The Story of Aiken Golf Club

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast. Today I am joined by Aichin, golf club owner Jim McNair and golf course architect Blake Knit. This episode is powered by Tdameritrade. Just as great golfers evolve the game, great brokerage firms evolve the market, and Tedammeritrade's innovations have always been game changers. From being the first brokerage to establish trading with your phone to being the first to feature trading through an app, tedammeor Trade has always led the way with breakthrough technology that helps you invest smarter. Visit tedomritrade dot com backslash frieda Egg to learn more member sbiic. So this episode will be a little bit different structure than the normal one. Our first we talk with Jim McNair of Achen Golf Club. We did this on a visit to Aichen in February. I was blown away with aich and I think it's just a wonderful golf course. It's about twenty five minutes from Augusta National, So anybody going down to the Masters highly recommend adding Aken to your itinerary. Go play. It doesn't take long to play it's very affordable for the master's week and if you're in the area and haven't played it, if you're within two hours three hours driving distance haven't played it, go check it out. I mean it costs you twenty five bucks to play on a weekend. It is an awesome golf course. Usually, I think most golf courses that get heaped with praise are exclusive private clubs high in the rankings, or the big dollar resorts. But in my mind, I find courses like a can that are able to provide an unbelievable architectural experience at a price that any golfer can afford to be the golf courses that deserve the most praise and the ones that kind of fulfill you the most. When you play, you think about him the longest, and Aikin's just a special place. So we talk with Jim about his family, their ownership of Aichin and the story of it, the history of the course, and then I call up my buddy Blake Konant, who's a shaper for Tom Doak and Renaissance golf Design, to talk a little bit more about the course from an architects perspective. So hope you guys, enjoy this episode and definitely add akin to your list of courses to see. Add it to your bucket list. It's it's a trip worth making, especially if you're going to the Masters.

00:02:41
Speaker 2: The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need to do is actually square the face so they'll dig down underneath that bad line and propel that.

00:02:51
Speaker 3: Ball right out onto the green.

00:02:53
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.

00:02:54
Speaker 4: Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely different than playing out of a night clean lion of greenside. Fucker, you need to be aggressive on any shop, whether it's sitting cleanly for it's Friday egg.

00:03:06
Speaker 5: Well, we've all faced it, the dreaded Frida egg. It's not to be feared though. It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.

00:03:22
Speaker 1: Fuck like this like that, you know, talk like this real close? Yeah, give me, Uh, what's it? What's your favorite fruit?

00:03:32
Speaker 6: Apples? Why?

00:03:35
Speaker 1: Why? Why? Apples?

00:03:38
Speaker 6: The nutritional value about that? I have one every day? Have you ever had the envy apple's? It's oh my gosh, that's why they call it the envy apples. It's a killer. My wife has to go to a certain grocery store every day to get the Envy Apple. I mean only one. I think public is the only one has.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: It, Envy Apple. I'm a big honey Chris guy.

00:04:01
Speaker 6: Those are good. Those are good. I mean, Chris, you gotta find an in the Apple. Once you get it, you'll never go back.

00:04:08
Speaker 1: It's I might go down to that Publix just to get one. Now, tell us about Achin Golf Club. How'd you come about here at aich And Golf Club.

00:04:19
Speaker 6: Well, this is a family owned golf course. Not too many left in the United States. Probably my father purchased it from the city of Aiken in nineteen fifty nine. I was two years old and I've grown up here and this is our sixtieth year under ownership of the McNair family. So it's special.

00:04:40
Speaker 1: There's got probably got to only be a couple dozen families that have sixty years of golf course ownership and are still running.

00:04:47
Speaker 6: I would love to know the stats on that. I think we're a very small group.

00:04:52
Speaker 1: Tom Doka said on my podcast he was talking about one of the toughest things about running your own golf courses. Unlike businesses, when a golf course goes out of business, then all of a sudden they have the advantage because the new owner comes in, buys the golf course on pennies on a dollar, and the golf course that's run a great business all the time is all of a sudden, now the golf course that's fighting against somebody that has spent no money and can come in and kind of undercut them.

00:05:23
Speaker 6: Well, let's tell you the golf industry now has changed so much over the last thirty years. It is so competitive. You have to have your niche. And I think why the ach And Golf Club is still here after one hundred and six years is the fact that we've been able to adapt and we have our niche. It may be a small niche, but it's the history. It's the routing. It's walkable. We're a three wood away from downtown. You don't see that very often. And it's just a charming, quoint golf course with a lot of character.

