The parade of courses played throughout the PGA Tour season run the gamut from public to resort to network to private to ultra-exclusive, the latter a category of clubs accessible to the most privileged of the privileged, the top 1,000th of a percent.
The Congaree Golf Club in Gillisonville, South Carolina – site of this year’s CJ Cup, which is part of the PGA Tour’s Fall Series from Oct. 20-23 – falls into the latter category. Congaree will host the event for the first time after it was founded as Korea’s first official PGA Tour tournament in 2017.
The event was contested on Korea’s Jeju Island at The Club at Nine Bridges before having to relocate to the United States because of COVID-19. The CJ Cup was played in Las Vegas the past two years at Shadow Creek and The Summit Club, respectively.
The CJ Cup, which has provided a platform to showcase golf’s top Korean players, will still honor its South Korean roots. Five players designated by the Korea Professional Golfers’ Association, as well as the top three available players of Korean nationality from the world rankings, will be part of the 78-player field.
The remainder of the roster will be made up of the leading players from last year’s FedExCup points list and sponsor exemptions. There will be no 36-hole cut.
Congaree Golf Club hosted the Palmetto Championship last year, taking the spot on the PGA Tour’s schedule when the RBC Canadian Open was canceled due to logistical challenges related to the ongoing pandemic.
Rory McIlroy is the defending CJ Cup champion, while South African lefthander Garrick Higgo captured the Palmetto Championship played on the course in 2021.
A club like no other
Congaree Golf Club is located approximately 30 minutes north of Savannah, Georgia and equidistant inland from Beaufort, SC in Jasper County. Congaree Golf Club was founded by two billionaires: Dan Friedkin, the owner and CEO of Gulf States Toyota and the AC Milan soccer team, and the late Robert McNair, who founded and owned the NFL’s Houston Texans among other mega businesses.
The two men purchased the 3,000-acre Davant Plantation in 2014, renovated some buildings, commissioned the peerless Tom Fazio to design the golf course, then invited select individuals to join them as “invited ambassadors,” people prominent in their industries who aren’t so much expected to pay cash as donate their time and mentorship.
Friedkin remains Congaree Golf Club’s sole “member.” Those 200 or so ambassadors make a healthy contribution each year to the Congaree Foundation, which funds the club’s Global Golf Initiative. The initiative operates a camp each summer for selected high school students from around the world, instructing them in golf, academics and life skills and aiding in obtaining academic and athletic scholarships.
Business leaders such as Dermot Desmond, Jim Crane, and Jim Pallotta are involved at Congaree. The club also has another 100 or so honorary and professional ambassadors, a roster that includes former PGA Tour stalwarts Nick Price, Tom Watson and Mark O’Meara and the LPGA’s Morgan Pressel.
The club is named after a Native American tribe that once called the area home as well as a local river and a racehorse owned by McNair called Congaree that ran third in both the 2001 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.
The mile-long entrance road curls around a pond to a plantation homestead that dates back to the American Revolution; the main house was rebuilt after being burned down during Union General William T. Sherman’s Civil War march across the South.
Congaree Golf Club is considered one of Fazio’s best
Fazio’s course is a wonder. Opened for play in 2018 and built on two deep sections of sand separated by a low-country wetland area, it plays to nearly 7,700 yards from its back tees and is a par-71. The native ground and the plethora of sand allowed Fazio to shape extensive ridgelines and mounding and create significant roll across an otherwise level property.
The big-shouldered course has an elevation change of about 30 feet from its highest to lowest points but is accentuated by huge bunkers and scores of waste areas, reminiscent of those found in Australia’s Sandbelt region. All sandy expanses at Congaree are deemed “natural areas” so players are permitted to ground their club anywhere, anytime.
The wide, open fairways are defined by scores of stately live oaks – most of which were transplanted fully grown from other parts of the property. Only in person can you really appreciate the players and the golf course, as gallery members can see the rises and falls, the slope on the massive greens, the many sculptured bunkers, the importance of hitting the fairways, and the challenge of playing from the waste areas when those fairways are missed.
Fazio has called Congaree Golf Club his Lowcountry version of Vegas’ Shadow Creek, one of the most expensive and manipulated golf courses ever built. He had to fashion the hills, ridges and lakes on the course and the holes were routed first – the oaks, most of them well over a century old and 40 feet or higher, were brought in afterward to add to the challenge.
At Congaree, all the grass surfaces are tightly mowed. Instead of deep rough there is sand, and lakes come into play on nine of the holes and wetlands are a challenge on five more.
Congaree Golf Club was designed to be kept firm and fast, an aspect that makes holding approaches on its elevated putting surfaces daunting and demanding.
The round opens with a tee shot over a road, with the second (a straightaway par-5 with a forced carry off the tee) and the third (a drivable par-4 that bends to the left) immediately grabbing the golfers’ attention. The 170-yard fifth hole features a green that’s pitched toward the pond in front. The course’s three par-5 holes present good scoring opportunities, although the sloped green at the sixth hole will make a player really work for a birdie.
The 540-yard (!) par-4 eighth hole is considered the course’s signature hole, with the need for massive length and accuracy around huge sand washes that put plenty of fear when it’s played as a par-5 every other week of the year. Some visiting pros have already suggested the eighth hole at Congaree is the hardest par-4 in the world.
Standouts on the back-nine include the 15th, another short par-4 and the start of four straight two-shotter on the closing stretch,. The hole has a fairway that moves both to the left and right and a putting surface that funnels balls away from the player on the approach. The experience ends at 18 with a testing approach over water and sand to a narrow green behind the clubhouse.
Congaree Golf Club was named the best new private course by Golf Digest in 2018. It is now ranked No. 39 on the prestigious list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses.
Atlantic Dunes
Great golf options down the road in Hilton Head
You will either need to wrangle an invitation to join as an ambassador or play your way into the top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings to play Congaree Golf Club – the latter may be easier. But there are plenty of great golf options less than an hour from the exclusive club and at Hilton Head Island. Here are a handful:
Located about 35 miles to the southeast, the Hilton Head Island region has more than 30 golf courses in an area considered one of America’s finest golf destinations.
Heading the list are the trio of courses at the Sea Pines Resort (Harbour Town Golf Links and Heron Point, designed by Pete Dye, and Atlantic Dunes, a Davis Love III design) that are currently ranked as the top three “Best Courses You Can Play” on Hilton Head Island by Golfweek.
There is also plenty to like about the three courses at Palmetto Dunes Oceanfront Resort. The Robert Trent Jones Course is widely considered one of the most scenic and challenging courses in the state while the George Fazio Course is Hilton Head Island’s only par-70, a place with just two par-5s and a series of meaty par-4s where birdie opportunities are few and far between. The Arthur Hills Course here offers off-balance lies and ocean breezes as well as an extensive network of lagoons winding through 10 different holes.
At the island’s north end, Oyster Reef Golf Club entices low-handicap golfers while appealing to players of all skill levels with its spectacular setting. A renovation by Rees Jones in 2018 restored the course to its just-opened level of superb challenge and conditioning. Oyster Reef Golf Club is a part of the Heritage Golf Collection on Hilton Head Island along with Port Royal Golf & Racquet Club (Barony & Robber’s Row) and Shipyard Golf Club (Brigantine, Galleon & Clipper) that can more than keep golfers enthused and excited.
In Bluffton just off the island, Old South Golf Links is widely considered one of the area’s most underrated layouts. Designed by Clyde Johnston, Old South is the only public access course playing along the Intracoastal Waterway.