Jim McNair vividly remembers when he first laid eyes on the site. He stood on the corner of it overlooking an old disused mining site that nature had spent the last 70 years gloriously reclaiming with native Kalmia and holly bushes and sparkleberry and pine. McNair was blown away by its potential.
“I mean, it was just wow!” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, what a great site to build a short course on.’”
That’s when the course architect – the one who had been hired to build a new facility for the USC Aiken golf team and the First Tee of Aiken on a portion of land that had been deeded to USC Aiken by the Graniteville Company – threw a bewildered look at McNair.
“No, Jim,” he said. “The site's over here.”
When McNair turned around, what he saw took his breath away – and not in a good way. The man who rebuilt Aiken Golf Club and Cedar Creek into beloved local facilities, swears he’s not making it up.
“I pulled my foot out of my mouth and we walked the actual site that had been given to him,” McNair said. “It's straight down the hill – a slope of about 20 percent all the way to Trolley Line Road. Heavily treed … you almost couldn't walk there were so many trees.
“So I asked the architect, ‘What are your plans?’ He said, we're going to take out every tree and grass the entire 60 acres. Straight down the hill.”
The alarms immediately went off in McNair’s head. Once that site was cleared of trees, he was convinced one really hard rain – and South Carolina has had its share of those in recent years – and all the sandy soil underneath would wash straight down across the road and into the YMCA parking lot across the street. “It was an accident waiting to happen,” McNair said.
McNair, 64, had been brought in “late to the party” as he calls it and “by accident” according to Tony Allman, the board chair for the First Tee of Aiken. Allman was paying his green fee at Aiken GC in 2020 and introduced himself to the man behind the counter, McNair. Before he could finish explaining who he was, McNair heard the words “First Tee” and made a bold promise.
“Tony, I’m going to help you build that facility,” McNair said.
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