Midland is the USGA’s editorial director.