We drove along Battle Creek some thousand feet below the heavily wooded ridges atop the Cumberland Plateau, our sentinels on our route from Monteagle and Sewanee to South Pittsburg in southeast Tennessee. The creek is green in the morning light, the water winking at us through the many trees.

The habitats we pass on its bank run from vacation homes and cabins to see-through shacks and trailers, from luxury SUVs parked in driveways to chickens scratching in the dirt around rusted out trucks on concrete blocks.

Whoa. Careful. Mind the ‘baby grass’ at Overton Park, please

My guide was my friend, Parks Dixon. “If it rains for a couple of days, they’re all right,” he says, “but if it rains for a week, the whole golf course is a lake.” He explains that all the water that falls up on the ridges we’ve been driving below since leaving Monteagle eventually ends up down here in Battle Creek, and Battle Creek often becomes Battle Bay.

We reach the gravel parking lot of that nine-hole public golf course, carved out of a farm field and flood plain in 2014, and the inspiration for the redesign of a nine-hole public golf course some 300 miles west, carved out of a primeval forest in 1906.

The golf course is Sweetens Cove Golf Club, and the inspiration to bring its designers to Memphis and turn them loose on Overton’s storied but long neglected nine was all Parks Dixon. Parks is somewhat shy — a condition I have no familiarity with — and humble, reluctant to take credit for things — a condition almost every politician has no familiarity with — but make no mistake. What’s happening to Overton Park’s golf course and soon the Abe Goodman Clubhouse would never have gotten off the tee without Parks.

Designers share vision for Overton golf on walking tour

He got the right people involved — including Sweetens’ architects, members of the Overton Park Conservancy, and some other folks genuinely interested in the course and its importance and potential in Memphis. And some well-known Memphians, and well-known couples like Memphian Ashley Manning and her husband, Peyton, have stepped up and put their money down.

Fore. And Memphian Parks Dixon has the honors.

Back to that gravel parking lot. At the end sits something smaller than a house trailer and a bit bigger than wherever you keep your lawnmower. Aptly called The Shed, this is the clubhouse and pro shop of Sweetens Cove.

There is no locker room. The men’s and women’s bathrooms are over there on that edge of the parking lot. Use at the turn is recommended.

Opinion: We live in the Great State of Mediocrity

There is no grill or bar. There’s a barrel with shot glasses on it and a bottle of bourbon over there on the stoop rail of The Shed. Use before teeing off is recommended.

Bring your own food and cooler. And a sense of humor. You’ll need all that.

Sweetens Cove and what it’s doing for the energy of golf is a big enough draw that when the course held its Waffle House Open, Waffle House sent its one food truck from Atlanta and parked it in that gravel parking lot for two days. When the course held its Burger Open, Wahlburgers sent its food truck 850 miles to park it on the lot for two days.

There are five partners and co-owners. One of them is the aforementioned Peyton Manning. Another is tennis great Andy Roddick.

Out of The Shed – where two people can’t turn around – from the fertile mind of Matthew Adamski — who runs it with a couple of assistants who can’t be in there at the same time — they sell out of every T-shirt they come up with, and out of the golf shirts and hats and cups and balls, too, and out of any number of golf tchotchkes and this-and-that. In-Shed and online, it all moves to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars net to the course every year.

Opinion: The Overton Park golf course is about a lot more than golf

On this particular morning, they sold me three golf shirts and a Battle Creek Crew Team T-shirt. All three golf shirts had a different Sweetens logo. That’s all part of the brand, because the Sweetens brand is not to take anything too seriously, in a game that’s taken itself far too seriously, losing younger generations.

“In 40 years,” say Adamski, “King-Collins designed courses are going to be remembered for revitalizing golf.”

The course itself has been featured in The New York Times, and ranked by Golfweek as the 49th modern course overall and as the 21st Best Course You Can Play in America.

All of that is quite a testimony to Tad King and Rob Collins who started King-Collins Golf Course Design with Sweetens Cove, and quite exciting for Overton Park’s nine they completely redesigned to open reimagined this fall.

Back at Sweetens Cove, Parks and I are riding number one, a 563-yard par five from the back tee. It’s just 401 yards from the front tee. There’s not a flat lie anywhere, all bumps and slopes. Everything is a bit downhill or uphill, and a bit sidehill. And all beautiful, all in a beautiful bowl surrounded by high ridges carpeted with trees.

Parks and his wife, Beth, first saw it in 2014. “We heard about the course by chance,” said Parks, “and decided to give it a shot. It was cold, misty, and then rainy. Nobody out there but us. We stayed on the first green for 30 minutes. ‘Look at this putt,’ I’d yell. ‘Oh, yeah?’ she’d yell back, ‘Come try this one!’ ”

Ashley, Peyton Manning make ‘lead gift’ to Overton Park golf course renovation

They thought the huge, hilly, subtly and not so subtly contoured green would be the only one like that. All the greens are like that, but each its own unique adventure. One green has a canyon in the middle of it.

They were in love. Sure, with each other, but also with this course, also with this game. You remember why you fell in love with golf at Sweetens Cove. You forget the stodginess and stuffiness; you remember the joy.

That’s the point.

Parks is a good golfer. His handicap is 8.5. On number three, another par five, he was 40 yards from the green in two. “After my 11th shot, I picked it up,” he said. “It just kept rolling back to me off the front.” The difference between that experience at Sweetens and just about anywhere else is that he was laughing — “howling” — when he picked it up.

They finished the nine in the rain, soaking wet and howling, and then they played another nine.

And Parks became determined to bring that joy to Overton Park. For example, number four is just a little too long for a par three and number six is a little too short for a par four, so Parks made them both par 3.5. I chuckle a little bit just writing that.

After we finished our tour, we walked across the ¼-acre putting green — a cross between a skate park and a scale model of the Smokies — and mounted a deck — the “heckle deck” — built around a big spruce above the par three ninth green. From there, one can share an opinion of the shot making with the group playing the hole, attempting to carry 150 yards of sand and waist-high native grass and hold a lightning-fast green that breaks 30 feet to the left downhill to a left side pin placement. Nothing to it.

Hole by hole: Overton Park golf course renovation

That spruce tree is on one of my shirts.

The new nine at Overton Park will still be where the game starts for kids with tee positions and features just for them, including their own putting green, but other tee positions, a couple of impressive fairway bunkers, contoured fairways and very interesting greens will provide plenty of challenge for anyone.

Plenty of joy.

Thanks, Parks.

I’m a Memphian, and they’re sprigging the future of golf right now in Overton Park.