CarolinaLiving.com recently posted an article I wrote for its Compass eNewsletter about golf communities near universities. Large universities and even more modestly sized colleges are magnets for all kinds of cultural events, including concerts, museum shows, lectures by famous and should-be famous people and, of course, sporting contests. Those who like what cities offer in the way of entertainment but loathe the traffic, extreme pace and pollution will find most of the good stuff near a university in the Southeast.
        In the CarolinaLiving.com article, I provided capsules of the best golf communities near universities in North and South Carolina. These include Governors Club near University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill; Landfall, just 10 minutes from UNC-Wilmington; Reems Creek, a few miles north of UNC-Asheville; Green Valley Country Club in Greenville, SC, near Furman University; Wildewood Country Club and the University of South Carolina (USC) in Columbia; Woodside Plantation in Aiken, near that city's branch of USC; and Wild Wing Plantation, virtually across Highway 501 from Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC, a few miles from Myrtle Beach.
        Of course, many more choices abound throughout the region. We have toured and played the golf courses at most of the following communities. For more information, please contact us.

One of the 45 holes of golf at Wintergreen Resort; this is #17 at the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains on the Devil's Knob Golf Course. 

Virginia

• Glenmore in Keswick, VA, home to a number of University of Virginia (UVA) professors and athletics team coaches. The entire community, including the John LaFoy golf course, has a Scottish tinge to it.
• Wintergreen Resort, 45 minutes from Charlottesville and UVA but worth the trip given its lofty Blue Ridge Mountains location, 45 holes of excellent golf and reasonably priced real estate
• Kinloch, whose golf course is perennially ranked in the top 3 in the state of Virginia and only a few miles from University of Richmond. Lester George, who designed another top 5 course at Ballyhack in Roanoke, partnered with longtime amateur golfing luminary Vinny Giles to develop the Kinloch layout.
• Viniterra is an unusual combination of Rees Jones golf and a working winery within an easy drive of colonial Williamsburg and one of the nation's oldest schools, William & Mary. Located halfway between Richmond and Williamsburg, Viniterra has the best of both worlds, even if life inside the gates is calming.

The Landings on Skidaway Island is a mere 20 minutes from downtown Savannah and features six excellent golf courses for one membership fee.

Georgia

• The 4,800-acre Landings at Skidaway Island, with six golf courses, tons of activities and just 20 minutes from Savannah and its highly regarded College of Art & Design, which has helped transform the city and is a magnet for art and culture.
• Athens is the quintessential college town, a vibrant center of creativity. (The rock band R.E.M. formed there while its members were attending University of Georgia.) The Georgia Club offers 27 holes of golf and reasonably priced real estate (homes from the low $300s).
• Champions Retreat, just outside Augusta, is unique; its 27-hole golf course was designed by Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer (one nine each). The community of mostly upscale homes lies along the Savannah River, just a few miles from another golf course you may have heard of with "Augusta" in its name. Augusta State University merged a couple of years ago with Georgia Health Sciences University to form the nearby Georgia Regents University.

The Audubon golf community is as close as a golf community gets in Naples to the Gulf of Mexico.

Florida

• The Tampa Bay area in Florida offers just about everything in the way of entertainment, services, transportation (great airport!) and dozens of golf communities. Just 45 minutes south of the University of South Florida in Tampa is River Strand at Heritage Harbour, a "bundled" golf community, which means that golf membership in its fine [who] golf club is included in the price of the house. Another five minutes down the interstate, Lakewood Ranch is a city unto itself, as well as a sprawling golf community.
• If you are a college basketball fan, you will remember the terrific March madness run a few years ago by unknown Florida Gulf Coast University in Ft. Myers. Between Ft. Myers and nearby Naples, those looking for a golf community have literally scores of them to consider. For those looking for a 55+ community, we have heard good things about Pelican Preserve in Ft. Myers. In Naples, we loved the golf course at Audubon Country Club, whose surrounding homes are as close to the Gulf of Mexico as golf communities get in Naples.
• In a few weeks, golf fans will turn their attention to the TPC Sawgrass "Stadium" course, just south of Jacksonville where the best PGA golfers will compete in the Players Championship, sometimes called the "fifth major." Divided into more than a dozen small communities, the Sawgrass community offers not only three golf courses but a wide array of real estate choices. Jacksonville University is a half hour away. (The ocean resort Amelia Island and its fine seaside layouts is just 45 minutes from the university.)

