Secession Golf Club, Beaufort SC

[Mike_Sweeney]

http://www.secessiongolf.com/index.html

A friend of mine just came back from a trip to Secession Golf Club, and raved about the course saying that they were very content to play the course rather than travel to other local courses. Do any of our Southern friends @ GCA know anything about the course and the club? It is a Bruce Devlin course, and the atmosphere sounds (see website above) like a Sand Hills type of atmoshere.

[Daryl "Turboe" Boe]

Mike,

Secession is a wonderful place, a great atmosphere and one of the best caddie programs I have ever seen.  A great mix of seasoned caddies and young and disiplined marines from the nearby Parris Island Marine Base.   Wonderful.  And it is good, because it is walking only here.  I have heard that there are not even any carts for medical dispensation.  If you are unable to walk anymore, they will allow you to bequeth you membership to you child, but you are out of luck yourself because it IS WALKING ONLY!!!

The course is good.  Although I wasnt crazy about the first hole.  It actually was Pete Dye I believe who did the routing, and then something got sideways with the funding and the project was finished by Devlin.  But you can still see Dye in it.

No time to post more now, but it is a wonderful GOLF club, and the atmosphere there is great.

[Mark_Fine]

Fun golf course!  Mostly treeless, sodded bunkers, some greens with extensions to tees, generally firm and fast, bump and run shots, wind and lots of it,...  Pete did do the original routing (not sure if Devlin kept all of it).  My only complaint was that I thought the greens could have used more undulations.  Just about every putt seemed relatively flat.  I confess I've only played it once and need to see it again but that was my recollection.  I remember saying if Pete stayed on board, the greens wouldn't look like these.  Obviously other things would have changed as well.  

Overall a great golf experience and a really good golf course.  If I were in the area, however, I would still venture elsewhere to play.  Variety is the spice of life and it applies to seeing golf courses as well  
Mark

[Jeff_Stettner]

Mike:
Secession is a wonderful club to belong to; it's a destination club (second or third or who cares how many memberships one has) where all members, save the founding group, have to live at least 200 miles from Beaufort. There are no carts. Period. No cart paths even. The routing is absolutely phenominal; some tees are actually flush with the fringe of a couple of greens. It has to be one of the best walks a golfer can enjoy.
The course is good, but there are some things I really question. The mounding looks really bad on a number of holes, and I question the need for it at all when one sees the simple beauty of the low-lying site. There is a really cool set of berms that squeeze the entrance to the ninth green and I hope the club is able to change all the mounding to this kind of appearance. The bunkering is also somewhat nuerotic. On one hole (16) there is a Pete Dye bunker on the green, a Bruce devlin bunker on the right side of the fairway and a few of the in-house-stacked-sod-bunkers on the rest of the hole. It all creates a serious mish-mash. As stated above, some of the greens could also benefit from some contour.
I see why people rave about Secession, but I implore everybody who is in that area to visit Chechessee Creek. It's as good a modern golf course as there is.

[Will E]

Jeff,
Without question Secession should be and still could be a fantastic course. It is a great walk and also a great example of how goofy a course can look when contrasting styles are thrown in. I hope the course can settle on whatever look they are going for and stick with it. I agree, it is a great destination club.

Also, I've been thinking a lot about Chechesse Creek and it may be the best new course I've seen in the last couple of years. At risk of being never allowed to post again I'll say that it is a similar and better course than Garden City.
You are right, it is that good. Can you find any weakness to the course? It's a "BULLETS" 9 in my book.

[APBernstein]

I will proudly (and loudly) proclaim Chechessee Creek a better course than Harbour Town (I played them both in the same day this past summer).

I was the first player out at 8 AM (with a caddie) at Chechessee and had a fabulous 2 and a half hours of golf.  I honestly can't think of any true weakness on the entire course.  It doesn't "pretend" to be anything other than an outstandinf low-profile course.  Forget the term modern, its just plain good.

I haven't had the chance to play Seccession yet, but considering I get down to that area at least once or twice a year, I will make a point to see it.

[Jeff_Stettner]

Andrew:
I'm a firm believer in seeing as many worthy courses as possible. Nevertheless, if I am ever again within 250 miles of Chechessee you'll have to drag me away from there, screaming and digging my nails into ground. If Chechessee is not one of the 10 best courses built in the last 50 years, I really want to see the 10 that top it. As it stands in my book, Chechessee is C&C's masterpiece, especially when one considers who much worse the land they had here is compared to Cuscowilla, Sand Hills and even Kapalua. I'm not saying it's a better course than Sand Hills. I juat can't imagine a better effort.
Shooter:
I cannot find one element of Chechessee I would like to see changed. I also cannot ever recall saying that about any golf course. Were it in a setting like Sand Hills or Pac Dunes, this short discussion would have been redundant long ago.

[Dan Grossman]

As an aside, I thought that Devlin replaced Dye when there was an incident about an island green...

I was all set to play, and right after we hit our tee shots on the par 3 second, the biggest thunderstorm ever rolled in and we weren't able to get back out on the golf course.  I was disappointed that I wasn't able to reschedule the round.  It looked fantastic.

[Gib_Papazian]

I'm going to echo Shooter and the Kid about Sucession - I can see why Mike Young joined a club a four hour drive from home in Athens. What a place to be - an idyllic location with a perfect routing and a club that seems just right without that cloying undertone one would expect from a place that frankly looks to be designed as a sort of alternative Augusta.

The green are a bit blah, but it was not blowing hard when we played there so I cannot comment about that until we play it in a few different conditions.

That said, they need to get the bunkering straightened out. If it is going to be sod walled, so be it, but do it correctly. If they would just pick a style and stick with it, that golf course would be a masterpiece. I'd like to see a bit more of those berms on the 9th hole, our caddies thought they look terrible but to my eye they were really stylish.

Chechessee is another matter entirely. Shooter, Stettner and I are professional nitpicking contrarians. We had several hours between Paris Island and Macon to come up with a single criticism about what C&C did there and frankly the only complaint I have is that it is not in California so I can join the club as my 2nd home.

It is safe to say we were completely flabbergasted by the golf course in every single aspect. If that is not a bulletproof 9 then maybe I do not have enough taste to rate golf courses. In all honesty, I found it FAR superior to Cuscawilla despite resting on a non-descript piece of land.

[Fred Ruttenberg]

Could someone provide more information about Chechesseeeg.where is it located,private or public, green fees,etc.

[Brian Dillard (Guest)]

Fred,
Hello, I am a golf professional at chechessee creek and I can answer most of your questions. YES Private, greens fees 120 unacompanied, 45 accompanied, walking with caddies.  We are located in Okatie, SC that is right smack in between Hilton Head and Beaufort about a 15 minute drive from either.

More info here in Golf Club Atlas with some early pictures.

Brian

[Gib_Papazian]

Brian,

Thank you for your information and hospitality.  

I do not think it is overstating the case to say that Chechessee is nearly worth flying across the country to see as a special trip.