00:06:00
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about how it's evolved.

00:06:03
Speaker 6: Well, it began his life. The ac And Golf Club began as a hotel resort golf course. This Achin was known as the winter Resort, the DuPonts, the Firestones, so many of the wealthiest owned homes here. The Palmetta Golf Club, which is one of the finest private clubs in South Carolina. It was one of the first built in eighteen ninety three. Aichin Golf Club was probably in the top thirty or forty in nineteen twelve. It served the hotel, the Highland Park Hotel, all the way until nineteen thirty nine. Then it became a municipal golf course, so it adapted after the depression.

00:06:45
Speaker 1: So the depression caused that it did becoming a municipal.

00:06:49
Speaker 6: It was in the fact that it survived the depression. Some of the wealthy winter colonists that lived around the golf course loved it so much that they actually donated money to the club in nineteen thirty eight and thirty nine to keep it, to keep it going.

00:07:05
Speaker 1: And those those people were also members.

00:07:08
Speaker 6: At They were members at Palmetic Palmetta. Some were actually later on members at Augusta National.

00:07:15
Speaker 1: This little area of golf because you're what twenty miles from I guess yes, it's.

00:07:21
Speaker 6: It's a mecca for great, great golf courses. And it's like we spoke earlier, a lot of it has to do with the beautiful topography and the site that we have in this area because within thirty miles we've got Augusta National Golf Club, we've got Augusta Country Club, you've got Palmetta Golf Club, and a newer fazzio called Sage Valley is always ranked very high, and it's because the topography and the routing is so natural on this type of site where sandy it's almost a Pinehurst feel. I guess you Coulnsider, possibly sand Hill of South Carolina. So that's what makes this area special, and that's why the golfers because of the winter weather was mild considerably back in the day, a loy of the winter wealthy northerns would come in winter here and they wanted to play golf, ride their horses. So it just attracted that type of clientele.

00:08:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, for speaking from the northerner, this in February is pretty nice, about sixty five degrees.

00:08:28
Speaker 6: And today's a perfect example.

00:08:30
Speaker 1: It becomes a municipal yes, and then it's owned by the city. For how the.

00:08:38
Speaker 6: City had an agreement when they purchased it from the hotel which didn't make it through the depression, and the city bought it with an understanding they would have to own it for twenty years, and the end of that twenty years was nineteen fifty nine. And my father was a had been a golf professional at Charlotte Country Club and a great player, played for Duke University, was a PGA professional, and he always had a dream to own his own golf course, and so he purchased it from the City of Acon in nineteen fifty nine. So June of this year will mark sixty years for our family.

00:09:12
Speaker 1: So he purchased it, and it wasn't a public facility until later, right.

00:09:20
Speaker 6: Correct now, it went from hotel resort to municipal to a private country club. We actually had a pool dining. I mean I remember when I was very little. I was one of the screaming kids in the pool on a Saturday in a hot July had over three hundred members at one time. It was kind of the only game in town at that time. And as things evolved and Achin got larger, the real estate development golf course boom came in, and then we adapted again and became a semi private club actually probably fifty percent public play and fifty percent membership.

00:09:59
Speaker 1: And today you're that my private We sure are that.

00:10:01
Speaker 6: We sing like that that's the best niche because there are too many private clubs. Be honest, in in in the ACN area. We want to be accessible. We want people to come and enjoy the golf course. We will always be open, you know, for guest play. We want to be inclusive, not exclusive, and I think that's going forward we will probably always be that way.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: The golf course has a lot of Scottish characteristics with it being accessible for the entire community, but also you know, the routing kind of goes out and back. Yes, it's right next to town, so you're basically golfing in this small little town of Acan and so it's got a lot of the same characteristics of a Scottish golf course. And here it is in South Carolina, you know, right on the South Carolina Georgia border.

00:10:59
Speaker 6: And I think that's what makes unique and unusual because I think when people come to play the golf club, they they're not expecting this. They don't expect this type of golf course to be where it is. And of course that goes back. You've got to give a shout out to Donald Ross and j R. Inglis in one hundred and six years ago for the routing. They did a masterful job of routing and utilizing the natural terrain that was there. And of course back in that day, they didn't move a whole lot of earth to build a golf course, so everything's natural. I've had so many people play here that say, this looks like this golf course has been here forever and it was designed to be a golf course.

00:11:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, nineteen twelve, So it got built three years after McDonald got back from his trip and built National Golf Links, which everybody usually says is the start of the Golden Age. But Ross had been building some courses around and obviously the connection with Tufts helped.

