RIDGELAND, S.C. – Riding on a shuttle to the CJ Cup in South Carolina, one of the passengers asked aloud, “Is there a golf course around here? Where the hell are we?”
One of them mimicked the dueling banjos from the movie “Deliverance” as a friend chuckled and replied, “If you want to go and hide, this is where you go.”
Yes, there is a golf course amid these 2,000 acres of lakes and longleaf pine forests in South Carolina’s Lowcountry and it’s a pretty darn good one. Congaree Golf Club is the brainchild of two of the wealthiest men in the U.S: billionaires Dan Friedkin and the late Bob McNair, who is best known for owning the NFL’s Houston Texans. McNair’s passing trimmed the number of members at the club to one.
Instead of members, Congaree boasts roughly 250 “ambassadors,” captains of industry who are lovers of the game, many of them flying in on their private planes to play the Tom Fazio design situated on an 18th-century rice plantation that also once served as a quail hunting preserve. The layout fits in wonderfully with its natural surroundings.
“Just the whole setting here, it reminds me of a couple of my favorite places that I’ve been,” said Jordan Spieth, noting Sandbelt courses in Australia and Whispering Pines in East Texas. “I love just these giant trees that shape the holes.”
PGA Tour pro Lucas Glover and World Golf Hall of Famers Nick Price, Mark O’Meara and Tom Watson are counted among the few, the proud who have paid the initiation fee – a donation to the Congaree Foundation – and lend time and money to a greater cause.
And that’s the primary reason that it’s pretty cool the Tour is making its second somewhat unscheduled stop in this rural outpost of the Palmetto State. Congaree made an unsuccessful bid to host the 2026 Presidents Cup, losing out to Medinah, but the Tour kept it on its short list of potential future venues and when the 2021 RBC Canadian Open was canceled due to the global pandemic, Congaree stepped in to host the Palmetto Championship. The tournament was held ahead of the U.S. Open in June, a month when the club is typically closed. It should play faster and firmer this go-round after the CJ Cup, which originated as a PGA Tour event based in South Korea, pairing with the Zozo Championship for a two-week Asian Swing, elected to be played stateside again due to COVID concerns.
Gary Williams, the former Golf Channel “Morning Drive” co-host and current host of “Five…
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