BLUFFTON, S.C. – Golf courses have been getting bigger lately. Architects and developers gravitate towards sprawling, sandy sites that demand dramatic, sweeping golf holes with large features and bold, ambitious greens. The results are often rewarding, albeit very intense.
Counterpoint: Anson Point, a new Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw golf course secreted away within the 20,000-acre Palmetto Bluff property in coastal South Carolina. Where most other new golf courses shout, it whispers, but it has plenty to say.
Anson Point’s quiet location about 20 winding miles upriver (the May River, in this case) from Hilton Head places it in the heart of the Lowcountry, one of America’s most charming regional landscapes. The latest in a long line of stellar Coore & Crenshaw layouts takes advantage of a 500-acre site of gently rising and falling terrain that meanders from deep pine and live oak forests to expansive salt marshes. The routing is masterful, with each nine-hole loop featuring a charming crossover kink as it ushers golfers from inland pine forest to oak hammocks to marsh. Coore & Crenshaw could easily have chosen to route the course in concentric loops so that each group could feel isolated while playing each hole. By eschewing that expansive exclusiveness in favor of something more sociable, Anson Point enjoys a feeling of coziness that feels like a true throwback to early 20th century design. There are echoes of some of England’s great heathland courses like those found at Sunningdale and St. George’s Hill, albeit in a distinctly Lowcountry setting…