The 19th Hole: Things to Do During the TOUR Championship, Off the Course

The TOUR Championship returns to East Lake Golf Club on August 26 and runs through August 30, which means the top thirty players in the FedExCup standings, a lot of walking, and the busiest week our neighborhood sees all year. If you are looking for things to do during the TOUR Championship once you are off the course, or you live here and want to know what is happening that does not require a badge, this is the week we build the whole calendar around.

We are five minutes from the gates, and for those five days we are turning the place into The 19th Hole.

Things to do during the TOUR Championship when you are off the course

A tournament day is a long day on your feet. You walk more than you expect, you stand in more lines than you expect, and by the time you are back at the car the only real decision left is where to go so the day does not just end in traffic. That decision is the one nobody plans and everybody ends up making badly, usually at nine at night, hungry, in a parking lot.

East Lake is mostly residential, which is the charm of it the other fifty-one weeks a year and the problem during this one. There is not a strip of twenty restaurants waiting outside the gates. What is close fills up early, so the move is to know where you are going before you leave the course rather than after.

There is a rhythm to the week once you have done a few of them. Mornings are for getting in and finding your spot. The middle of the day belongs to the course and to whoever is making a run at the FedExCup. The hours after the last putt are the ones that decide whether the day felt like a good one or just a long one, and those are the hours worth having a plan for.

Vela Park becomes The 19th Hole, August 26 to 30

Vela Park Food Works is running tournament week as The 19th Hole, with the dates matched to the tournament exactly, Wednesday through Sunday. That means cocktail and food specials across the week, putting green games, photo ops, live music, and a DJ set on Saturday. Back Nine is also open if you want to test your swing on the golf simulator, which is either a good idea or a very bad idea depending on how your own game went that morning.

None of it needs a tournament badge. If you are in town for the golf, it is the easy landing spot after a round. If you live here and have been quietly bracing for tournament traffic all month, it is the reason to come out anyway.

The park is the part that lands differently during a week like this. After five or six hours inside a rope line, shoulder to shoulder with a gallery, the thing you actually want is room. A lawn wide enough to spread out on, shade, and a table nobody is hovering over waiting for you to leave. That turns out to be harder to find during tournament week than good food is, and it is why people end up staying for an evening instead of the hour they planned on.

What is on each night that week

The regular weekly lineup keeps running underneath the tournament programming, so the front of the week is worth knowing too:

• Monday: Trivia Night, before the crowds arrive and the easiest night of the week to get a table
• Tuesday: Taco Tuesday, with taco specials and ten dollar margaritas at the Good Times Bar
• Wednesday: Sounds on the Green, live acoustic music outside, and the first day of tournament week
• Thursday: Yappy Hour, dog-friendly with themed drink specials, for the people who brought the dog to Atlanta too
• Friday: Friday Night Live, live local music on the green space
• Saturday: the DJ set, which is the loudest and latest the week gets

Times shift, so check the events calendar for the current schedule before you plan a night around any one of them.

Where to eat between rounds

Six independent kitchens and a full-service bar, which during a week like this mostly matters because a group coming off the course never wants the same thing. Somebody wants barbecue, somebody wants a salad, somebody wants a beer and dessert and nothing else. Six separate counters and one table handles all of that without anybody compromising.

We wrote the full rundown of the kitchens and the surrounding neighborhoods separately, so if you are still deciding, start with our guide to where to eat during the TOUR Championship.

Getting here and the parking situation

We are at 1881 2nd Ave on the Atlanta side of East Lake, about five minutes from the club. Parking is free and on site, with no meters and no decks, which is worth more during tournament week than any other week of the year. Directions and the rest of the details are on the visit page.

One practical note: traffic through the neighborhood funnels along 2nd Avenue and Glenwood Avenue during the tournament, and it is heaviest right when rounds end. Coming a little earlier or a little later than the crowd is the difference between a ten minute drive and a forty minute one.

If you are skipping the golf entirely

Plenty of people who live on the east side treat tournament week as something to get through rather than something to attend. Fair enough. The week still comes with live music four nights out of five, a park to sit in, and a putting green that does not care whether you watched a single shot.

That is the version of tournament week we like best, honestly. The golf is the reason the city is paying attention to East Lake for five days. The neighborhood is what is here the rest of the year, and the point of doing anything at all that week is to show people that.