To mix golf and baseball metaphors, Aiken’s 23-year-old golf community Woodside Plantation seems to have all its bases covered.  It offers its residents a choice between a 36-hole golf club with modest member fees and a 27-hole more exclusive club with both equity and non-equity membership choices.  Its selection of real estate runs the gamut from town homes that start in the low $300s to single-family estate homes that creep into seven figures, with hundreds of choices in between.  For those looking to build their own home, properties range from around $60,000 for a wooded lot to the low $100s for lots with golf course views.  You won’t spend more than a couple hundred thousand for the best lots in Woodside on an acre or more.  After that, count on about $160 per square foot to fit and finish your personal palace in grand style.  Also, the community provides such city services as sewers (no septic in Woodside), and for those who like to cook with gas, natural gas lines run through parts of Woodside.

        In all, Woodside offers a wider range of choices than its two prime local competitors, Cedar Creek and Mt. Vintage Plantation, including proximity to retail and medical services.  A mall is located just outside the community’s back gate and features a full range of retail stores, a wellness and medical center and array of restaurants (the charming center of Aiken, which features additional shops and restaurants, is just a short drive down the road).  But the mix of options inside the 2,800-acre community's four gates, especially the recreational activities, is what tends to attract families and retirees alike.  Between the two clubs, residents have access to 14 Har-Tru and clay tennis courts, some lighted; six nature preserve areas and four lakes for non-motorized boating and fishing; a community garden center; and plenty of on-site dining through the two clubs.   Aiken also has a long history of horse events, from steeplechase to other races, and an equestrian center is just outside the gates of Woodside.

The front pin position (day I played) is the easiest on the 3rd hole at Woodside Plantation's Reserve Course.  A back left positon would demand an extra club or two and a lot more courage.

        This all-activities-for-all-people approach has attracted an eclectic group of permanent residents to Woodside.  Half of Woodsiders are retired and the other half are still working (and half of those are empty nesters “practicing” for eventual retirement).  The most notable sub-group of residents is the Women of Woodside, an active bunch of the ladies who organize and promote everything from a newcomers club to book clubs, lunch clubs, gourmet cooking classes, gardening and an active community volunteer program.  You won’t be lonely or inactive if you live at Woodside.

        When I first visited Woodside Plantation five years ago, I found the club membership situation confusing.  Club Corp of America runs the Woodside Plantation Golf Club and its Rees Jones and Bob Cupp courses; the Woodside developers own The Reserve Club at Woodside Plantation and its Nicklaus Design and Fuzzy Zoeller courses (only 10 holes open so far on the Zoeller course).  Few residents at Woodside see the need to join both clubs and, thus, Woodside is somewhat in competition with itself on the golf front.  Thus the community’s web site doesn’t exactly give the Club Corp courses top billing, but neither do they ignore them.  Three and a half courses is still a good marketing proposition, no matter how different their fee structures are.

        Fees at The Reserve Club are $17,000 for a non-refundable membership plan and $34,000 for a 100% refundable plan (after a minimum of two years membership).  Dues run $349 per month.  At the Woodside Plantation Golf Club, Club Corp charges an initiation fee of $6,000 for full family golf and dues of $332 per month.  The fee is not refundable, but members have privileges at many of Club Corp’s other private clubs nationwide.  According to Woodside sales representatives, families tend toward membership in the Woodside Club and retirees seem to favor The Reserve.  Few join both, although many opt for a social membership at the one where they don’t play golf.

With a false front and surrounded by puckered bunkers, the two-level 18th green at The Reserve yields pars begrudgingly.

        I played The Reserve's Nicklaus Design course recently and found it in peak condition and enjoyable to play.  I was not feeling too frisky and may have moved up one set of tees too far (6,200 yards from the White tees), taking too much advantage of the course’s generally wide fairways and leaving myself a majority of lofted shots into the well-protected greens.  In retrospect, I should have moved back one set of tees, almost 400 yards total.  Still, I found nothing to quibble about in the layout, and the ample bunkering and changes in elevation kept me on my toes.

