If you don’t subscribe to our monthly FREE newsletter, Home On The Course, then you missed the announcement in the March issue that Savannah Lakes Village, one of the best buys in Southeastern golf communities, is making a special offer to our newsletter subscribers. The community’s two-night Discovery Package, which includes lodging in a two-bedroom townhome and golf on each of its two excellent courses, is more than reasonably priced at just $250. However, for Home On The Course subscribers, the folks at Savannah Lakes will throw in a third night of lodging and an extra round of golf. That works out to $83 per night, with golf each day!
        Savannah Lakes is located on Lake Thurmond in McCormick, SC, about a half hour from the college town of Greenwood and 45 minutes from Augusta, GA. Real estate prices in the community are comparably lower than similar golf communities, and its homeowner association fees represent the best bargain I have found, especially with golf membership and other amenity access included for just $125 per month. (Golf members pay modest green fees, but they have the option to play as much golf as they want for one additional low annual fee.) The community offers some unusual extra touches, such as a four-lane bowling alley.
        To take advantage of this special discovery package offer, please subscribe now to our free newsletter and contact me for more information, a referral to the community’s top real estate professional and to begin the arrangements for a visit to Savannah Lakes.
SLVhomeacrossgreenOn Savannah Lakes Village's two excellent golf courses, members can opt for $41 green fees or, if they play multiple times per week, an annual membership at $282 per month, which works out to about $17 per round for those who play four times a week.

        Many of us will look on with awe tomorrow (Sunday) during the final round of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass when players in competition for victory face the daunting 17th hole with its tiny island green. That green is on my bucket play list, but I have played a par 3 surrounded by marshland maybe 100 times that is every bit as intimidating.
        Although from all appearances, the 13th green at Pawleys Plantation Country Club is smaller than the 17th green at Sawgrass, published measurements indicate it is a couple hundred square feet larger.  But I can't imagine the Sawgrass hole is any more intimidating than Pawleys short par 3.  Jack Nicklaus took care of that in 1988 when he used the old rice plantation dike as the site of the four tee boxes on the hole. (The dike also serves as the tee locations for the longer and hardly less intimidating tee shot to the par 3 17th hole.)  At only ½ mile to Pawleys Island Beach and the Atlantic Ocean, the tee-to-green shot over an expanse of marshland is fully exposed to the elements. Rare is the day when the wind is not blowing one way or the other and, oddly enough, the only “good” wind on the hole is straight in your face because the extra lift of a decent shot will pretty much ensure your ball does not bounce over the typically firm green.  The toughest wind is the one that blows out across the marsh to the island and ocean beyond.
Pawleys13fromsideThe 13th green at Pawleys Plantation. Tee boxes are off to the left and, on the day of this photo, the wind was blowing from tee to green, making a difficult shot almost impossible to hold on the tiny green.
        That said, a shot to the back of the green under such conditions leaves a strongly downhill putt with the wind blowing back toward a middle or front hole location, running the risk of putting the ball through a thin strip of collar and into the marsh short of the green. Whereas the entrance and exit to the 17th green at Sawgrass is from the back left, at Pawleys the route is from the right, providing a dubious bailout that is no more accessible than the thin runway at Sawgrass. 
        I am sure those who have played #17 at Sawgrass have their pet names for the hole, some not so genteel. At Pawleys Plantation, members like myself have a stock response for first-time visitors who stand on the 13th tee box, mouth agape at the shot before them.
        “Yup,” we say, “the shortest par 5 you will ever play.”