Golf Community Reviews

    The Saturday Golf Properties advertising section of the Wall Street Journal features a few interesting offerings for anyone looking to live large next to a terrific golf course -- or to own an entire golf resort.  Just bring more than $14 million and a heavy sweater.
    LandVest, which is affiliated with Christies' "Great Estates" division, is offering the Thousand Islands Country Club, located on an island in the St. Lawrence River in New York State, for a cool $14.95 million.  The almost 1,000-acre

Oyster Harbors is a Donald Ross gem on Cape Cod.

    Members of The Reserve at Litchfield Beach, a private club at the golf-rich southern end of Myrtle Beach's Grand Strand, overwhelmingly voted to sell the club to the McConnell Golf Group of Raleigh, NC.  The trouble is that the sale is being held up by former members who have brought suit to recoup their equity investments.  I played and reviewed the course a little over a year ago and thought this was the appropriate time to look back, especially since the McConnell Group plans to close the course for three months after purchase and redo the greens and some other aspects of the Greg Norman layout.

To have a decent chance at par on the tough 5th hole at The Reserve, a drive down the left side is essential.   

    Greg Norman designs golf courses the way he plays them - brawny and all or nothing affairs that show little sensitivity to the needs of double-digit handicappers.  Playing from shorter tees doesn't really help much when deep bunkers and hazards snuggle up to large and significantly contoured greens.
    But a mellow Norman design can provide quite a reasonable challenge, as we found on New Year's Day at the private Reserve at Litchfield Beach, a 1998 Norman design on the South Strand of Myrtle Beach.  The Reserve is one of just a handful of private courses along the golf rich Grand Strand and among the three best, all on the south end.  The others include the Pete Dye designed DeBordieu and Tom Fazio's design for Wachesaw Plantation, both of which might be surprised - along with the Members Club at Grand Dunes and the Surf Club in North Myrtle Beach - that The Reserve's web site calls it "the only exclusive golf club on the Grand Strand."  
    Price points for homes at The Reserve fit nicely between the other two, with handsomely designed single homes on ample lots starting in the mid six figures.  Prices at DeBordieu Colony, which includes some seven-figure homes on and near the ocean, average about 10% higher than The Reserve.  Wachesaw, like The Reserve to the west of Route 17, the main thoroughfare through the Grand Strand, presents homes that begin in the $400s and move up to the $1 million+ mark for the larger lots on the Waccamaw River.
    The Reserve's operators showed some restraint by not over-seeding the fairways for the winter, and to my mind, that strategy worked to the course's advantage.  Rather than the tufts and inconsistent growth of fill-in winter grasses, the dormant fairway Bermuda grass was as tight as during the warmer months, although with a little rain in prior days, tee shots did not roll far past their landing areas.  The greens were near flawless, especially for a January, but the grass mowers were not out on New Year's morning so they lacked a little speed.  Our hosts assured us that earlier in the week, the putting surfaces had been slick.  I believe it.
    Greens were enormous and crowned in some places.  Norman has done a wonderful job of channeling Donald Ross around the greens.  Misplaced approach shots typically find the depths of a swale and require either a delicate chip shot or a long putt from up to 15 yards off the green.  We were impressed that even during the winter, putting from well off the greens was not only possible but, in many cases, preferable.
    I can't say that any holes at The Reserve are etched in my mind forever, but some stand out.  The best was also the #1 handicap hole on the course, the par 4 5th, a dogleg right that plays to a modest 395 yards.  A lone tall pine on the left side of the fairway forces a slight draw off the tee.  Pushed drives to the right side of the fairway make it essential to fade your approach shot over two sod-walled bunkers that guard the front and right sides of the green. 

    The par 3s all play over waste bunkers or marshland, but the large greens are fairly easy to hit. (if difficult to putt, especially when they are cut to roll fast).  The 17th, at 175 yards, is all carry to a large contoured green that makes being below the hole almost mandatory to avoid three-putt possibilities.  For a hole-by-hole description, click here for The Reserve's web site.
    The Reserve offers two levels of golf membership.  For an initiation fee of $32,500 and dues of around $350 per month, full golf members play unlimited golf and have the run of the club.  A special "Golf Membership" is geared toward second-home owners and provides 26 rounds of golf annually for an initiation fee of $22,000 and dues up to $200.  Members have a huge practice range and green at their disposal, and the clubhouse, while not huge, is well appointed.  The greeting at the bag drop make guests feel like members.

