Golf with a mission works in South Carolina (especially this week)

Apart from what’s on TV, obviously, some of the best golf during Masters week is in the South Carolina Sandhills, an area that radiates out from Aiken, South Carolina and is a manageable drive from Augusta, Ga.

Old Barnwell and Tree Farm have received best new course accolades. Broomsedge and The Quixote Club are very good, and The 21 Club is aiming to complete construction of its first course in 2026. Congaree Golf Club, in Ridgeland, is the grandaddy of these exclusive courses.

It’s an intriguing place for a hotbed of golf development. Among the 50 U.S. states, South Carolina has low comparative rankings in many categories. It’s 42nd in education, 43rd in crime and corrections, and 42nd in opportunity, according to U.S. News & World Reports. It’s in the middle of states for its economy, fiscal stability and healthcare. It’s highest ranking? That would be 19th for its natural environment.

Yet those socioeconomic challenges have equated to an opportunity: To tap the wealth of national members, successful club founders and philanthropically minded locals to funnel charitable dollars into the surrounding community. This is golf with a mission. And it gets a big boost during Masters week with busy tee sheets.

At Old Barnwell, guest fees are $2,300 per foursome. And it has a big impact. “They should get us to half our mission budget for the next 12 months,” said Nick Schreiber, its founder. The Quixote Club charges $2,500 for a foursome, with $700 of that going to its foundation.

For these courses, the model in one way or another is East Lake Golf Club. In the timeline between being Bobby Jones’ home course and becoming the host of the Tour Championship, East Lake was a struggling club in a rundown part of Atlanta. In 1993, Tom Cousins, a real estate developer, bought it with the intent of revitalizing the club and the neighborhood through the East Lake Foundation. It worked.

How well will it work in the Sandhills? Here’s a closer look at three of its courses that are working to set a new standard for mixing golf and philanthropy.

Congaree Golf Club: Congaree, No. 42 in Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest ranking, has hosted two PGA Tour events, both times substituting in a pinch. During Covid travel restrictions, it hosted the Palmetto Cup in 2021–which replaced the RBC Canadian Open—and in 2022, the CJ Cup, which was originally played in South Korea.

Locally, the Tom Fazio-designed course is better known for the young golfers it supports and the funding it gives to the surrounding community. That money comes from its “ambassadors,” who donate to the Congaree Foundation when they join the club. Most continue to make annual donations.

“It’s all stewardship,” said Ben Grandy, who runs the foundation. “Those who are involved in the club remain connected to the mission.”

Those dollars go to two areas. The first is the Congaree Global Golf Initiative that works with young golfers to help them improve, get golf scholarships, and be supported afterwards. The second is local organizations like the Boys and Girls Club, the Low Country Food Bank and the Sergeant Jasper Golf Club. The grants are split roughly 80 percent to the Congaree’s golf initiative and 20 percent to local groups. Last year, the foundation had an operating budget of $1.5 million, with about $1.1 million of that earmarked for these programs.

Grandy, who comes from a small South Carolina town himself, said what goes to the community organizations has a big impact.

“In some of these smaller communities, you can see the need,” he says. “You spend a couple of days here and you know a lot of people. You can identify the need, and you can make a lot happen.”

Old Barnwell: Old Barnwell Golf Club, in Aiken, finished second among Golf Digest’s Best New Private Courses when it opened last year. The club’s motto is “for all who love it” and through its caddy program and local initiatives, the club aims to give young men and women the connections that golf affords.

OB, as it’s more commonly known, is the brainchild of Nick Schrieber, who hails from a prominent Chicago family and worked for various tech companies. After completing a stint in rehab, Schrieber remembered his childhood caddying in suburban Chicago and the connections he made with corporate leaders on the course. He wanted to give that to kids from less privileged backgrounds.

Getting into OB has nothing to do with how much you can pay. In fact, Schreiber structured it so that membership would be affordable – originally $12,800 for a national initiation and around $4,000 a year for dues. For “mission members” - people who work locally in fields aligned with what it’s trying to accomplish, like for example, an administrator at an HBCU–the cost is even cheaper - $1,000 to join and $600 a year.

But he was strict about one thing: You need to be onboard with the mission and willing to open up your golf rolodex, or you’re not getting in. Like college, it’s all about the essay and the interview.

“If someone says I love golf because it connects people, we say we’re full,” Schrieber said. “Those who put a lot of effort into the new member questionnaire, that speaks to us. Then I play a round of golf with everyone. We turned away a guy who was really a good guy, but he wasn’t in it for the right reason.”

OB has partnered with Voorhees University, The Evans Scholarship, Stephen Curry’s Underrated Golf Tour, and Annika Sorenstam’s foundation.

“Our longest-range plan is to create a blueprint for other clubs,” he said. “Every great club has two things at their disposal: a great golf course and a membership with experience and expertise. We want to put a road map around it and codify it.”

The Quixote Club: Don Quixote, one of literature’s great heroes, slashed away at windmills thinking they were giants. He dreamed anything was possible and that inspired this club’s big dream: to use its membership dollars to improve education for students from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Located in Sumter, S.C., an economically challenged town best known today as home to Shaw Air Force Base, The Quixote Club sits in the footprint of a former private club. In 2019, Greg Thompson and his brother Lewis bought the old club and transformed it with Jack Nicklaus II’s help. Thompson, who is a Congaree ambassador, is a son of Sumter who became successful and wealthy through Thompson Industrial Services and Thompson Construction.

Sumter’s schools were hurting his ability to attract top talent, so he went on a quixotic journey to assemble a group of educators and administrators to launch the Liberty STEAM Charter School.

“The club has raised $1 million a year for the past four years,” he said. “People know 50 percent of their initiation fee goes to the foundation and 100 percent of that to the school.”

Thompson and his wife Danielle have contributed some $7 million for the construction of the school, which is taking over a mostly abandoned shopping mall.

“The club has grown faster than I thought,” he said. “We’ve had to double our initiation fee and triple it in some categories to slow the volume of members.” Local members now pay $75,000 and national members pay $60,000. Want a prime locker? That can be had for a donation to the foundation.

Quixote’s efforts were recently recognized with a $2 million grant from the Charter School Growth Fund.

The challenge for these clubs with a greater purpose is to keep the momentum going. They're not located in areas that are easy to access for even eager national members nor are they in spots that typically attract tourists in the state, like Hilton Head or Kiawah Island. They have a windfall once a year from Masters patrons who are eager to play the surrounding courses. But when the next economic downturn comes, national memberships are often the easiest for golfers to let go. After all, they require planning, travel and often a giant bill to cover the friends who came along on the trip.

For now, there’s some solid support. “Winners want to be with winners,” Thompson says. “We had a member just send us a $250,000 check for Liberty, unsolicited.”

That unprompted generosity is what all these clubs aim for.