Golf in South Pittsburg

South Pittsburg is a small Marion County city on the Tennessee River near the Alabama border, a community that has acquired an unlikely national golf reputation through Sweetens Cove — a nine-hole course on the river bottom that has become one of the most talked-about layouts in American golf. Sweetens Cove, routed on flat Tennessee River bottomland and redesigned by Tad King and Rob Collins, draws golf enthusiasts from across the country and has been the subject of sustained coverage in major golf publications, an extraordinary achievement for a nine-hole course in a community of a few thousand people. The surrounding Marion County landscape is the southern Cumberland Plateau, and the Tennessee River here runs through a corridor between the plateau escarpment and the Alabama highlands. South Pittsburg's Lodge Cast Iron facility — maker of Lodge cast iron cookware — is the city's primary industrial employer and a brand with national recognition.