On Tuesday, the PGA Tour announced that due to the cancellation of the 2021 RBC Canadian Open a new, as-yet-unnamed event will be played at Congaree Golf Club in Ridgeland, South Carolina. The new tournament will take place June 10-13, the week before the U.S. Open. This story on Congaree is reprised from its original appearance in Global Golf Post in 2017.
RIDGELAND, SOUTH CAROLINA | To find Congaree, a philanthropically driven golf club that is just coming to life on a centuries-old quail-hunting and logging plantation, requires a winding trip off Interstate 95 in the South Carolina lowcountry to a single white gate that offers no hint of what sits on 2,500 acres inside.
Follow the sandy tire tracks that lay beneath a canopy of oaks and they lead to a large white house that replaced the original building on the Davant Plantation that was burned by Gen. Sherman’s troops in 1865.
Nearby sits a white one-bedroom cabin where Julia Roberts stayed while filming Something To Talk About here.
With a cluster of white buildings dotted around the property, Congaree is where Tom Fazio has designed an extraordinary new golf course that brings in elements of Pinehurst No. 2, Pine Valley, Royal Melbourne and Seminole.
Congaree is also where Houston business titans Dan Friedkin and Bob McNair have created an exclusive golf club that has no initiation fee for its small membership.
It is their shared vision to create Congaree with its emphasis on philanthropy.
In fact, Friedken and McNair are the only two members. Everyone else associated with Congaree (named for a Native American tribe that lived nearby) is known as an ambassador.
The ambassadors pay dues and, at some point in time, are encouraged to make a donation to the Congaree Foundation, a non-profit educational initiative that is intended to be the beating heart of this place.
Congaree is about the golf experience, which manages to blend both new and old on a grand scale, but it is about more than that. It has been from the start and will continue to be going forward.
“We thought that collectively we could build a club for the betterment of the next generation and for generations to come. We came up with a business model that would not be measured in financial terms but in the difference we made in the lives of children,” says Bruce Davidson, one of Congaree’s managing partners and a renowned teaching professional.
“We’ve always thought there are kids all over the world who are interested in golf who may make a difference in society and in lives if they can go to college. Our initiative will try to identify kids throughout the world who want to go to college but don’t have the means to even think about it.”
At Congaree, it feels as if time has stopped. In fact, it’s moving on with the intention of using golf to help young people get where they want to go.
Each June, Congaree will bring 40 youngsters from the United States and around the world to spend a week at the club (they will start with 12 this year) where they will receive life counseling, golf instruction and equipment while working with academic advisors.
One building is being converted into a schoolhouse/library and features a bell on the roof. Each morning students will ring the bell when they start and again late in the day when their work is done.
The expectation isn’t that the Congaree students will land at Princeton or on the PGA Tour but that they will be better positioned to succeed. Congaree is also working with officials in Jasper County where it is located, one of South Carolina’s poorest counties.
“They will leave here thinking they have a chance. We want to give these kids hope. Our challenge is to keep up with them and we have ways to do that,” Davidson says.
Congaree isn’t like anyplace else. It does not advertise. Ambassadors (there are about 200) are usually invited by referral from other ambassadors.
There are no tee times. There are no tee markers. Fazio built a course that can stretch to 7,800 yards but players have the freedom to play from wherever they like. The golf course quietly opened this spring.
Most fairways are at least 50 yards wide and the sandy soil was sand-capped to assure firm, fast conditions. Green complexes feature bunkers cut into the edge of the putting surface similar to Royal Melbourne. If there is a bunker on one side, there is usually a runoff area on the other.
For a course designer as familiar as Fazio, it looks like nothing he’s done before.
“We wanted it to be old school that blends with the new and Tom did a terrific job,” says John McNeely, also a managing partner at Congaree and president of Diamond Creek in the North Carolina mountains.
“It’s a unique setting. I’ve always loved Pinehurst and this is like Pinehurst with big beautiful oaks. We tried to put the golf around the trees instead of blowing the place up.”
On a soft spring day, Congaree looks almost more imagined than real. It’s quiet – about 40 miles from Hilton Head Island – and peaceful. As old as much of Congaree is, it has been updated meticulously with no compromise.
While three groups make their way around the course, finishing touches are ongoing. The club will close to ambassadors each summer but the first students arrive this June.
“Our job,” McNeely says, “is to challenge and to make these things available to these young people to help them move on in life.”
At Congaree, it feels as if time has stopped. In fact, it’s moving on with the intention of using golf to help young people get where they want to go.