00:12:02
Speaker 6: Yes. Yes, Ross got his early start obviously doing some courses, but then found out that there was a big there was a market for hotel golf courses because it was the roaring teens and twenties Pinehurst resort. He built all five courses there. It was the first time that any designer had ever built five courses in one location. And then he built his empire from there and we were just lucky to have his input here. And he had his protege JR. Inglis, who had built a couple of hotel golf courses for him come and he built our golf course and opened in December of nineteen twelve. And he actually loved this golf course so much that he remained until nineteen thirty nine. He was our golf professional for over twenty four years.

00:12:54
Speaker 1: Your golf course is fifty eight hundred yards from the tips, all the way stretched out the way back. Yes, and I don't think anybody would ever say that this is an easy golf course.

00:13:05
Speaker 6: It's not. It's not, I think it's it's it's how the it's how the terrain affects your tea shots. Sometimes you'll get about, sometimes you won't. The greens complexes are difficult. Ross always believed, if you've read his books, he always believed that the par three should be the most difficult because you had ball in hand and you could tee it up. So, if you'll notice on this gol of course, we have five par threes and they're all extremely difficult par threes. The par four's, they're scorable, they're short, but they're tricky. And the par fives you can hit those in two. But yet it's still a very very challenging golf course.

00:13:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get the uneven lies all over the place. And then you've got these greens that they've got there. They're terrifying greens that hit wedges into because they've got slopes everywhere. Yes, vicious false fronts. You've got to double green. You've got all sorts of all sorts of stuff going around, and then you're hitting up you know, ten yard elevations from a sidehill. It's just shots you don't really encounter, mind.

00:14:10
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, this golf course allows you to play kind of a ground game too, which is a Scottish tradition. So and also when you get around the grains on some of the tightly mown aprons, you've got a lot of different options. You can flop it, you can bump and run it, you can put it. The bunkering is not difficult, but they're strategically placed, so if you get in the wrong part of the bunker you can have a very very difficult you know, recovery shop.

00:14:38
Speaker 1: You're operating as a semi private and the real estate boom hits, and then a different type of golf course becomes in vogue. Yes, and at the time you say to your father, we we got to do something exactly so when when was this?

00:14:53
Speaker 6: And well, we were fine through the nineteen seventies the eighties. In the nineties we got lost. The real estate development golf course was in vogue. Then people loved historical golf courses in this type of style, but it really wasn't We couldn't compete with the type of money and investment that was being put into real estate development golf courses in the area. And to be truthful, too, our golf course started to really show its age. The last renovation was not up large when that was one my dad did in nineteen sixty, So it was time. The golf course obsolescence had set in. And to be honest, we lost our market and we had to do something drastic. And I'll never forget that day I took over from my father. He retired nineteen eighty five. I was a god professional on Hiltonhead Island. I came back and I took over operations for him in nineteen eighty five, nineteen ninety five, ten years later, I'll never forget. It was a Sunday night. I was exhausted. I worked hour ten twelve hour days, seven days a week, and I walked in, I cried and I put my keys on the desk and he's and I didn't even have to say anything. He said, some what do you want to do? And I said, we have two options. We can even sell it walk away, or I said we can we have to completely redo the golf course. We have to reinvent this golf course. I said, from the greens, to the teas, the irrigations, the cart passed to the to the shaping, everything needs to be updated, he said. He said, if that's what you want to do, I'm with you. So starting in nineteen ninety six all the way we reopened in two thousand. We spent four years renovating and reopened in two thousand and that's when we started slowly getting the accolades that we receive now for what the golf course is.

00:16:49
Speaker 1: So a four year renovation.

00:16:52
Speaker 6: Yeah, well it was all in house, all in house.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: Where'd you learn how to do all this?

00:16:58
Speaker 6: You just I grew up in golf. I remember age thirteen. My dad would wake me up on Sunday mornings, and he was always a little concerned because I put me on the triplex, the little greens Master three and I would go mow greens for him, and I could barely push the mo pedal because I wasn't quite tall enough. So I've been in golf course maintenance and played great golf course. I was a player at Clemson University, so I was a college golfer. So I've played golf courses. I understand architecture, I understand maintenance. I understand what they need to conditions wise. And maybe it's just you know, McNair's a Scottish name. Maybe in my ancestry there was someone that built golf courses. Because I had never ridden a bulldozer before, but I purchased a Cat de five bulldozer, rolled off the you know, the trailer, and it took me about a day to figure out how to shape and we were off and running and it was basically an in house. Like I said, three three of us.

