How Congaree Saved The Lone Public Golf Course In South Carolina’s Poorest County

Congaree, the exclusive private golf club with a membership model built around philanthropy, recently added a second course. Sort of…

Congaree’s firm and fast Tom Fazio design quickly gained national acclaim when it opened in 2017. The club has garnered even more widespread attention as it hosts the PGA TOUR’s CJ Cup in South Carolina’s low country, about 40 miles northwest of Hilton Head Island.

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Congaree’s mission is to offer educational, vocational and golf instruction opportunities to underprivileged and deserving youth through its Congaree Foundation. The club’s invited ambassadors (rather than members) are encouraged to not just make a financial contribution to the charitable Congaree Foundation, but take an active role in interacting with and mentoring kids who come through the Congaree Global Golf Initiative and earn college scholarships – many of whom have gone on to play golf at the collegiate level.

But another, separate effort from the club’s Congaree Foundation is the acquisition and subsequent rehabilitation of Sergeant Jasper Golf Club, a 9-hole layout nearby in Jasper County that was on the verge of being turned into housing; a trailer park, actually.

The course is the only one open to the public in South Carolina’s poorest county, with almost a quarter of residents living below the poverty level.

Congaree’s vision for Sergeant Jasper really has nothing to do with its course and club directly. Instead, it’s an effort to keep golf as an affordable and accessible community amenity – providing opportunity for locals to play (and learn) at a course that costs $8 to walk nine holes. The 18-hole rate, with cart, is only $25 and juniors can play for free. The Congaree Foundation helps to subsidize the cost of golf for the community, not unlike a municipal golf facility.

Sergeant Jasper is charming in its own way, but needs a lot of love after years of deteriorating conditions. And thanks to the Congaree Foundation and a group of PGA TOUR pros, among them Congaree Ambassador Lucas Glover, who has helped spearhead a #RechargeTheSarge campaign, Sergeant Jasper is slowly being transformed after being saved. The club’s director of golf, Tom Craft, also oversees day-to-day operations at “The Sarge,” which is about 20 minutes away from Congaree’s 3,200-acre property but can feel like a world removed.

“When we took it over, you would have hardly known it was a golf course,” Craft says. “They had one employee for everything and he didn’t know anything about grass. But he was responsible for everything, so he’d be on the mower answering the phone calls.”

Today, much of the grounds work at Sergeant Jasper is being done by a former course superintendent whose career included 20 years at Johnson City Country Club in Tennessee – an A.W. Tillinghast design. “This is kind of his retirement, his swan song,” says Craft.

On the drive from Congaree to Sergeant Jasper, you’ll pass the courthouse at which the legal work was completed to acquire the public course. The old-school Southern feel is straight out of a John Grisham novel. And while the course itself is a far cry from the manicured conditions at Congaree – many teeing areas are bare and patchy, greens are wooly, and overgrown trees infringe on playing corridors – the Sarge is a fun layout that, for what it is, is perfect in many ways. There’s lots of sand, mature trees, holes with variety and undeniable charm if you’re looking with proper perspective.

In addition to the efforts at Sergeant Jasper, the Congaree Foundation is running golf programs at the local high school, where the student body is over 95% black and the average household income is less than $20,000. They’ve put in a range and practice area at the school that can be used during gym classes, helping further expose locals to golf.

When Congaree hosted the PGA TOUR’s Palmetto Championship in 2021, one of the participants (who tied for 35^th) was Bryson Nimmer, a Jasper County native who was given a sponsor’s invitation to the tournament. Nimmer grew up playing the Sarge and went on to earn one of the top spots on the Clemson golf team before turning pro.

“The greens are really small, so if you can hit the greens, you’re a player,” Craft said of Sergeant Jasper. “He played nicer places after that, but he grew up out here.”

The bigger-picture question with Congaree and Sergeant Jasper is whether this is an approach that might be followed elsewhere?

Could other private clubs step in and make a difference when it comes to preserving endangered golf in their local communities?

One of the unmistakable takeaways from a visit to Congaree is the love that its ambassadors and invited guests have for the game. The effort at Sergeant Jasper is a recognition not only of the community impact that golf can have, but the beauty that can be found in the game’s many forms – from high-end private clubs to $8 public courses.