Summer Reflections on Golf Courses, Golf Communities and a Few Other Things
I am spending a few summer days in the Low Country of South Carolina, which is to say the golf is super hot, literally, and my brain is on simmer. Whether it is the heat or the slow pace of Southern life during the dog days, I have trouble doing much that involves effort (except, of course, for golf). But, dear reader, I owe you a newsletter for July so here it comes, belatedly, with some random thoughts and observations rather than the typical one-note article.
What some people don’t know could kill them
I have a healthy respect for alligators, not because I’ve had a bad experience but because of TV movies in my youth that gave me nightmares. I pay attention when the locals in Pawleys Island, SC, talk about alligators. I have learned, for example, that if an alligator comes after you, run in a zigzag since alligators have no ability to turn. This turns out to be fairly useless advice since I have never seen an alligator wander more than five or 10 feet from the bank of a pond or lake (and, for the record, I have seen dozens of alligators in the area south of Myrtle Beach alone).
I recall a junior golf tournament one summer about 15 years ago at Caledonia Golf and Fish Club in Pawleys Island. In my 13-year-old son’s group was another youngster who hooked a shot to the left and below one green, about five feet from a pond—and about 10 feet from a resting alligator. The kid’s father had to physically restrain him from going down to play the ball. The boy had grown up in the area and figured that if you didn’t bother the alligator, he (or she) wouldn’t bother you, although that might not be the case when brandishing a pitching wedge near the face of a gator.
Okay, I blame that on youthful ignorance, but a recent incident at Pawleys Plantation Golf Club shows that adults can be even dumber. I was paired with three golfers visiting from South Africa—there is no word in Afrikaans for “alligator” but there is for crocodile—and, at the par 3 3rd hole, which features a long bunker about 50 yards short of the green, there was a mother alligator resting in the bunker with her baby. We hit our shots well over the gators and onto and beside the green, and before I proceeded forward in my cart, one of the South Africans was already out of his, cell phone in hand, walking toward the gators. He got within 10 feet of them at which point I shouted in a hoarse whisper, “Stop…and walk slowly backwards.” He waved me off, took the photo and returned to his cart. At the green, he asked me what the fuss was about. I told him to never mess with a gator, especially when one is guarding a young one, and I thought it instructive to tell him how a gator can drag a human into a pond and go into a death roll until its prey is either exhausted or drowned. Clearly, my South African partner had missed the alligator episode on Wild Kingdom.
Golf community costs are relative;
you get what you pay for
I had an interesting discussion a couple of days ago with friends who live a few doors down from us in our condo building at Pawleys Plantation. We and our neighbors have been blessed for the 20 years that we have owned the condo that only one unit has been rented to vacationers, and then only over the course of a couple of years. The couple I was talking with lives next door to that previously rented unit, and they indicated the experience was not a good one—noise, cars parked randomly, that kind of thing. They indicated that if any of the rest of the owners in the adjacent condos were to sell to people who rented out their units on a short-term basis, then they would find another place to live.
Fair enough, but a second reason for them to consider departing was the HOA (Homeowner Association) fees. At Pawleys Plantation, condo owners pay quarterly dues not only for their condos but also an overall fee to the community’s HOA. The total of all HOA payments amounts to about $2,700 annually; in my experience, that is competitive with the dozens of other semi-private golf communities I have reviewed. Most of our HOA expense is for a guarded gate at the entrance off US Highway 17, and when I asked my friends if they’d be willing to give up the guarded gate to pay lower HOA fees, they quickly said, “Of course not. We like having the gate.”
Best Golf Community? The Play’s the Thing
I am often asked to name my favorite golf community, a question I always duck with a stock response: “It depends.” As indicated above, the fees where my wife and I have maintained a vacation home at Pawleys Plantation in Pawleys Island, SC, for most of the last 20 years are reasonable, the golf course is never boring, and our condo safe, secure and looked after by kind neighbors for the many weeks we are not in residence.
The “best” golf communities are those that most closely match a couple’s top requirements. Some are a matter of choice but most of the top ones are a matter of necessity. For example, if you have a history of medical issues, you would be well advised to choose a community close to a highly ranked hospital and the excellent doctors it attracts. If you plan to host friends and family at your new golf community home, or expect to do a significant amount of traveling in retirement (or you still have a few years of work-related travel), an efficient airport within, say, an hour will be important.
But you are, after all, going to live in a golf community, and the quality of golf will also be a strong determining factor in your choice. For those who plan to play golf a few times a week, the quality of the course inside the gates will be the most important consideration. If you appreciate diversity in your golf experiences, then a community with more than one golf course—or multiple options nearby—should be high on your list. When you visit golf communities in one area, make sure to play as many of the most well reviewed golf courses, both inside and outside the gates, as possible. For those who prefer a single golf course that is challenging enough to hold your interest through multiple plays, make sure you do just that—play the course a few times. That’s all it should take to learn whether the layout and conditions will keep you at attention through day after day if you are a golf glutton.
Larry Gavrich
Founder & Editor
Home On The Course, LLC
