The neighborhood in New Bern, NC, known as Greenbrier preceded by a decade or so the Emerald Golf Club that wends its way through the golf community. The original streets of Greenbrier, developed in the 1980s by the paper company Weyerhauser, bore the names of spices like Basil Drive, Thyme Court and Rosemary Road. According to Steve Tyson, a New Bern real estate broker and builder of 60 of the early homes in the community, Greenbrier was so popular when it first opened that Weyerhauser decided to build a golf course on the adjoining tree farm it owned. That helped sell even more of the most upscale properties in New Bern at the time.

A top-rated course in its time

        The Rees Jones layout opened in 1988 and was an immediate hit with residents, other area golfers and raters; Golf Weekly named it one of the top 50 golf courses in the Southeast, and the PGA used the course for its Tour Qualifying School in the early 1990s. With the attraction of the golf course and its status as the highest-end community in New Bern, Greenbrier essentially was completed by 1994 (only two lots remain available for sale today out of 700 home sites).

Unless you favor the left side of the fairway on the par 4 4th hole at Emerald, your second shot will be over water...again.

        When the golf course was built, Weyerhauser decided to give prospective buyers the opportunity to live on a street named for a famous golf course. Today, a few families live at the intersection of Pine Valley and Shinnecock, and others on cul de sacs like Winged Foot Court. Rest assured that some of the kidders who live in Greenbrier wait for a reaction when they tell their friends that they live “on” Oakmont, Southern Hills or St. Andrews.

        The golf club has been semi-private throughout its 25-years of operation; indeed, the only strictly private golf clubs in New Bern are Taberna, which was developed as a golf community but whose course has suffered some financial difficulties in recent years; and New Bern Country Club, a Donald Ross design along the Trent River which features older homes along its periphery.  Steve Tyson, the local Realtor, sports a 2 handicap and thinks New Bern Country Club is the best course in the area but freely admits that could be because it is his home course and that at around 6,000 yards, and with tiny greens, “it suits my game.” He ranks Emerald #3 in town, behind the more modern Carolina Colours layout designed by Bill Love; I played Carolina Colours the day after I played Emerald and concur with the Realtor’s relative ranking of the two. Taberna and River Bend, a 1975 layout, would be tied for 4^th in Tyson’s opinion.

Charity event drew a young Tiger

        The Emerald golf course may not be championship quality, but it was good enough to host a professional charity event during the 1990s that, thanks to the drawing power of its sponsor, former tour player Curtis Strange, attracted some big names in golf. The last round played in the event in 2000 included Strange, whose wife was a New Bern native, Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard and David Feherty.

        That may be an odd assemblage of golfing luminaries, but there is nothing odd about the way the golf course unfolds. Emerald is generously proportioned, reminiscent of a tree-lined New England course with a preponderance of doglegs. The pros probably ate it up from under 7,000 yards, especially if pin positions on the large, generally softly contoured greens were within a few yards of the middle and if the bent grass greens were not shaved low; they were a bit on the slow side on the day I played. But they were in very nice condition, smooth and just long enough to make the direction of the grain more a factor than the green contour. After a few over-read putts, I got wise to the fact they were not going to break as much as it appeared. Hitting the ball straight and putting well will work on any golf course, but at Emerald, it will result in an appreciably lower score. One can imagine the golf gurus at Weyerhauser reminding Rees Jones that a challenging layout was a good thing, but a course that played fast would be even better. Mr. Jones listened.

Off the tee, the fairway at the par 5 5th hole at Emerald appears narrower than it is, with woods on both sides.

        If I play Emerald again, I will move back one tee box, from the blue tees -– at 6,123 yards and rating/slope of 70.2/126 –- to black at 6,483/71.7/129. It was tough to miss the wide fairways, even on slightly sprayed drives, and the large greens were easily accessible to all but the sloppiest approaches from the 150-yard markers and closer. After a morning rain, the course was virtually empty, and I was able to play the round, which included 150 photos and 78 strokes, in a leisurely 3½ hours. I noted a few hiccups out on the course -– the cart paths are in need of significant repair and the pin on #6 was in the far back, not in the middle as indicated on the pin position chart. But the friendly service at the snack bar and in the pro shop more than made up for those small lapses.

        In fact, when I asked about a senior rate, club professional Catie Camacho said they didn’t have one but added that she would be “pleased to offer you a discounted rate of $40.” That was about 1/3 off the rack rate. The discount was a lot steeper than the bunkers, which along with one of my best rounds of the last year, played quickly and quietly, helped make for a gem of a day at Emerald.

        Note: Resale homes in the Greenbrier golf community range from $155,000 into the high six figures. The $155,000 home for sale is on the 7^th hole of the Emerald golf course and includes free membership as well as lawn maintenance courtesy of the community’s property owner’s association…I will have more to say in this space and in the June edition of Home On The Course, our free newsletter, about the “near” coastal town of New Bern, as well as Carolina Colours, a golf community with an engaged group of residents and members.

        To sign up for the newsletter, please click here.

Above, homes along the Emerald golf course -- these are behind the green on the par 4 14th -- are vintage 1980s and '90s.  Most sell in the $300,000 to $500,000 range.  Below, the approach to the finishing hole is best made from the left side of the fairway.