Par 3s at The Reserve are all-carry affairs.  The 17th forces a high soft shot to an undulating green.  Placing your tee shot below the hole is best.

chutz·pah (noun) -- shameless audacity; impudence; brass

    In Texas Hold ‘em poker, the moment of desperation is reached when one player is down to a relatively few number of chips and goes "all in."  Sometimes the player has a good enough hand to win, he thinks, but most of the time circumstances force him to make a last, desperate attempt to stay in the game.
    In the mountains of North Carolina, Seven Falls Golf and River Club developer Keith Vinson is

    Note:  I have toured and played the courses at Champion Hills and Kenmure, two communities within 15 minutes of Seven Falls.  All amenities are in at both communities and the courses are fine.  Champion Hills, which is Tom Fazio's home course (he grew up in Hendersonville) is particularly sleek and mature, and features all the markings of a Fazio course, including cloverleaf bunkers and funneled fairways.  If you would like an introduction to either community, please contact me.

    More than 90% of the members at Myrtle Beach area private golf club, The Reserve at Litchfield Beach, voted recently to sell to a North Carolina entrepreneur.  Now, four former members are holding up the sale.
    According to an article in the Myrtle Beach Sun News, the former members claim they are owed reimbursement of their initiation fees under terms that were in effect when they joined the 11-year old club.  However, the former members claim that the proposed sales agreement with the McConnell Golf Group would eliminate their reimbursements.
    As a rule, initiation fees at equity clubs are higher than those at non-equity clubs.  In an equity arrangement, club members are reimbursed a percentage of their "deposits" when they resign;

The Greg Norman layout at Oldfield features plenty of waste bunkers and pine trees, as well as an uncertain future.

Out of bounds stakes do not protect the homes at the North Shore Country Club unless they are well behind the greens. 

    One of our readers, a resident of the community that surrounds North Shore Country Club in Sneads Ferry, NC, has taken issue with our review of the golf course a year ago.  Below is her note to me and my response.  For my original review of North Shore, click here.

Her email to me:
    I saw your review about NSCC and noted your objections to the OB markers and "homes being built too close to the golf course".  Hello - without the homes there would be no golf course.  Our home is on the fairway and we have had our share of golf balls hit the house, break windows, etc., all by golfers who do not get it that when they pay their greens fee they are paying to play on the GOLF COURSE and not in and around homeowners' property.  The fairways here are generous (I am a golfer) and your criticism of obtrusive OB markers is pathetic.  If you can't play your ball in bounds (or at least be courteous if you do make an error - we all do) than you need to go hit balls on a public range and stay away from decent courses like North Shore Country Club.  Feel free to respond although I doubt you will.

The response I sent to her:
    First of all, thank you for reading Golf Community Reviews and for taking the time to respond to my review of North Shore.  I appreciate the passion many people feel for their home course and community.  You certainly feel that way about North Shore.  I wrote about North Shore twice in the space of a couple of days a year ago, and my overall review was strongly positive.  I recall receiving a complimentary email from your club's general manager a few days after I posted the article.  I am a fan of North Shore, but no golf course or community is perfect, and it is the job of a reviewer to indicate the warts as well as the beauty marks for those who have not had the opportunity that I have had to play the course.
    Given your obvious anger toward golfers whose shots hit your home or land in your yard, I wonder why you purchased a home directly adjacent to a fairway.  Although there is no excuse for

    A new western Carolinas real estate auction service goes online Saturday with 27 golf community properties at the prestigious Cliffs Communities under the gavel.  Add up all the minimum bids and more than $10 million is potentially up for grabs to the highest bidders.  The operative word is "potentially" because the private sellers (no Cliffs developer properties are involved) are not required to accept the high bids. UpstateBuyers.com founder Jon Ball indicates that some after-auction negotiations are likely between the high bidders and owners.  But with one property with a minimum bid of just $25,000, some offers are bound to be accepted without further ado.

    You can bid or follow the bidding on the individual properties by registering at UpstateBuyers.com (it's free).  Most of the properties, both home sites and re-sale homes, are part of the the Cliffs Valley community in the aptly named town of Travelers Rest, within a half hour of Greenville, SC.  A second auction, scheduled for mid July, will feature re-sale properties from the Cliffs at Walnut Cove near Asheville.  Properties from other developments, including those at Brights Creek, are expected to be included.

    If you decide to register for the auction, please indicate you read about it here at Golf Community Reviews.