Zac Blair/Buck Club Near Aiken, SC

[Jeff_Brauer]

The quick lesson is, if the contours are labeled with elevations, make sure you are looking at the feature from top down, i.e. downhill by the numbers.  If you do, the cross section shape of the contours will show you what the land form looks like.  A valley will show with the center of the contours low, and a ridge will look like a hump.

[Tom_Doak]

I'm telling you, that's a skill I definitely do not have: I wish I could read street maps as well as you guys read topos! [No GPS for me. I'm always afraid that the lady giving directions will get mad at me for some reason and suddenly stop talking!]

Same here. Reading a topo is for me as foreign as reading a Russian newspaper.

It really is not nearly that hard, although I suppose some people would never get it.  If you spent a week at it with someone's help, I think you would be able to read them.


Where I went from good at it to great at it was when I was working on the routing for High Pointe.  It was the first time I had a good two-foot topo of an interesting piece of land that was mostly clear of trees, that I could go out and walk around as much as I wanted.  So I would go out there with the map and find that the little bump for the third green was right there on the topo map and what that looked like as a bunch of lines . . . and then find a wiggle of lines that looked interesting on paper and go see what that meant on the ground.


After that, it was easy  . . . anytime I could find a pattern of wiggles on the map that looked unusual, that probably meant an unusual feature on the ground I should utilize.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I'll disagree to a degree.  I look for those little squiggles, too.  It does seem to me that routing first deals with the really big picture and the broader rolls of a site.  If you can use some Diddle bump (surprised Bill Diddel didn't claim that as his intellectual property.....) without sacrificing the general flow, so much the better.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:


I was just talking about learning how to read a map, not so much about routing a course.

[Bill Shotzbarger]

Tom and Zac,


This seems like an incredibly exciting project and one I have been, and will be, closely following.


Tom—it looks like this will be your first new course project in the Carolinas since very early in your design career. Are you excited to get back there for a new build?


Also, I think the site has sandy soil which lends itself beautifully to ideal playing conditions most golfers on here love. Am I correct about that? Does that type of soil make construction easier or more difficult for your team?


Bill

[Tom_Doak]

Tom—it looks like this will be your first new course project in the Carolinas since very early in your design career. Are you excited to get back there for a new build?

Also, I think the site has sandy soil which lends itself beautifully to ideal playing conditions most golfers on here love. Am I correct about that? Does that type of soil make construction easier or more difficult for your team?

Bill:  I've only been hired to do the routing of the course, not to build it.


As for the soils, I haven't dug around to see exactly what is there.  I doubt it is pure sand like Pinehurst or Ballyneal, but sandy soil is much easier than clay just due for minimizing weather delays during construction.  The sooner the site dries up the quicker you can get going again.

[Michael Whitaker]

Here is a map of the ancient coastline. It explains why there is so much sand so far inland. I went to school in Columbia. When we would dig a pit out back of our apartment to cook BBQ we would turn up sea shells. Just sayin' 

[Michael Whitaker]

.

[Tom_Doak]

Here is a map of the ancient coastline. It explains why there is so much sand so far inland. I went to school in Columbia. When we would dig a pit out back of our apartment to cook BBQ we would turn up sea shells. Just sayin' 

I had no idea that the sand went so far inland down there.  Why aren't there good courses around Columbia?

[Mike_Trenham]

In my time as a Gamecock and resident of Columbia SC all I found was red clay, but I was not informed enough to know to look for sand.


Mike W.  I am really curious about this topic, as examples would you say Camden or Orangeburg benefit from a percentage of sandy soils?

[Steve Lang]

   If one looks, for extent and origin of the Sand Hills, its border is essentially The Fall Line of the Piedmont, though there was some intrusion of the coastal plain up the north flank of the Congaree River to Columbia, SC it looks isolated from one mapping I found.  The sand is windblown, not unlike the Great Sand Dunes out in Colorado 


From Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_Regions_of_South_Carolina


Sandhills[edit]The Carolina [/color]Sandhills is a 10-35 mi wide physiographic region within the innermost part of the Atlantic Coastal Plain province.[/color][1] The northern extent of the Carolina Sandhills is located near Fayetteville in North Carolina, and the Carolina Sandhills extend south and southwestward into South Carolina and Georgia. The Sandhills is home to [/color]Sand Hills State Forest, part of the Congaree River, and the state capital of Columbia. The Carolina Sandhills are interpreted as eolian (wind-blown) sand sheets and dunes that were mobilized episodically from approximately 75,000 to 6,000 years ago. Most of the published luminescence ages from the sand are coincident with the last glaciation, a time when the southeastern United States was characterized by colder air temperatures and stronger winds.[/color][2][/color][/font][/size]References[edit][/font]

^ Swezey, C.S., Fitzwater, B.A., Whittecar, G.R., Mahan, S.A., Garrity, C.P., Aleman Gonzalez, W.B., and Dobbs, K.M., 2016, "The Carolina Sandhills: Quaternary eolian sand sheets and dunes along the updip margin of the Atlantic Coastal Plain province, southeastern United States": Quaternary Research, v. 86, p. 271-286; www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research
[/font]

• ^ Swezey, C.S., Fitzwater, B.A., Whittecar, G.R., Mahan, S.A., Garrity, C.P., Aleman Gonzalez, W.B., and Dobbs, K.M., 2016, "The Carolina Sandhills: Quaternary eolian sand sheets and dunes along the updip margin of the Atlantic Coastal Plain province, southeastern United States": Quaternary Research, v. 86, p. 271-286; www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research

[jeffwarne]

Here is a map of the ancient coastline. It explains why there is so much sand so far inland. I went to school in Columbia. When we would dig a pit out back of our apartment to cook BBQ we would turn up sea shells. Just sayin' 

I had no idea that the sand went so far inland down there.  Why aren't there good courses around Columbia?

