The First Tee of Aiken was founded in 2009 and called Houndslake Country Club home for over 10 years. But with golf participation on the rise, the organization eventually needed its own facility for teaching youth the virtues of the game. At the same time, the University of South Carolina Aiken was feeling the pressure of overcrowded public courses in the wake of the post-COVID 19 golf boom, pushing the school to find a dedicated practice facility for their golf team. This ultimately led to a natural partnership between the First Tee and USCA with the goal of creating a dual-purpose facility that would both meet the demands of the growing First Tee program and provide the USCA Pacers with their own practice facility. Six years of planning and a $3+ million spend delivered the finished product: the Chalk Mine 9, practice areas, and onsite classroom.

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Take Note...

Not so fast. When Jim McNair met First Tee of Aiken board chair Tony Allman in the golf shop at Aiken Golf Club in 2020, he vowed to help build the facility for the First Tee. Jim assisted with the project from the start, including a tour of the initial site. Jim was perplexed with the steep tree covered hillside that had been chosen for the practice facility, going so far as to deem it unbuildable. He had his eyes focused on the adjacent 38 acres of abandoned mining site that had been cleared over 70 years ago, and which boasted a plethora of native plants that had begun to reclaim the exposed terrain. The combination of Jim’s disapproval of the intended site and enthusiasm for the other option caused the First Tee and USCA to change their original plans altogether, leading to Jim becoming the architect of the facility on his preferred mining site.

Mining for Chalk. The site on which the course sits is literally an abandoned chalk mine. In the 1950s sand and chalk were mined here by the Graniteville Company to make porcelain, but mining operations ceased after about 10 years. The site remained untouched until the Three Amigos (Jim and his friends’ self-proclaimed design team) began constructing the Chalk Mine 9.

Par 27. The Chalk Mine 9 is a simple nine-hole par-3 course that occupies roughly 15 acres of land. The course and practice facility are maintained by only a couple of people, so length and size of holes and the amount of maintained turf were all carefully considered during construction.