I moved away from ATL in 2015, so I didn't know Durham Lakes had closed. You are spot on in your assessment; really good layout that was a prisoner of it's conditioning.
Thanks AG. I really liked that golf course and was excited about it opening back up. Just from the aerials, the guy did some incredible heavy lifting and work. Really remarkable it seems.
It really was a pretty fine layout with a good mix of holes. Number 9 and 18 were two particularly good closing par 4's for each nine. Especially 9. Research shows it was built in 2006, designed by Scott Pool. I know nothing of him.
Maybe Mike Young might know something about this. I like his courses and always have wanted to get down to his place The Fields in LaGrange. Maybe I could just go down there, play, and ask.
I don't think Scott Pool has done but a handful of courses, but at least one other one is quite notable. Waterfall in Clayton, GA on Lake Burton is a pretty unique golf course; huge elevation changes and spectacular conditions. Waterfall used to be bent grass tee to green, but it tended to stay terribly soft, and I think it's been regrassed. Bill Bergin just completed a large renovation project.
Two other notes about Waterfall: The current ownership includes, among others, Nick Saban, who also has a house there. And the course is named after a par 3 that drops over 200' from the tee to the green, so it typically plays about 9 clubs less than the measured yardage; I've never seen anything to match it. (It used to be #10, but I think Bill Bergin has altered Pool's original routing.) The membership had, at least in the bent grass days, a local rule that if the entire group agrees on where a ball landed but the ball cannot be found, the player drops with no penalty. The reason is that golf balls at more or less terminal velocity would plug so deep they just couldn't be found. I know that sounds like a tall tale; it isn't.
Also, that hole gives the course it's name; there is a waterfall from the top all the way to the bottom 200' below. It's spectacular, and completely fake; the water comes out of a retention pond at the top, and then is captured and pumped back up to the pond. As soon as the last group of the day finishes and takes their pictures, they cut off the waterfall and the pumps for the night. I have a picture of me taken on the tee looking toward the green, and from the green looking toward the waterfall and up at the tee; good pictures, but they don't really convey the scale.