Great golf courses are often the passion projects of single-minded individuals. A pair of under-40 entrepreneurs, Nick Schreiber and PGA Tour player Zac Blair, are the visionaries behind two of the country’s most intriguing new courses—Old Barnwell and The Tree Farm—just 25 miles apart outside Aiken, S.C. Perhaps because of the relative youth and inexperience of these innovators—and their counterintuitive choice of designers—the ideology and architecture propelling both properties feel uniquely fresh and more purposeful. Opening simultaneously in the fall of 2023, the clubs embody an emerging ethos in the golf zeitgeist, namely to break convention and embrace the game in more free and culturally meaningful ways.
At The Tree Farm, Blair has attracted a kindred young-in-spirit if not exclusively young-in-age national membership that mirrors his infectious passion for walking, fast play, head-to-head matches and creative architecture, particularly from the approach shot through the green. Most are good players who think nothing of hoofing 36 or more holes a day. One of the club’s mottos is, “Play fast and don’t be a dick.” Another is, “Slow players will be asked to leave the property.”
Blair called his shot to Golf Digest in 2017 for a “different” type of club with a “small pro shop, simple food menu, a grillroom but no dining room and a killer practice facility. We’re talking golf the way real golfers love it, a fun, relaxed place where you won’t get arrested for wearing your hat indoors. It’s going to happen, so stay tuned.”
That idea, called The Buck Club, was intended for a site in Blair’s home state of Utah with updated versions of the template holes C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor made famous in the 1910s and ’20s. While that project sought traction, Blair discovered the 500-acre Tree Farm property—20 minutes northeast of Aiken, previously a pine nursery—that presented advantages the Utah site didn’t, including a 12-month climate, better golf topography, sandy soils and the potential to excite a larger pool of members and investors. Blair acquired the land in early 2020, and the project’s migration from the Rocky Mountains to the rural South prompted him to ask Is this The Buck Club or something else? He ultimately saw The Tree Farm as a new opportunity.
The Tree Farm’s par-3 fourth is modeled on the daunting fifth at Pine Valley.
Blair selected Kye Goalby as architect, a veteran insider who has worked closely with Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and others (Goalby is the son of 1968 Masters champion Bob Goalby). Though Goalby is not well known outside architecture circles, he is admired within, and Blair became convinced he was the right choice after walking the site and spending hours conversing with him. “It became apparent Kye had a great grasp of the kind of greens I wanted and the way I wanted the course to play,” Blair says. “Once he built the 13th and 14th greens, I thought, Yeah, if this is the direction this is going, we’re good to go.”
Blair made several attempts to lay out the course and through Goalby asked Doak, one of the most decorated architects in the profession, for advice. Doak agreed to review the plans, and eventually Blair asked Doak to route the entire course. “I thought to myself that if Tom even had the slightest interest, it would be pretty dumb not to want him to do the whole routing.” (Doak routed the holes but otherwise was not involved in the design.)
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