        A few holes were memorable.  The par 3 3^rd, which plays downhill at 193 yards from the White tees (well over 200 from the back tees), is drop dead gorgeous, one of those holes you imagine the designer conjured the moment he laid eyes on the raw land.  The green juts out into the lake beyond, and all that can save an errant shot from watery doom left or right are the greenside bunkers.  With the pin up front, the huge green is tough to fly, but when the pin is back, a decision must be made; tempt fate and water by going for it, or play short and run the risk of a 70-foot three putt from the bottom of the long and two-tiered green.

        The 6^th is another excellent hole, a 515-yard par 5 with a tee shot that must fly 150 yards of scrub to find a fairway that tilts significantly to the right.  Bunkers guard both the elbow and crook of the dogleg.  The high side of the fairway is the ideal landing zone to prepare for a routine lay-up down the left side as a large bunker protects the right two-thirds of the slightly elevated green.  Greens are well protected at The Reserve, but they are also large enough that they can receive shots flown over the front bunkers; of course, that can result in some longish putts down slopes to front pin positions.

        After a blind drive over the upslope in the fairway, the approach from the top of the rise on the par 4 16th hole is to a green that looks familiar, with lake behind and bunkers guarding the right and left front.  Although the combination of lake and bunkers is a clear echo of the par 3 3^rd hole, no one will quibble with the view, even for a second go-round.  The finishing hole also demands two stellar shots, the first to avoid a ravine and bunker that guards the entrance to the fairway; add to that a bunker on the far side of the landing area, and the safer play is also the longer path to the green, to the right.  Deep and high-lipped bunkers surrounding the putting surface give the green complex an intimidating puckered look from the fairway.  The false front will stop any short shots dead.  A par at the 18^th will be well earned and likely the capper to a good scoring round at The Reserve.

        One nice side benefit to Woodside’s Aiken location is its proximity to Augusta National Golf Club and April’s annual Masters golf tournament.  The more enterprising homeowners in Woodside Plantation offer their homes for rent to attendees at The Masters, fetching anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000 for the week, enough to cover annual club dues or for a nice week of golf in the Caribbean.  It can pay, literally, to live at Woodside Plantation.

Woodside Plantation, Aiken, SC.  Web:  WoodsidePlantation.com.  Properties from $60,000 to $300,000.  Homes from $300,000 to $1 million+.  Woodside Plantation Golf Club:  36 holes by Rees Jones and Bob Cupp.  The Reserve Club:  18 holes by Nicklaus Design and 10 by Fuzzy Zoeller (final 8 planned).  For more information or to arrange a visit to Woodside Plantation, contact me.  Some of my clients have visited (and liked) Woodside, and I will be happy to share their comments.

At the par 5 6th hole at The Reserve, the biggest challenge is the tee shot which must fly a ravine and then skirt bunkers that bracket the fairway.

        You can imagine that I receive my fair share of marketing brochures from golf communities I visit and review.  Far fewer have shown up in my mailbox since the economy went south and most baby boomers put their retirement plans on hold.  Without the property sales they were used to before customers slowed to a trickle, golf communities can’t, or won’t, spend money on printed communications.  Instead, they rely on their own web sites and social networking services like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with the people in their databases.

        The strategy might be pennywise and pound foolish.  I find myself groaning when my email inbox fills with messages from golf communities, and I grow to resent those who send me repeated messages.  For example, Brunswick Plantation, located north of Myrtle Beach, was sending me one message at least every day for a few months, all with virtually the same underlying message of low-priced real estate.  Other golf communities are more temperate, but if you are on multiple golf community lists, the sheer volume of emails is annoying.  Facebook and Twitter communications just compound the problem.

        I use a computer for hours each day and, honestly, I look forward to holding a sheet of glossy paper or newsprint in my hand for a little bit.  My fellow baby boomers are probably more modest than I in their use of the Internet, but no less enthused by print communications.  Golf community advertising is targeted to 50- and 60-somethings, and we baby boomers may be perfectly adept at online communication but we were also raised on print.  Old habits die hard.  And photos still look better on glossy paper than they do on a glossy screen.