00:18:00
Speaker 1: How did you plan out what you were going to do with the golf course? I assume you kept the same routing.

00:18:06
Speaker 6: We did not. The routing is just fantastic. We just tweaked every hole. In fact, there was a joke we would say what would j R. Inglis do here if he were here today? And we would sit and kick it around and say, well, maybe he would want this green slope this way. Let's rebuild this green this way. We kept all the really great traits that were already here, we greatly improved on the ones that weren't, and we basically brought a lot of character back to the golf course that had just been worn down through the years. The edges had worn off. We had to bring We had to bring that look back. Maybe there were some wasteterias that were there, sandy areas that they had grown in over years. We came back and rebuilt those reshaped bunkers that were there. But you've got to understand it was a municipal too at one time. And Ross actually had come back in nineteen thirty four and grassed these grains and reshaped them. Well then, as life is immuni the city was losing money in the nineteen forties and fifties. So what did they do? What is every smart unit? They filled in bunkers. They took maintenance to whatever they had to do just to keep it open. And so when my father got here in nineteen sixty, he had a lot of work to try and bring it back. But it was, to be honest, I think it was a little too far gone, you know, with forty years of no upgrades, so it needed that absolute blow up renovation. That's what we did.

00:19:43
Speaker 1: Did you have like old aeriels or old pictures of anything that you know kind.

00:19:47
Speaker 6: Of We never did, and we touched base with the Toughts archives. They did have some things. But the sad thing is that Donald Ross's office burned and all of his records burned back in the thirties, and so many plans that he had and so many his routings and stuff that he had that penciled in, they're all gone.

00:20:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing. How many fires have yes ruined histories? I know of so many places. So had you read before you did any work? Had you read architecture books?

00:20:22
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, yeah I was. I was an architect buff. I mean, I just I loved You know, once you become a player and then and you're in the maintenance and you own, you know, your families owned a golf course, you you start to, you know, ask questions, why is the golf course? You know how you know you've got a drain of golf course. Why are these green slope like this? How does the drainage work in golf? You know? There's so many aspects to golf course architecture and just over time, you just soak them in like a sponge, and it's just who you are. If you're in the golf business like I have since age eight, you know, you just it comes naturally to you what off hole should look like. I was lucky enough in my playing career to play some great golf courses, and you take away those images. And of course I was that kid that in the back of math class, I'm the one sketching out golf holes, you know, and playing blind man's golf. So I was designing golf holes when you know, when I was in junior high So it just came came natural to me.

00:21:26
Speaker 1: I feel like I grew up and I grew up designing golf holes, you know. And it's funny they had the there's a video game that I used to play that I would design. You could design a golf course, and I wouldn't play the golf version. I'd just be designing golf holes. And it's amazing though, because, like I think about it, then, it was like it had to be the mid nineties. I was designing like hard penal golf holes, like yes, and he was opposed to all. My views have changed and everything over the years. But one of the things you do that that a lot of places seemed to struggle with is is providing architecturally interesting golf at extremely affordable price. I mean, the most you pay here outside of Master's week thirty nine dollars. That's correct Saturday morning with a cart thirty nine dollars. I want to walk in the twenties.

00:22:18
Speaker 6: Yes, twenty five dollars green fee. It's part of the accessible the accessibility of the golf course that we want. We want to stay where your average golfer doesn't feel like he's overpaying. We feel like this is probably one of the best golf values in the entire area for what you get. It could be I believe Michael Bamberger once wrote an article about us golf dot com and the very last line he said, it's such a great golf course. Since he said all that for twenty bucks, he said, you know, how do you believe that? So I'll tell you what was funny too, is Michael Bamberger also said he said, what's so wonderful about this golf course is that you can just walk in the pro shop say hello, pay and go right out to the first tea. And he said it reminds me a lot of my home club, which is Pine Valley. But he says, this is playable when Pine Valley's not. Yeah, we're you know, we're we feel fortunate to be able to offer this to golfers. It you know, golf courses. Every golf course has their story. Everyone plays has a home club and they get used to playing the home club and when they come and play here, it's such a unique experience that we love to hear the comments and it's it gives us a lot of joy to be able to offer something different. And that's I think that's why Ake and Golf Club has received some of the accolades that it has because it's so unique.

00:23:46
Speaker 1: In terms of maintenance. How do you maintain the golf course to level that people are happy with the maintenance, where the architecture shows off, like where you can still hit all the shots, and that it's not too expensive to where your greens feed gets out of hand.

