Some years ago, I was touring the excellent links course on Bald Head Island, SC, with a local real estate agent. As we passed a row of nice beach style homes along one of the fairways, the agent pointed to two houses side by side and told me that the husband in one had run off with the wife in the other. He said it wasn't the only time divorce had occurred in that little bit of paradise.
I've heard similar stories repeated elsewhere. At one upscale Bluffton, SC, golf community, a man from upstate NY visited his under-construction golf home. The next-door neighbors were away during his visit, and when they returned and heard he had been there, they asked the golf community office for his home phone number in order to welcome him to the community. His wife answered the phone and confessed no knowledge of the new golf home. They were divorced shortly thereafter and, presumably, the man moved into the house with the mistress for whom he had built it.
Relocation is filled with enough angst that no couple should worry about whether there is much chance of marital disharmony in the new home. Men's Health magazine recently published an article that, for better or worse, for the rich and the poor, purports to identify marital safe havens across the country. The top 3 are not exactly retirement destinations – Madison, WI, (maybe it's the cheese), Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia (must be those glorious cheesesteaks). But firmly in place at #4 is the only city in the Southeast that made Men's Health's Top 20 for low divorce rates, Columbia, SC.
The 27 holes by P.B. Dye for Cobblestone Park show many of the distinctions of a
modern golf course. D.R. Horton is now in charge of most of the community.
We think we know why. First of all, it is the state capital and home to the large University of South Carolina, which offers top flight sporting events, academic courses for baby boomers, and instills in the surrounding area a diversity of thought and debate in short supply in the rests of the state (yup, blame it on those liberal professors). But Columbia also boasts a variety of golf communities to suit every taste and playing ability. Among the best is Woodcreek Farms, which hosts an annual professional golf tournament on the NGA Tour (some may remember it as the Hooters Tour) on its highly rated Tom Fazio golf course. Initiation fees and dues are reasonable for this quality of golf and its other country club amenities, the more so because membership buys you privileges at the nearby WildeWood Country Club, set in another nice golf community with equally stately and reasonably priced homes. Both Woodcreek and WildeWood homes currently for sale start in the $300s.
