Courses Played That Are No More (Volume 1)

I want to talk about a topic that interests me.  Closed golf courses.  Now for some of you, this may be a depressing avenue to go down.  I don’t necessarily view it that way.  I believe that there was massive over-building of courses and the recent closures have been more of a market correction than anything else.  That’s neither here nor there.

In this post, I wanted to share some thoughts on the courses that I have played that have shut down.

From my list, these are the closed golf courses that I know of.  Some are grown over and some have been developed into housing.  I can say that for almost all of them I haven’t been back since I played them long ago.  So I can only offer some fuzzy memories on them.  Hope you enjoy.  Let me know some of the courses you have played that are no longer around.

• Anderson Country Club (Anderson, SC) – This was a course that was close to Clemson.  I only ended up playing it once, but it was very challenging.  The greens were very firm.  I don’t remember much else.  I do know that “The Country Club” was a favorite of many of its regulars.
• Bay Tree Golf Plantation (Little River, SC) – I have some good memories from this track.  There were 54 holes here and I got to play in the North-South All-Stars here.  This is a Ryder Cup-style tournament for the graduating seniors from different sized high schools in South Carolina.  We had some good matches.  Unfortunately, the course closed in 2006.  The closure of the course has hurt the values of the condos.  The course is mostly grown over.
• Hillandale Golf Club (Travelers Rest, SC) – This course was the victim of a housing development.  I got to play in a very rowdy golf tournament here in high school.  Let’s put it this way.  I played the first two rounds with a guy named Alley Cat.  It was quite a time.
• Millstone Golf Village (Easley, SC) – This is a course that closed in 2006.  It was about 25 minutes from my house, but I only played it once.  It had some quirky holes and some good ones.  I always felt it was in decent shape, although sometimes it would be a little too firm.  Their marketing hyped the course and the practice facility.  Both were good, but couldn’t be sustained.
• The Wellman Club (Johnson City, SC) – This was a tough one to hear about.  I didn’t necessarily love the golf course but had some awesome memories from high school golf here.  We won two state championships at this course.  I honestly can’t tell you much about the layout.  That’s unfortunate, but I will always remember the place fondly.