00:24:09
Speaker 6: Right, Well, let's tell you what that's that's where else you know, And there's a new buzzword in the golf industry now. It's called sustainable, and we laugh because we've we've been sustainable from day one. And when I say that is we're on a ninety acre site. Turf total turf rough greens, Teeth Fairways is thirty eight acres from a maintenance standpoint, an irrigation standpoint, from a chemicals and fertilizer standpoint. When your average golf course is normally on one hundred something makers with probably seventy to eighty acres of turf to maintain, we cut that in half and that's where we can. We have a small crew. We do do certain things that you have to when when you run this type of a golf course. We do walk more o greens, we don't cunt corners, aren't certain things. We make sure we're on a great fertilization and chemical program every year. We never skimp on that, and we make sure that we try and maintain a consistent conditions, which can be difficult to do through all the different seasons, in the different conditions that we have in Achin, But we're we're I think we're really with the golfers really appreciate it is the fact that it's such a sandy, dry site that we can have literally two inches of rain and within an hour you can go right out and play. And it's and it plays hard and fast a lot during the year, so you can play the bump and run and you can you know, you can play what game you want to play.

00:25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got a lot of walkers out here too. What would you say a percentage walk versus ride?

00:25:50
Speaker 6: Gosh, I tell you we've got a great you know, Achin is somewhat of a retirement community, and so we've got a lot of very health conscious seniors that really enjoy walking. I'd say our golf course probably has more walkers than maybe many other golf courses do. We've never had a rule that you had to ride, regardless of what day, what time. You can always walk here. And I would say it's probably fifty percent of our membership walks.

00:26:22
Speaker 1: I mean, so for this part of the country, that's unheard of.

00:26:25
Speaker 6: Yeah, but it's such a walkable golf course. Yeah, it's fifty eight hundred yards there. There's there's some elevation changes there, but it's it's it's a fun walk.

00:26:36
Speaker 1: Yeah. You get around it quick too.

00:26:37
Speaker 6: Yes, you can. I would say our average round here afore someme going out is under four hours.

00:26:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's we played this morning on a holiday weekend. Didn't wait at all, you know, just sipped around, so I got to experience it. It's uh, it's great. So with the Masters, is that the busiest week of.

00:26:59
Speaker 6: The or it can be. It can be. It's changed a lot over the years. A lot of golfers used to come to Aiken to play. There's so many great golf courses now in the august area that tend to promote the corporate and I think a lot of the Master's guests now, believe it or not, are on the corporate dime. So they're playing the Sage valleys, they're playing the you know, the Champions retreats over in Augusta and that those type of golf courses. But we do offer something so unique that we do get a lot of players Master's week that make the drive from Augusta over to Ake and to play us.

00:27:39
Speaker 1: I mean people should come to play. I mean the between I mean my personal opinion. We played. I played Palmetto yesterday. It's great, phenomenal golf course. Yes, and I thought about it. It's like if ke walks four fifty, I picked four hundred play pal Metto if that's the going rate. But then if you can combine it with this, that's a great two day little trip. If you can manage to get your access out.

00:28:04
Speaker 6: Yes, well, I tell you we were fortunate enough. Matt Janella on the Golf Channel, he visited our golf course about three or four years ago and he absolutely fell in love with it. And he does a feature on the Golf Channel every week before Masters, and he says, Okay, if you guys are coming to Augusta, this is where you need to play golf. And he lists all the golf courses what they cost, and he always says, and the best golf value if you're coming to the Masters of the ach and Golf Club. And we would we would have more people call us, get a tea time and come in for one hundred dollars a masterive week when everyone else is two hundred and fifty and up.

00:28:39
Speaker 1: It's got to be hard figuring out how much to price it is.

00:28:43
Speaker 6: It is it is, And personally, I don't like to go to a golf course and feel like I've gotten gouged or overcharged because it's a certain week. I've had several golf course operators in the area say, Jim, your golf course is fantastic. You should be charged double what you charge. I just can't do it. On a personal level. I want to stay where when someone comes here and plays Master's Week and they pay one hundred dollars, say well, I want them to walk off the golf course and say, hey, that was worth one hundred dollars. I really enjoyed it.

00:29:14
Speaker 1: So do you guys get a lot of junior golf out here?