        Like life itself, the search for the perfect golf home often takes some unexpected turns. You should always have a plan and follow it when you are looking to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars but, as Yogi Berra once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

        Barry and Carol Hudson, most recently of Fayetteville, NC, learned the lessons of flexibility when they went searching for their perfect golf home. They knew they wanted to live in a golf community in the Carolinas, but they thought it would be on the coast. They went so far as to put in a bid on a home in the sprawling Dataw Island golf community after visiting 10 other golf communities in the Carolina Lowcountry. If their bid had been accepted, they might be living happily ever after in a marshland community that features two excellent golf courses by Tom Fazio and Arthur Hills. Instead, they find themselves a full five hours from the coast, on a beautiful lake in a community, The Reserve at Lake Keowee, with one fine Jack Nicklaus golf course.

Competitors in the BMW Charity Pro-Am tee off on the 6th hole at The Reserve at Lake Keowee, one of three venues used on the first three days of the tournament.  (The others are Greenville Country Club's Chanticleer course and Thornblade Club.)

        Dick and Chris Bishop of Vienna, VA, just outside of Washington, D.C., had water on their minds, as well as mountains and good golf, when they began their search for a golf home, even though they were not boaters. “We just like to look at it [the water],” said Dick. There are dozens of golf communities that would have fit their ideal location, but as so often happens, friends who had purchased a property in The Reserve at Lake Keowee urged Dick and Chris to take a look there.

        “We thought a golf course was the number one amenity we were after,” says Dick, “but when we found the perfect lot, that turned out to be our top amenity.” That lot, which has some of the best lake views in the community, has had a big beautiful house on it since 2008.

        “We built it with our family in mind,” says Chris, referencing the three daughters, their husbands and nine grandchildren who visit at least once a year.

High-quality golf communities like The Reserve at Lake Keowee are seeing a resurgence of interest now that the economy is on more solid footing.  Homes being built in the Village Point section, adjacent to the lake and Village center, start in the $600s.

        When you talk with experienced golf home prospectors like these two couples, you understand that flexibility may be the most important characteristic in a golf home search. Both couples had lived suburban lives for decades, with plenty of services and conveniences nearby; and yet, they wound up in what, by most definitions, is a remote part of the South, Sunset, SC, a half hour from the town of Clemson and a full hour from Greenville. Such distances don’t lend themselves, say, to dinners out that include a couple of glasses of wine and then a drive along dark country roads. But you learn to make accommodations.

        “If we know we are going out to dinner in Greenville,” said Dick Bishop, “we usually bring a designated driver along with us.” Grocery shopping also tends to be a communal exercise in a community like The Reserve; if the Bishops are heading to the supermarket in Easley, 20 minutes away, they’ll ask their neighbors if they need anything. The neighbors return the favor.

        Carol Hudson confided that she would have been content to live in or near the city of Greenville itself; the Hudson’s son and wife and their young children live there.

        “But it is so beautiful out here by the lake,” said Carol, “that I was convinced.” Both the Hudsons’ son and a daughter who lives in Oklahoma and visits once or twice a year have become “Legacy” golf club members who have all the club privileges of their parents without any additional dues payments.

        “The Legacy membership is a nice benefit for our family,” says Barry.

        Golf overall at The Reserve is a big deal, so much so that, despite what may seem a hassle at some other clubs was welcomed by most club members at The Reserve –- a professional golf tournament. Preparations by the PGA Tour closed the course for a week prior to the Web.com tour’s BMW Charity Pro-Am event last weekend, and then for the three days of the tournament itself, but few residents complained, according to the two couples.

        “It’s a minor inconvenience,” said Barry Hudson, “but we are happy to have the tournament on our course.” (At 7,112 yards, The Reserve was the longest of the three in the tournament rotation. The course, which I’ve played, is no pushover, but suffice to say that the tournament winner finished 27 under par, most of those on the Thornblade Club course but 9 of them at The Reserve. Indeed, these guys are good.)

        Dick and Chris Bishop not only welcomed the tour event, they also jumped right in to help run things at The Reserve. (The BMW Charity Pro-Am field plays the first three rounds on three different Greenville area golf courses, then at the Fazio-designed Thornblade Club for the fourth and final round.) Dick Bishop was named co-chairman of The Reserve’s part of the event and was glued to his golf cart for the three days, making sure things went smoothly. (They did.) More than 120 residents of The Reserve volunteered to be walking scorers, hole marshals, drive shuttle vans, serve food and drink and provide hospitality services for players and guests during the tournament.

        “I loved to see the pros play the course I play every week,” said Dick.

        Both couples supervised the building of their homes at The Reserve and tout the benefits of having things laid out just the way they wanted them.

        “We were always going to build,” said Dick Bishop, who conceded that their project went smoothly in 2006, “and we enjoyed the process with the architect and builders.”

        For the Hudsons, the process was not quite as smooth, with a number of “redos” necessary along the way, an issue that didn’t seem in retrospect to bother Barry too much.

        “Carol wound up being the ‘foreman’ on the project,” he admitted.