        I received one of those rare printed marketing pieces today.  The latest issue of River Landing’s newsletter, called “Lately,” gets it right.  River Landing is located in Wallace, NC, more than an hour from Raleigh and about 45 minutes from Wilmington.  That qualifies it as “remote,” although the golf community and its highly rated 36 holes by Clyde Johnston are less than two minutes from Interstate 40.  Yes, River Landing’s newsletter includes the obligatory resident testimonials (“Life is good here, very good.”) and plenty of photos of smiling people who could be wearing signs that read, “We are on permanent vacation.”

        But, shrewdly, the newsletter also features a local Wallace merchant.  Butcher Billy Goff has been in business in Wallace for 21 years and has expanded to serve some of the most popular barbecue in a barbecue mad region.  On a subliminal level, the story sends a message to us northerners who don’t live in a big city and consider a butcher a luxury (my town in Connecticut just got its first in 25 years).  It also implies that Wallace may be remote, but it must have a strong economic base if businesses can last a couple of decades there.   Moreover, the feature on a local merchant does not appear as self-serving as having your residents talk about what a great choice they made; after all, what are they going to say, “We are bitterly disappointed with our life here?”

        Customers I work with want assurances that the services they counted on for the last 40 years or so will be available to them in retirement.  They are skittish about going from suburbia or a city to the middle of nowhere.  River Landing is acknowledging that some prospects think it is far from civilization.  The story of Billy the Butcher addresses that notion head-on, and I think successfully.  

        It is smart marketing for a golf community to communicate what’s outside the gates as hard as it does what’s inside.

        If you would like more information about River Landing or any other golf communities in the southern U.S., please contact me.

        In recent months, I have visited two high-end golf communities, Hampton Island Preserve and White Oak, that could serve as poster children for bad timing.  Both opened for business and started selling properties in the few years before the economy went sour.  They both face a long slog ahead but are approaching the future in slightly different ways.

        Hampton Island, sited on a beautiful piece of marshland property along the Georgia Coast about an hour south of Savannah, has a guard, a gate and a golf course that hosts a couple of rounds of golf “on a good day,” according to a Hampton Island representative.  Just a few homes have been completed in the community.  Yet if you happened on a description of Hampton Island in the online Robb Report, you’d get the impression the golf community was in full operation mode.

        “…Hampton Island,” says The Robb Report, “is a coastal resort with a community base of more than 400 people.  Members enjoy use of the golf course, two luxury spas, an equestrian center, an organic farm, fishing and hunting excursions, and meals prepared by an on-site master chef.”  The Robb Report also indicates that memberships are $150,000 and dues $10,000 annually; the developers may have taken a page from The Cliffs Communities playbook which also offers a boatload of amenities at sunken-treasure prices.

The 1st hole at the Ricefields golf course at Hampton Island Preserve.

Mohair greens  

        Although Hampton Island Preserve lists all these pricey amenities on its web site, I saw zero activity around the equestrian barn and organic farm, and did not see a soul on the golf course over my 18 holes.  The Davis Love III designed course, called Ricefields, features an impressive layout that takes full advantage of the abundant marshland and sandy land formation.  Love did not disturb much of the terrain, but if he visits the year-old course, he might be plenty disturbed by its condition.  No lawnmower had touched it for at least a few days before my visit, perhaps as long as a week, and the greens putted like mohair.  They also showed some severely worn spots.  I had looked forward with anticipation to playing the course, but I felt like weeping on the first green.

        Hampton Island Preserve must be spending whatever limited resources it has on things other than maintenance of the golf course.  Or maybe the developers are simply preserving all their capital.  (I tried to contact the developer but he did not return my message.)  With only a handful of property-owner members, despite The Robb Report’s claim of 400 of them, it is hard to justify the expense necessary to maintain a top-notch layout.

        Yet for all the sense cutting expenses seems to make, letting the golf course deteriorate can develop an ugly spiral from which it is hard to recover.   Golfers considering property at Hampton Island will likely look past the attractive course design and see only the current course conditions; they are not likely to be satisfied with explanations that it is only a temporary situation.  Such conditions scream “We are out of money!”  With so many fully functioning golf clubs up and down the Carolinas and Georgia coasts, only daredevil risk-takers are likely to plop down a half million dollars for a marsh-view lot at Hampton Island if the golf course conditions are, as my teenage children might say, “sketchy looking.” 