00:29:18
Speaker 6: We used to Back when I was growing up, there were some great junior golfers that came out of ac and in fact, over the past Kevin Kissner was one on the tour. Now we do have a few juniors here, some of the other clubs and A can probably have more because they're more of a country club set and they have the practice facility of which, like a lot of older golf courses, even Palmeta Golf Course, they never built driving ranges back in the teens and twenties. In fact, they never even had a driving range at Pinehurst until they finally built one, I want to say, in the thirties. It was called Maniac Hill. They didn't have it ross and never even designed put a range in a Pinehurst.

00:30:00
Speaker 1: So it's amazing how much that change a lot of Like in Chicago, a lot of the great clubs there have the worst ranges.

00:30:09
Speaker 6: They were afterthoughts. Exact, they were after thoughts, no doubt about on property they may have had extra.

00:30:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like Chicago golf is pretty good, but that used to be a polo field.

00:30:18
Speaker 6: So yeah. And you know, and and Palmuta Golf Club is one of the finest private clubs in South Carolina obviously, And you hit balls, you hit the balls that can only go about sixty percent of a normal ball, and they have nets.

00:30:32
Speaker 1: In the back, so it's, yeah, what what hole do you get on out here? Though, You're just like, you know, when you look at it, you just you think back to when you're you know, renvaying the course and you just you smile because you're like so happy with the way it turned out.

00:30:48
Speaker 6: Let's see, you, I I really don't have a favorite hole here. I have kind of a love affair with every hole because of what went into each hole, and you know, each hole of so different, but yet they all kind of blend together and they roll you through this crazy ride and you finish up back at the clubhouse. I tell you, there's there's nothing prettier though, early in the morning on the on the third fourth tee, looking back at the third green and the third fairway with the sun coming up through those hundred year old pines. Nothing prettier than the tenth tea, which sits one of the In fact, it's one of the most elevated sites in the city of Acon as far as elevation goes. And to look down with the sun going down and the irrigation flying out in the fairway, Number ten is probably one of my favorites too. As far as just a beautiful spot.

00:31:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great spot. It's so beautiful. I can only imagine.

00:31:44
Speaker 6: No, yeah, come, and most golfers actually through the time. Spur magazine was a huge magazine back in the nineteen twenties, and the sixteenth has always been, you know, the old signature hole. It's a beautiful par three, great elevation drop, and they actually in Spur magazine in nineteen twenties called it the famous Valley hole. It was actually one of the most famous holes in the entire Southeast. And of course there weren't that many golf courses in the twenties and it's got the stone steps that were built as part of a WPA program in the depression. They were given a grant and they built the stone the stone steps, and in nineteen forty, in fact, the green fee certificate is actually framed. Fred Astaire came and played paid his four dollars green fee, and they said he danced down the steps because they're a little uneven so you have to take a different gait. And that's been the you know, the funny story through the years that Freda's stair danced down the stairs of the sixteenth. So if you really want to look at the signature hole the Agchinkoff Club, it's the sixteenth.

00:32:57
Speaker 1: That fifteenth green is pretty good.

00:33:00
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's kind of crazy. It's a little two tier and depending on where the pen is, it's especially the backpin.

00:33:07
Speaker 1: It's there's just no good option on that one. You just got to either hit a really great t shot or laid back and then you got a terrifying wedge.

00:33:18
Speaker 6: What's funny. Jim Dotson, who writes a lot of golf books, he came and played here and I didn't expect this, but he said his favorite green was the fifteenth Green. He said he's never played at green like that. He said he had to put it a couple different times just to figure it out.

00:33:35
Speaker 1: But the thing that got me all day was the pull of the property like pulls of the train railroad.

00:33:42
Speaker 6: Supposedly it does. That was always the adage was the greens break to the railroad track, and I just never really quite believe that.

00:33:52
Speaker 1: But hey, maybe it was. It's George's fault. But in my head all day, why we didn't hit our birdie golf? Yeah, I think everybody should come. This is a golf course that everybody should see. If you're into golf course architecture. This is a must sy I think in my mind.

00:34:09
Speaker 6: And we welcome you. We'd love to have you here.

00:34:11
Speaker 1: So if you're making a trip down to Augusta, do it. If you're in Georgia, come do it. If you're this is a place worth driving to see. Spend a week on an aked.

00:34:23
Speaker 6: And they're fantastic, beautiful hotels right downtown and you can almost walk to the club, They're that close. Yeah, so you.

00:34:33
Speaker 1: Guys got to do it.

00:34:34
Speaker 6: In the downtown, the downtown restaurants and the feel of the old Ache and downtown, which is, like I said, less than a three foot away from our golf course is worth coming to enjoy.

