Andrew Green’s Firefly Is Even Better With the Architect Along

As Seen in Athlon Sports
by Brendon Elliot, Senior Golf Writer

Ninety-five degrees greeted me when I arrived in Nashville on Thursday. By Friday, I was playing Andrew Green’s Firefly in temperatures that began in the low 60s and fell into the 50s, with enough wind to give a round in Middle Tennessee an almost Scottish feel.

I had written a handful of articles about this property before making the trip. I knew the story behind Green’s first original design and had followed Firefly’s progress toward opening. Now I finally had a chance to play it.

Firefly was outstanding. And the part I keep coming back to is how much of the golf course I could see.

At several points during the round, I looked out across multiple holes and realized how much I enjoy that quality in a course. I could follow the shape of the hole we were playing, then look beyond it and see how other holes occupied the same landscape. My eye kept traveling beyond the next shot.

Green Gives the Land Room

Firefly, a private club in Spring Hill, south of Nashville, opened its courses over Labor Day weekend. It is still a very young place, with the golf operation continuing to establish itself. Yet the relationship between the holes and the land already feels remarkably settled.

Green deserves considerable credit for that. Looking across the property, I admired how comfortably his holes occupied the ground. The views were beautiful, certainly, but seeing several holes together also let me appreciate how he had fitted a golf course into this setting.

I could study a green complex up close, then look farther out and take in a much larger piece of his work. I came away admiring both the care around those individual greens and his use of the property as a whole.

Having Green there made the experience even better. He played several holes with each media group, including ours, giving us the opportunity to experience his first original design alongside him.

That is a particularly good reason to resist judging Firefly solely through the projects that preceded it. Green has an established reputation for his work on existing courses. Here, he had the opportunity to decide where the golf should go from the beginning, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing those decisions on the ground.

For a course that has only recently welcomed its members, Firefly felt unusually comfortable in its surroundings.

A Front Nine With Three of Everything

The front nine contains three par 3s, three par 4s and three par 5s. That distribution appealed to me, and the sequence makes it more interesting still: a par 4 to begin, then a par 3, a par 5, another par 3 and another par 5.

Green then finishes the outward nine with a par 4, par 3, par 5 and par 4. The longer holes keep arriving between the short ones, so there is no extended run of par 4s to settle into. I enjoyed that rhythm.

The variety worked well in Friday’s wind. I liked having three par 5s woven among the shorter holes, with no two consecutive holes sharing the same par.

The greens were firm, which I expected from a course so early in its life. I would want more time and more rounds before trying to describe how they will play as the course matures. Friday provided one experience under some fairly demanding conditions.

What I could judge was the thought behind the complexes. They were difficult, yes, and I found them fair. I enjoyed that combination, especially on a day when the weather was already asking plenty of us.

There is useful variety in how Green lets golfers approach those targets. At the seventh, the ground short of the green allows a ball to be worked in along the turf. The fourth presents a much more exacting little target, with a deep bunker and falling ground around the green.

Those are different problems, and they help explain my enthusiasm for the front nine. Its three par 3s have room to be individual holes. Green has given them different ways to occupy a golfer’s attention.

The 14th Was My Hole of the Day

The long par-5 14th was my favorite hole at Firefly. For golfers playing the appropriate tees, it struck me as the perfect combination of difficulty and fairness.

The drive climbs uphill, with bunkers down the left and ground that feeds from right to left. Beyond the rise, exposed rock gives the hole a rugged character. The second shot crosses a creek toward a landing area that rises to a plateau, followed by an angled, contoured green.

There is a lot of golf in that description. The longest hitters can entertain getting home in two, while most players will need three shots. What appealed to me was having so much to consider along the way: where to drive it, how to negotiate the creek and where to leave the approach.

For a player taking three shots, the second has a purpose beyond getting farther down the hole. The creek and the angle of the green give that shot consequences for the approach. That helped make the 14th feel fair to me: the player without the distance to reach in two still has a hole worth thinking through.

The 15th changes the pace with a short par 4 that offers the possibility of driving the green under the right conditions. Later, the downhill par-3 17th brings the ground into play again, with bumps short of the green that can help feed a running shot toward the target. The back nine gives golfers plenty beyond the long 14th, but that was the hole I would pick first to show someone what I enjoyed about Firefly.

Joe Hallett, Nick Dimengo and a Round Together

I also had the pleasure of playing with my old friend and fellow PGA Professional Joe Hallett, who has taken on the role of director of golf instruction at Firefly. Seeing Joe at this point in the club’s development was especially enjoyable. There is still so much being organized, and he gets to help establish the teaching operation as the membership begins experiencing the place.

I have known Joe long enough that playing a round with him would have been a pleasure anywhere. Getting to do it at Firefly, as he begins this role, made the visit that much more enjoyable.

Our group also included fellow Athlon Sports writer Nick Dimengo. Nick and I have known each other for about two years, but Friday was the first time we had actually met in person.

That sounds odd until you consider how many working relationships develop that way now. You know someone through the work long before you ever share a tee time. With Nick, the in-person introduction felt overdue.

Kindred spirits is probably the best way to describe it.

Between an old friend, a fellow writer I was finally meeting and the architect joining us for part of the round, I had wonderful company in which to get acquainted with Firefly. The cold and wind were very much part of the experience, but so were those relationships.

I did not play the nine-hole short course. From what I could see, it looked every bit as thoughtfully considered as the main course, although a look from nearby is only enough to make me curious. Those nine holes deserve a round of their own.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.