The era they were built.
Camden being the noteable exception

[jeffwarne]

There is a ton of sand around Columbia/Aiken, BUT individual properties can vary widely.
And though often the soil  on top is sand, 3-8 lower it can be some or mainly clay.


Across the street from the Tree Fam, a former portion of the property was a kaolin mine(clay)and it has crazy 40 foot tall wild dune buggy/dirt formations in the leftover clay.
There are several kaolin mines just barely west of the property as well

[Michael Whitaker]

Here is a map of the ancient coastline. It explains why there is so much sand so far inland. I went to school in Columbia. When we would dig a pit out back of our apartment to cook BBQ we would turn up sea shells. Just sayin' 

I had no idea that the sand went so far inland down there.  Why aren't there good courses around Columbia?

Tom - think about this... there are numerous Ross courses in NC and Florida, but only one or two in SC. Why? Money. SC was a very poor agricultural state and there was no money or interest in golden age golf... except by the northerners who wintered in the south. So, they brought down the designers who they were familiar with. That’s why we have two Raynor courses, one remodel by Mackenzie, and one Ross hybrid in Camden. They were all built for northern enclaves. You can count the courses built here before WW2 on one hand. By the time golf became popular in SC courses were mostly created for tourism or real estate sales. The “build it and they will come” philosophy didn’t exist back then. Glad to see it’s finally making its way to SC. Long overdue.

[jeffwarne]

Here is a map of the ancient coastline. It explains why there is so much sand so far inland. I went to school in Columbia. When we would dig a pit out back of our apartment to cook BBQ we would turn up sea shells. Just sayin' 

I had no idea that the sand went so far inland down there.  Why aren't there good courses around Columbia?

Tom - think about this... there are numerous Ross courses in NC and Florida, but only one or two in SC. Why? Money. SC was a very poor agricultural state and there was no money or interest in golden age golf... except by the northerners who wintered in the south. So, they brought down the designers who they were familiar with. That’s why we have two Raynor courses, one remodel by Mackenzie, and one Ross hybrid in Camden. They were all built for northern enclaves. You can count the courses built here before WW2 on one hand. By the time golf became popular in SC courses were mostly created for tourism or real estate sales. The “build it and they will come” philosophy didn’t exist back then. Glad to see it’s finally making its way to SC. Long overdue.

There was also Aiken GC circa 1912 I think, and North Augusta(SC) had a NLE around 1900ish.
And Augusta,like Aiken and Pinehurst a winer resort area, just across the river in GA had ACC, Forest Hills, ANGC

[Jeff Schley]

So according to Mike's map, Augusta has sandy soil? I thought it was clay.

Or does the map only give possibility of having native sandy soil?

[jeffwarne]

So according to Mike's map, Augusta has sandy soil? I thought it was clay.

Or does the map only give possibility of having native sandy soil?

parts-the Hill area of Augusta has sand,ACC-less so, Forest Hills, Augusta Golf Club(patch)

[David_Elvins]

So according to Mike's map, Augusta has sandy soil? I thought it was clay.

Or does the map only give possibility of having native sandy soil?

Augusta isnt on the sand.  you can see much more detail here.
Mineral Resources Online Spatial Data: Geologic maps (usgs.gov)

[Don Mahaffey]

Bored?  Want to find the next great sandy site in some far off corner of the US....this is your site:
https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/WebSoilSurvey.aspx


Not sure why the link is microscopic...or only on my computer.  But click on it...I promise its not hazardous.

[Kalen Braley]

Bored?  Want to find the next great sandy site in some far off corner of the US....this is your site:


https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/WebSoilSurvey.aspx

Not sure why the link is microscopic...or only on my computer.  But click on it...I promise its not hazardous.

Here you go Don.  And it is secure http, so thats a plus!

[Jeff Schley]

Any update on the progress of Zac Blair's Tree Farm?  Haven't seen anything lately. Did he get the funding in place to start yet?

[Ben Hollerbach]

Zac's been posting pictures recently of hole corridor clearing on site.

[Tom_Doak]

Any update on the progress of Zac Blair's Tree Farm?  Haven't seen anything lately. Did he get the funding in place to start yet?

I believe the funding is in place.

[Lou_Duran]

I suppose an important question might be, have you been paid for your routing?

[jeffwarne]

I suppose an important question might be, have you been paid for your routing?

Do you really think that's any of your business?