00:34:43
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for the time. Well, I'm excited for everybody to see the golf course and then we'll uh And I think your story you owning running golf course and running an affordable and architecturally interesting golf course is amazing.

00:34:57
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you. I want to thank the Fried Egg for for visiting us today. It's been a pleasure hosting you.

00:35:04
Speaker 1: That's it with Jim McNair. He's great guests, great stories. It's just unbelievable that a guy with no experience in architecture, small crew, small budget was able to accomplish what he did over at Aiken. Just to give Aken a little bit more color, and we had golf course architect Blake Conanon. Blake is a shaper for Renaissance Golf and has visited Aiken Golf Club and he came on to talk with me about Aiken and the golf course for about fifteen minutes. So enjoy Blake and thank him for his time.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: Which is amazing to me because it's yeah, it's just it's the accessible golf in Aiken and there's nothing else really near there outside of Palmetto, you know, or a guf done. It's like both are fairly private. It's good quality public golf near a city center. Like how often has that come around?

00:36:05
Speaker 1: What do you remember about that place?

00:36:10
Speaker 3: So the first green stands out, you know, it's a great way to introduce somebody to a golf course. You're you're teeing off in this wide open space and you get up to this just crazy perch green that's a double green with seventeen and there's some wild contours separating it. There's some tiny little pin positions on this knob which I think I think my pin it was front and left when I played, which justis perched out there on that knob, you know when it falls off on all sides. And then once you're past there, it's like, you know, two's not a great hole, but it keeps you interested, and then three is a pretty good hole. Fourth that uphill part three, and then fives of sort of a really cool windy part five with that, it's it's got a pretty narley green side as well. So it's like those first five holes just they passed the you know, Tom Tom always talked about you need to make an impression in the first six holes, and it's like, that's what that course does.

00:37:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Sandy Sandy waste areas too, Like it's amazing that that owner did that with just himself and three guys.

00:37:26
Speaker 3: Is that all it was?

00:37:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, himself, three guys. He had no background in construction, just time.

00:37:34
Speaker 3: He just had time on his side, right, four years, he could chip away at stuff. Okay, yeah, yeah, So.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: What do you think of the topography.

00:37:49
Speaker 3: It's sort of ebbs and flows. You know, those first five holes have some and then you you get into six and seven and it's sort of fly. And then those the holes that John English added, the eight through fourteen, you know, they've got some really severe stuff going on or just you know, big broad slopes getting down into some big lows and then having to come back out. I thought he did a pretty good job with those those whatever it was seven holes that he added. And then and then yeah, you're back on the original property. Sixteen goes way down into that low that par three, and then you come up to a cool t shot on seventeen. So it you know, it's got way more interest than you would think by just when you walk out of the clubhouse and you sort of see that open field for the one and eighteen share.

00:38:44
Speaker 1: Did you stay in town when you were there?

00:38:49
Speaker 6: Now?

00:38:49
Speaker 3: What what were my plans? I was leaving Pinehurst, and I had some friends who are working on projects in the South, so I was going a really circuitous way back to Omaha, and then I just wanted to see some golf on the way to those two places. So Aiken was somewhere. But you know, it's part of the reason I didn't want to go to Palmetow. It's like Aiken was an easy place where I could quick just like drop in. I knew I could get a tea time, or wait fifteen minutes and get a time or something and just get paired up with somebody and then be back on the road in three and a half hours, which is what I needed to do. So I think I drove through downtown a bit and might have got lost, but then I showed up at a golf clubs. It's so close, it's sort of it's like Winter Park almost as far as its proximity to a city center. There isn't as much real estate around it, but you could easily walk with your clubs to a bar to a pub downtown.

00:39:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of in a way. It kind of has like a Scottish field as the routing goes out and back too.

00:40:03
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah a little bit.

00:40:05
Speaker 1: And it starts kind of in the town and then it goes out and then it comes back in.

00:40:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's what I love. It's like, it's so simple and the fact that it started with eleven holes and whatever it was like pre nineteen hundred, right just before nineteen hundred, and we have this fun game that we like to play and where we've got some land just outside of town and we'll just go see how many holes we can make and we'll just start playing golf. So I really sort of maybe I'm romanticizing that story of it, of its genesis a little bit, but it's it's a cool place. And then yeah, when they added that to make it eighteen, it still functions and works quite well.

