No Comparison at All: A Closer Look at South Carolina’s Newest Golf Courses

Golf is a hot market right now. Participation is booming, equipment sales are soaring, and golf courses are being built as fast as developers can secure the land and contractors. Into this fray come two highly anticipated courses in Aiken, S.C., which has its own mini ecosystem of courses developing in the orbit of Augusta National Golf Club, which is just across the Savannah River.

The first two on the scene are Old Barnwell and Tree Farm, both infused with the DNA of renowned course architect Tom Doak. Both feature the sort of playability and attention to golf’s traditional ground game that Doak, along with Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw and others, espouse and which has become a popular design philosophy in North America.

Because both courses are only about 15 miles apart and were constructed—and opened—on similar timelines, it’s tempting to compare them to each other. Another common theme is that Brian Schneider, a longtime Doak associate,  helped build and design Old Barnwell while Doak conceived Tree Farm’s routing for PGA Tour pro Zac Blair, the club’s founder. Having said that, it would be a mistake to make any further comparisons. 

Old Barnwell was founded by Nick Schreiber with the vision of creating a club to provide access to groups traditionally largely excluded from private golf. He knew a world-class golf course was a necessity so he turned to Schneider and Blake Connant, who has worked on golf course designs and builds over the years including some with Doak.

Old Barnwell’s most striking characteristic is its long-range views, where golf holes emerge from rolling topography and are bordered by pine trees. The course is a study in scale with wide fairways and corridors that lead you toward green complexes replete with obvious contours and not-so-obvious contours inside of those contours.

What’s so baffling about Old Barnwell as a course is that  it tricks you into a false sense of confidence and understanding of its playing intentions. From most tee boxes, even middling players like me are greeted with nothing but ample fairway. But the trouble you can find (and I often do) is very troubling indeed. A good example of this is the 10^th hole where a decent drive with a draw will likely find its way toward the long bunker that guards the boundary of the left side of the fairway. This is exactly what happened to me and a poor shot out of that bunker found more sand, then another shot found more sand … and then the World Handicap System saved me from further embarrassment.

It might be easy to dismiss my folly as that of an average player but my group was filled with single-digit handicappers who were also rope-a-doped by Old Barnwell. The short par-4 14^th, which will become one of the course’s most talked-about and photographed holes, did nearly all of us in. It offers the excellent golfer a daring chance at driving its blind, plateaued green which sits hidden from the tee box. A direct line to the hole requires carrying a sod-faced wall with two bunkers at its base. The shorter hitter can safely hit out to the right—even using a hybrid—to land in short grass. But the fairway rises from right to left, toward the green like a ramp and tempts players of all abilities to try to shorten the hole by aiming farther left than necessary.

The safe play also offers a clear shot to a deep and welcoming green. Cutting the corner, even for the powerful player, presents other challenges as it’s not only the green that is blind but islands of sand ready to entrap your heroism that fall off the elevated green’s edges. The putting surface, like many of the surfaces at Old Barnwell, takes the simple shape of a square but appears to have had hydraulics placed under it to jack up its upper left-hand corner, which is perfect for funneling well-placed shots back to the center of the green or for taking a BMX up its slope to perform a Superman.

Versatility, in a word, is the M.O. of Old Barnwell, offering multiple lines of play on each hole and with each shot. This lends itself to endless variety (or puzzles) and causes an urgency to go back out immediately after holing out your final putt if nothing else to collect your bearings and make sure you just saw what you thought you saw. 

Tree Farm’s charms, if not its terrain, are subtler and no less fun. The course offers a gentle—and unique opening—with a short par-3, the easiest one on the course. It’s followed by a short par-4, allowing one to warm up into the round before providing you with its long third hole. Accuracy is not a factor on the third’s drive to an enormous fairway but the length of the hole is demanding as the back tees (465 yards) have forced carries for longer hitters.

Having navigated your drive, a long approach most likely awaits but there is plenty of room for ground-game approaches to a green that tilts from right to the left which will run many chips and shots off the green. Shots hit to the right of the green will have difficulty holding the putting surface.

That long par-4 is followed by one of the most difficult holes on the course—an uphill, 230-yard par-3 that plays into the wind. Trouble left and long protects this green as well as a cavernous Raynor-style  bunker on the right. Even a lay-up requires precision here as the length and visual intimidation of this hole is bound to cause lots of blowups and scar tissue.

While Tree Farm offers a bounty of kicker and feeder slopes to position your ball at the best chance for a score—and activate your imagination—in the 36 holes I played there, I became worried a better player might find the one true route to the green for each hole that gives the best opportunity at scoring and eschew other paths.

I had none of those worries at Old Barnwell, whose greens were baffling and where the lines of play seemed endless. I came away from my experience feeling each course asks  different questions and the more you can play them without thinking of the other, the quicker you’ll find the answers to each.