The Aiken Golf Club began in 1912 as an 11-hole course associated with the Highland Park Hotel. Three years later, John R. (“J.R.”) Inglis became the golf professional and extended the routing to 18 holes. Inglis was from Upstate New York, where he had worked on projects for golf architects William Flynn and Donald Ross, and he may have gotten Ross’s help with the Aiken layout. Like many Southern resorts that thrived in the 1920s, Highland Park struggled during the Great Depression, and the hotel was demolished in 1941. The city purchased the course in 1939, kept it afloat for the next 20 years, and sold it to a golf professional named Jim McNair, Sr., in 1959. The McNairs have since owned and operated the Aiken Golf Club as a semi-private facility. In the mid-1990s, Jim McNair, Jr., made the gutsy decision to renovate the course in-house. Between 1996 and 2000, with the assistance of a D5 bulldozer and a few crew members, McNair transformed every hole. The result was one of the best golf values in the country—a $25-30 round that’s worth a trip to play.
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Take Note…
Local tie-ins. The Aiken Golf Club provides a specific type of accessibility that’s too rare outside of Scotland. If you’re staying in Aiken’s downtown area, you can pick up your golf bag, walk the length of a long par 5 (or two short par 4s), arrive at the pro shop, pay your green fee, play 18 holes in three to four hours, get a beer and a bite to eat at the excellent Legends Grille on the second floor of the clubhouse, and walk back. That’s good living.
A simple but fun putting course. “Himalayas-style” putting courses are all the rage these days, but I like Aiken’s less bumpy, more mini-golf-adjacent version.
1912 and 1915. If you look at Cameron’s map at the bottom of this post, you’ll have no trouble discerning the two loops that make up Aiken’s 18-hole routing: the 11-hole 1912 loop travels five holes out and six back, and John Inglis’s seven-hole addition from 1915 takes off from the (old and current) seventh green.
Missile defense. Aiken is one of the longest 5,800-yard courses you'll play. One reason for that: on most holes, it's not advantageous to hit it more than 250 yards off the tee. You’re welcome to try, but you’ll often end up near hazards, in the narrowest sections of the fairways, or facing tricky angles into the greens. Bombers beware.