If you would like more education on any of these fine college town communities, please contact us.

        The Founders Group International, whose roots and parent company are located in China, has become the largest owner of golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area after an announcement yesterday that the firm had purchased 12 golf clubs owned and operated by National Golf Management (NGM). (Full disclosure: Your editor has been a member for the past 15 years of one of those clubs, Pawleys Plantation.) The purchase brings to 27 the number of publicly accessible golf courses that Founders Group and other China-based companies own between Southport, NC, about 45 minutes south of Wilmington, and Georgetown, SC, 45 minutes south of Myrtle Beach International Airport.
        Yesterday's purchase included some of the most popular and best reviewed golf courses along Myrtle Beach's Grand Strand, nicknamed for the virtually uninterrupted stretch of beach that runs from well above the border between North and South Carolina to a couple of miles south of the private DeBordieu Colony in Georgetown. They include Pawleys Plantation, the Grande Dunes Resort, Long Bay, Kings North and Pine Lakes International, the first golf course opened in the area (1927) and the birthplace of Sports Illustrated magazine. The other courses are River Club, Litchfield Country Club, Willbrook Plantation, the two golf courses at Myrtlewood, and the other two besides Kings North that are located inside the Myrtle Beach National complex.
Founders Group International, whose parent company is based in China, has purchased 22 golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area, including the Grande Dunes Resort.
        Prices for these most recently purchased golf courses were not announced, but based on what Founders Group paid for the earlier clubs, we are guessing this latest group will have fetched as much as $100 million. Pawleys Plantation, the Grande Dunes Resort club and Kings North especially are among the highest-trafficked golf courses in the area and command more than average green fees. Pine Lakes International maintains the cachet of the oldest club in the area.
        Founders Group and two other China-based firms now employ more than 1,000 Myrtle Beach area residents at their 27 golf courses. Under a longstanding U.S. Visa program, foreign nationals who make sizable investments in American companies employing 10 or more people can gain temporary residency for themselves and family members. Along with the clubs it and the other companies purchased last year, Founders Group also bought 100 homes in the Myrtle Beach area, as well as undeveloped land adjacent to the Grande Dunes Resort, a signal they intend to take advantage of the Visa program. But there may be other reasons for the big investment in Myrtle Beach golf:

    • The Chinese government has cracked down on construction of golf courses in the country and recently closed 66 courses it said had been illegally built.
    • Wealth in China is exploding, and there are limited opportunities to invest in businesses there. The rapidly emerging Chinese upper class has been spending its newly earned billions around the world.
    • Chinese families with money want to see their children educated in premier institutions of higher learning, such as those in the U.S. (There is talk in the Myrtle Beach area that Founders Group may build a school locally.)
    • China's current leadership may be a bit too authoritarian for those with the resources to now live anywhere in the world.
    • A China-born real estate agent in Myrtle Beach has been instrumental in generating interest from the Chinese company.

With the latest purchase, Founders Group solidified their portfolio of golf courses on the popular South Strand. They added Pawleys Plantation, River Club to a group that already included Founders Club and Tradition Golf Club.

        What this all means, if anything, for current members of the now-Chinese-owned clubs and the residents who live adjacent to the clubs, remains to be seen. Founders Group has retained virtually all of the operations employees at the golf courses, and there are no signs at the clubs they purchased last year of anything but business as usual. If anything, the new ownership is providing some modest benefits already. In a letter sent yesterday to members of National Golf Management's Prime Time Honors Club program, which had been providing deep-discount access to the company's owned and managed clubs, NGM announced that although five of its golf courses will be removed from the program by the end of June, eight of the courses Founders Group purchased earlier, including the excellent TPC of Myrtle Beach and International World Tour, whose hole designs mimic some of the most iconic golf holes in the world, will be added.