00:40:53
Speaker 1: The rate and like the costs, like twenty five dollars to walk on a weekend morning, I think that with a card it's thirty nine, it's like, and then the pace of play is fantastic. Being fifty eight hundred people get around really quick. Do you find yourself more impressed with places that pull off the low cost, high quality golf than you know, the exclusive clubs.

00:41:17
Speaker 3: Sometimes, yeah, totally, And I'm probably a little biased because I seek those out more. You know, sometimes all just not want to go to the hassle of having to jump through the hoops to be able to even walk a nice private course. I'd rather just show up and play a course that I know is kind of quirky or kind of old and is at a good price point, and I know I can get on and play it and there'll be some interest.

00:41:49
Speaker 1: You know.

00:41:50
Speaker 3: I find myself gravitating more towards golf like that whenever I'm in different cities. And granted it's still you know, it's still worth seeing all the really good old stuff, but sometimes it's just easier and more fun to get around these communis where it's or you know, these public courses where it's just all walks of life and they get around quick, and it's almost like, you know, the lack of a budget makes it maintained well because it only allows you to focus on the things that matter, you know what I mean. It's like sometimes when your budget gets too big, you can start losing focus, So what's important.

00:42:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely understand. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the thing is I think, so, what do you think about the retail golfer. So that community that's played there all the time, they love that golf course. But if you took somebody say, yeah, that's in a less that hasn't been kind of established. It's got a lot of quirk to it. It's it's different, it's it's not your your status quo golf course. How do you think of you know, the regular golf consumer would react to it.

00:43:16
Speaker 3: I hope they'd react well to it, because I find that stuff, you know, gives a place character and makes it unique. I also, you know, I think sometimes you don't notice things that are quirky if you grow up playing them. So if somebody grew up playing you know, North Barrack and all they knew of golf was just in the town of North Berrick, and they've got four of the craziest holes in the world. To them, that's sort of normal or that's what golf is. You know. Similarly back here, it's like, yeah, if you grow up playing cool, quirky stuff and golf that's just laid out on the land that you're given. You're certainly I'd hope you'd be more receptive to it in other places.

00:44:06
Speaker 1: With you know, parting thoughts on on Aiken in terms of the public golfer, who's might be in the neighborhood of for the Masters or passing through? What what would you say is your you know your threshold for driving? You say you're an architecture aficionado. Where what's your what's your kind of radius of you know, what it's worth me going to see this place?

00:44:34
Speaker 3: My radius? If it's worth for Aiken. I you know, I wouldn't want to stay overnight. I wouldn't want to have to make a drive. And I'm like, I'm I'm locking in the time it takes to play around, grab a beer and maybe grab a bite to eat. It's like, if if I'm going to have to drive so far that I would have to you know, wake up super early or be driving through the middle of the night, I probably wouldn't do it. But if I could wake up at seven and drive and get there and you know, do all those things and then get back before dinner, yeah, totally, just because there's it does have that Scottish feel with that it's got that cool clubhouse, and you know, you could spend some time in downtown.

00:45:22
Speaker 1: And just make a day of it.

00:45:25
Speaker 3: You know, you'd want to, you'd want to do a little bit of that. So I don't know what cities are near it. I think Augusta is the closest.

00:45:32
Speaker 1: City, right, Yeah, Charleston's Charleston's a little over two hours, Savannah's a little over two hours. So I think Atlanta's got to be prob like three.

00:45:43
Speaker 3: Maybe, okay, so maybe, yeah, maybe that'd be you know, if I was coming from Atlanta, i'd want to lump in like another couple of courses and just make a two day trip out of it.

00:45:54
Speaker 1: But if you could, if you could do Palmetto, and that is it's.

00:45:59
Speaker 3: Per right right, So yep, And then I don't have my I don't have my map on me, but I'm pretty sure those are the only two courses that I know of that are really worth seeing in sort of that area. I got.

00:46:15
Speaker 1: I guess the country club, but that's that's private.

00:46:19
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally, I guess.

00:46:21
Speaker 6: Yeah. Place.

00:46:23
Speaker 1: I'll see you, h I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for doing this. Cool all right later?

00:46:28
Speaker 3: Thanks man by the fried Egg requires a different technique.

00:46:33
Speaker 2: What you need to do is actually square the face so it'll dig down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out onto the green.

00:46:42
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.

00:46:43
Speaker 4: Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely different than playing out of a nice clean lion of green side bunker.

00:46:50
Speaker 3: You need to be aggressive on any show weather it's sitting cleanly.

00:46:53
Speaker 5: For it's Frida Egg, well, we've all faced it. The dreaded Frida Egg not to be feared, though. It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.