Our reviews of South Carolina's 2 newest course openings: Old Sawmill and Anson Point - FOGOLF

In the past few years, South Carolina has become the state where the most exciting golf design is taking place. Six new courses have opened since early 2024 (including one that’s a major transformation of an existing property), and six other 18-hole courses are in different stages of constructions with five expected to open in 2027.

RELATED: The best golf courses in South Carolina, ranked

Two new courses that opened in early 2026 demonstrate the range of architecture being explored in South Carolina. Old Sawmill, an hour northwest of Charleston near the town of Ridgeville, is the first new solo design from Tyler Rae. Rae has been one of the most prominent renovation specialists in the business over the last half dozen years with notable remodels of 1920s classics like Lookout Mountain in Georgia (our Best Renovation winner for 2023), Wakonda in Iowa and Detroit Golf Club. His expertise working in the vernacular of early American architecture comes through in the design of Old Sawmill.

/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2023/1/Old Sawmill 2.jpeg

The profound verticals at Old Sawmill punch up a stark site.

Derek Duncan

The site was essentially treeless, a family country farm that had little topographical variety. The elevation changes are subtle, with only a few shallow ridges traversing the long, narrow property. What it did have were several creeks and small irrigation canals bisecting the land at different points, old school additives that are creatively integrated.

Rae didn’t attempt to make the golf on this austere piece of land look natural or scruffy or try to blend in with something that isn’t there, a refreshing decision. This was a pasture, and the greens, tees and bunkers are unapologetically stark and muscular on top of it. They are developed, architectural forms that stand above the surrounds. The features look fierce, and the design feels like a slightly wicked, 100-year post-cedent version of Oakmont, full of sharp, grass-faced hazards and pedestal greens with robust, fractured surfaces.

/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2023/1/Old Sawmill 14.jpeg

Old Sawmill’s short par-3 14th.

Derek Duncan

RELATED: How South Carolina became the hottest spot for course design

The opening holes wade into the themes, but as the round progresses the architectural intensity increases. The canals and streams become more of a factor, squeezing the otherwise large fairways and crossing holes in uncomfortable places, like at the par-4 fifth where the landing zone quickly collapses from 70 yards across to just 25. Obscurity is another tool the design uses. The par-3 seventh green is partially hidden by a kick slope short right that feeds balls onto a putting surface ringed on three sides by sand, again not unlike Oakmont. The par-5 eighth with an abrupt, manufactured berm short right of the green forces play toward a string of depressed hazards on the inside left if any view of the green is desired.

Dramatic shaping around greens like four, 10, 11 and 12 is provocative bordering on maniacal, and the opportunities for explosions and implosions on the long, straight run home from the far corner of the property at 14 through the 18 will make every member simultaneously excited and nervous. These holes include a postage stamp par 3, a mid-length par 4 around a snaking creek to a punchbowl green and the walk-the-plank drivable par-4 16th at 280 yards, max, a distance that actually gives players of nearly every length a realistic chance to reach the green using the downhill grade of the landing area.

Old Sawmill 16 green

The green at the drivable par-4 16th.

Derek Duncan

What Old Sawmill lacks in atmosphere and aesthetics it makes up in intellect. The fairways can be enormous, but you find yourself tacking around the hazards, probing and pulling back at the same time. It is the stern, rational Apollonian to the Dionysian seductiveness of Anson Point, the new course at Palmetto Bluff from Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.

Located on the broad river marshes at the southern tip of the Palmetto Bluff development near Bluffton, Anson Point is two decades in the making: Coore and Crenshaw first discussed building a course here shortly after Jack Nicklaus’s original May River opened in 2004.

/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2023/1/Anson Point 11.jpeg

Anson Point’s long par-4 11th is one of several holes that overlooks the Lowcountry river marshes.

Derek Duncan

The routing spins in a series of loops that delve into dense lowcountry woods full of pine and oak. The land murmurs but is relatively flat, and the character of the course seeps in through the almost hypnotic movements of the isolated, disorienting forest. One is never quite sure of the geography until a green suddenly emerges upon the tee of another disconnected hole, or when the course banks along the marshes. Even then it takes some mapping to digest where you’ve been and to where you’re being guided.

After so many years working vast, sandy sites with more or less open horizons, it’s been interesting to observe Coore and Crenshaw move back into environments with strict boundaries. Anson Point, The Pines Course at The International, Wicker Point, The Back Yard at McArthur, Pinehurst No. 11—these are properties with constrictions and barriers, and the architecture complies with it, scaling down where needed and willing to play within the more constitutional dimensions.

RELATED: The best Coore and Crenshaw golf courses

/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2023/1/Anson Point 15.jpeg

The short par-4 15th features a gorgeous front-to-back sloped green.

Derek Duncan

At Anson Point, trees are a major component. They define the strategic space. There is room to maneuver, but they impose their will when they want to, or when the play is careless. At holes six, eight, 11 and 13, to name several, drives must attack uncomfortable lines along the extreme sides of the fairway to avoid large, preserved specimen oaks that can block out angles to the green. It can feel almost punitive until you realize that contemporary golf design has gotten too permissive with the driver.

The par-5 14th, a left to right, right to left dogleg, is one of the simplest yet most calculating three-shot holes Coore and Crenshaw have designed. There is room for days on the left but drives that don’t intentionally hug the treeline on the right have no view of the green or preferred layup area and must then hit long second shots toward a boundary of forest on the right. Once in position to see it, the green is beautifully situated against a small dune with a bowled surface on the left.

/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2023/1/Anson_Point_Hole_14_1.jpg

Anson Point’s 14th green.

Palmetto Bluff/Patrick O’ Brien

That green, with its low, remarkable putting surface, is an anomaly. The defining design feature at Anson Point are pushup greens on the smaller size that rise toward the rear and drop off the side and rear shoulders, including into bunkers. On a flat, Lowcountry site this has several advantages including visibility and drainage, and it contributes to an overall cohesiveness that builds toward a point of view. It also makes the low greens that sit entirely at grade like 14, the fourth and the fallaway surface at the 336-yard 15th feel more impressive.

Coore and Crenshaw associate Ryan Farrow shaped the greens and bunkers here, and his creativity—including adding several strange knobs in front of greens—continues to help develop Coore and Crenshaw’s intriguing, late-career evolution into the unconventional (Farrow is currently doing the shaping work at Pinehurst No. 11 as well). It’s a somewhat unexpected turn for them but a welcome one, and the unexpected, even in subtle forms, is what’s necessary to turn a lovely but sublime Lowcountry site like Anson Point into something worth talking about.

Our reviews of South Carolina’s 2 newest course openings: Old Sawmill and Anson Point

Leave a Reply