        Here’s hoping that Hampton Island Preserve can find its way, and the resources, to attend to the needs of its attractively designed and laid out golf course.

Waste bunkering is the commanding feature at White Oak.

Another approach to course maintenance

        White Oak, another golf-oriented community whose timing was unfortunate, has taken a slightly different tack.  The upscale Tryon, NC, community is located at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains on a piece of property its developers say reminds them of their native Ireland.  PGA professional Padraig Harrington and Champions Tour player Des Smyth are both involved in the White Oak development (the developers built a home at White Oak for Harrington and his family to use when he plays U.S. tour events).

        I played nine of White Oak’s holes recently with one of its few members, a dedicated reader of this web site.  The second nine at White Oak is scheduled to open later in the fall but, to my eye, it looked almost ready to open now.

        Unlike at Ricefields, White Oak’s owners are cutting the grass frequently enough to give the fairways and especially the greens the feel of a championship course, although there is little evidence of such grooming elsewhere on the layout (the “natural” looking waste bunkers were starting to look unnaturally scruffy).  That aside, White Oak could eventually be a top-10 course in the golf-endowed state of North Carolina.  The Arnold Palmer design -– Erik Larsen took the lead on the layout -- makes the most of the natural foothills landscape and looks for all the world as if it could have come out of the currently hot (Bill) Coore/(Ben) Crenshaw design shop.  The scruffy waste bunkers look indigenous, and nowhere does one get the sense that the land on which the layout is carved took a back seat to concerns for the housing.  Because the course is laid out along the lowest area of the property, the future homes will be sited well above, providing excellent views of the course from the back decks but, more importantly, keeping out-of-bounds areas to a strict minimum.

        The accompanying photos will give you a better sense of White Oak than words will but, for the record, I did not encounter anything resembling a mediocre hole on the nine we played.  Developers and golf course designer have conspired to create a challenging layout that members should be pleased to play over and over.  Hazards abound at White Oak, and to quote the cliché, you do have to “think your way around” the course.  But I found the layout fair and penal in equal measure, although in full disclosure, I struck the ball better at White Oak than on any nine holes I have played in at least five years.  It was 100 degrees on the course, and I was hot in more ways than one.

        It made me smile, and I hope Irish eyes will also soon be smiling at White Oak.

*

A new home for sale in Tryon, NC's White Oak community is patterned on this home already occupied at The Cliffs Communities.  The White Oak home adds another 1,000 square feet.

        Elaborating on a design used at The Cliffs Communities, JL Design Builders of Spartanburg, SC, are putting the finishing touches on a nicely sited and dramatically designed home in Tryon, NC’s White Oak community (see photo above).  The Laurelwood model includes 4,200 square feet (heated) and such flourishes as a wine cellar, media room, full-house audio system and even a 12-square-foot “doggie” room where Fido can have a bit of privacy.  In all, the home is 1,000 square feet larger than The Cliffs version.  Built at the midpoint of a sloping piece of property, the house features dramatic wooded views beyond the entire back end of the house, including from the dining room, great room, master bedroom and porch.  Conveniently located within 20 minutes of the growing cities of Greenville and Spartanburg, new owners in White Oak should appreciate both the privacy of the setting and the convenience of the location.  For more information about this brand new home, contact me and I will be pleased to put you in touch with the builders. 

        List priced at $1.15 million.

        Golf course owners, greens superintendents and golf course starters and rangers try everything to get players to replace (or fill) their divots and repair their ball marks on greens.  They are largely unsuccessful, especially at public facilities where the infrequent player feels no vested interest in maintaining course conditions.

        Course operators try everything.  Some fairly lecture the players in the pro shop or at the first tee about repairing divots.  Some supply free divot tools, and others post messages in the golf carts.  Short of these prods and reminders, there is not much else to do, except maybe threaten.

        The sign below, we trust tongue in cheek, was posted on the way to

         I suppose we should be grateful they at least made the attempt, something that cannot be said for a few of their playing partners.