By 1990, the Bob Jones Invitational — named for golf legend Bobby Jones — was in trouble. What began in 1982 as a straightforward pro-am at Highlands Country Club had grown too costly and difficult for touring professionals to reach, tucked away on the remote plateau.
Then-chairman Walter Wattles and accomplished amateur Charlie Yates found the fix. Yates was not simply a friend of Bobby Jones; he won the 1938 British Amateur, played on two U.S. Walker Cup teams before captaining the 1953 squad, and served for decades as secretary of Augusta National. Wattles and Yates dropped the pros and rebuilt the field around Walker Cup alumni, who now captain the teams.
The gamble worked. By its own telling, no other annual event in the country brings together more former Walker Cup players — the event’s claim, not an independently ranked title, but a distinctive one all the same.
The Walker Cup (known officially as the Walker Cup Match) is a biennial amateur competition between the United States and a combined Great Britain and Ireland team, first played in 1922 and organized by the USGA and The R&A. Alumni include future major champions Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Jordan Spieth, all before turning pro.
Bobby Jones himself played in five Walker Cups, went undefeated in singles across all of them, and served as playing captain in 1928 and 1930. He struck the ceremonial first shot when Highlands Country Club opened in 1928 as a Donald Ross design, and his father, Colonel Robert P. Jones, was among the club’s founders. His grandson, Dr. Bob Jones IV, now serves as the tournament’s honorary chairman.
Bobby Jones struck the ceremonial first shot when Highlands Country Club opened in 1928. (Source: Shutterstock)
This year’s weekend in Highlands runs the event’s usual course: There is a Walker Cup reunion dinner Thursday, practice rounds Friday followed by an evening of “cocktails and golf tales,” and Saturday’s 9:30 shotgun start before closing with a formal awards dinner. The 2026 committee is led by honorary chairman Dr. Bob Jones IV alongside co-chairs Ed Crenshaw and Anne Bailey.
The committee’s three Walker Cup liaisons carry more than a title. Jim Holtgrieve, Adam Mitchell, and Danny Yates — the nephew of Charlie Yates, the man who helped reinvent the tournament in 1990 — have all won it outright, and Holtgrieve captained the U.S. Walker Cup team in 2013, an honor Yates already held in 1999 and 2001. The full list of past champions stretches back to 1990.
Now in its 44th year, the tournament raises money for the Highlands Cashiers Health Foundation, with total giving topping $7.25 million through 2025. Recent years show the pace has held: $230,000 in 2022, $280,000 in 2024, and more than $262,000 in 2025, targeting the region’s primary care shortage through the Foundation’s five-year partnership with Blue Ridge Health–Highlands Cashiers.
Blue Ridge Health–Highlands Cashiers has grown alongside that support, recently topping 14,000 patient visits while offering family medicine, pediatrics, and preventive care to everyone on the plateau — in the Foundation’s own words, regardless of ability to pay. Foundation executive director Myrle Grate has credited the tournament with helping ensure “equitable access to primary care and vital health services close to home.”
This is not a spectator event: The Bob Jones Invitational is private and invitation-based. Readers drawn to the cause rather than the leaderboard can support the Highlands Cashiers Health Foundation’s work directly through its website.
At the turn…
Springdale lands a new ambassador — Springdale Resort in Canton has brought on Charlie Rymer, the former PGA Tour player and longtime ESPN and Golf Channel broadcaster, as its official ambassador and strategic consultant. Rymer, a former U.S. Junior Amateur champion, will appear at member events and tournaments through the year. His first outing in the role came earlier this summer at Springdale’s Member/Guest Tournament, where he worked Hole No. 8.
Cherokee Children’s Home tournament tees off — The Cherokee Boys Club runs its annual golf tournament Thursday and Friday, August 6–7, at Sequoyah National Golf Club in Whittier, benefiting the Cherokee Children’s Home. Registration and sponsorship windows closed weeks ago, so there’s no call to action here — just a nod to a Smoky Mountain Corridor charity tradition worth knowing about.
Beat the rush at this tavern in Highlands — Highlands Tavern offers a farm-to-table menu that leans ethnic fusion rather than standard tavern fare. The tuna tartare, built on avocado, cucumber, nori, and sesame, is the dish worth ordering first. There are no reservations; it is first come, first served — kitchen open 5 to 9 PM, closed Wednesday and Thursday.
Back-to-front greens: Why the miss matters more than the shot at Highlands.
Highlands Country Club’s own hole-by-hole notes are consistent on one point: Several of its best greens are elevated and slope back to front, and a short approach does not forgive itself the way a long one does. According to the club’s own greenkeeping staff, the putting surfaces were completely rebuilt at the end of the 1990s, replacing the old push-up-style greens with a modern USGA sand-based creeping bentgrass system — part of a master plan by architect Ron Prichard specifically aimed at restoring the internal contour of Donald Ross’s original greens. The practical challenge on these greens is the same: Play to the fat part of the green, not the flag.
Respect the false front on 10 and 11 — The club names these two holes specifically: both play to elevated greens sloping back to front, and both warn that anything short will fail to hold, sliding back down the slope rather than staying put. Take one more club and land the ball past the trouble rather than playing it safe short.
Know when short is actually the safe miss — Not every green here punishes the same way. The club’s own notes on the 1st actually call for missing short rather than long, the reverse of 10 and 11. Treat each green’s own tendency as its own puzzle rather than assuming one rule covers the whole course.
Calibrate distance on the greens that demand it — On elevated, back-to-front greens like 10, 11, and 15, distance control matters more than a picture-perfect line. Golf Digest’s general advice for this kind of green is to rehearse three chips in a row — one long, one short, one just right — so the hands learn correct distance before it counts under pressure.
At Highlands Country Club, that back-to-front tilt rewards precision as much as it punishes carelessness — read a green correctly, and it feeds the ball right to the hole instead of away from it.
