Site of former Columbia County golf course is on the market
Less than 25 miles from the Augusta National Golf Club sits a piece of property that once was a golf course – the Three Oaks Golf Course.
The course closed in 2008. Now it’s for sale.
“We’ve taken a couple of developers to look at it,” said Brad Merry, a Realtor with Augusta’s Blanchard and Calhoun Real Estate Co. On the commercial property website Crexi, he said, “We’ve had quite a few hits on it. It’s a prime location, and you throw utilities on it and you’ve got a pretty big piece of land to work with.”
The 112 acres of land sits off Wrightsboro Road near the Pumpkin Center community, about 6 miles north of the town of Harlem.
Two of the three oak trees that inspired the course’s name actually were blown down in a storm six months before the course opened in November 1997. Original co-owner David Jones had planned to use the land to build a home for him and his wife, but that idea, with partner Joe O’Tyson, transformed into Three Oaks.
Now Opening: Golf course for sale; architect acquired; truckers merge; selling speakers
The 18-hole, par-72 course measured 6,514 yards from the longest tees. The course rating was 69.7 with a slope rating of 114, as measured by the U.S. Golf Association.
At the time of Three Oak’s opening, it was just the second semiprivate golf course in Columbia County after Jones Creek Golf, which has since closed.
In 1998, just a year after the course opened, Jones was driving a tractor along the bank of a pond on the fifth hole when the earth gave way, pinning Jones under the tractor. He recovered, but in 2002 sold the course to Bill Waters, who changed several of the holes and fixed issues such as crisscrossing fairways and routing.
But it wasn’t enough. Three Oaks closed in 2008 after several years of shrinking membership and funding shortages.
"They didn't have the members to get the money," Tony Dean, a Three Oaks member, told The Augusta Chronicle shortly before the course closed. "They had to take it out of their pocket. Membership kept going down and down and down."
Today, the former Three Oaks is a working horse farm. What used to be fairways, still visible in aerial photographs, are now pastures separated by stands of pine, and Merry said it’s more suited now for “prime development” and not a transformation back into a golf course.
Visitors still can get a hint of the property’s golf past, though. The horse farm is called the Dog Leg Ranch.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Defunct golf course, just miles from Augusta National, is up for sale
