Timberlake golf course sheds ‘goat track’ label, flourishes with new look
From the beginning, in 1987, Timberlake Country Club’s golf course has featured a spectacular finishing hole, a par-5 with the green jutting into a Lake Murray cove.
Otherwise, maintaining consistency provided a challenge. Multiple owners and two bankruptcies created a pattern of good, bad and ugly.
The latter — an online critic labeled the layout west of Chapin off Amicks Ferry Road “a goat track” — spurred a call for action, and the results have been amazing.
Five years of planning and production turned the once-scorned layout into an engaging challenge, one that a Golfpass.com survey named the fourth most improved course in the country in its 2024 Golfers’ Choice awards.
“We did it without incurring more debt and with a lot of sweat equity,” said Albert Bueno, president of the member-owned club. “We didn’t do anything until we had the money on hand.”
Completed projects included resurfacing the greens, converting a storage area into a snack bar, replacing the fleet of carts, improving irrigation, bolstering the maintenance staff, resurfacing the cart paths and installing a fitness center.
The pro shop sparkles, pickle ball can be played on the tennis courts, stand-alone rest rooms on the course have replaced portables, retaining walls protecting greens from ponds have been repaired, new maintenance equipment has been purchased, and ... the list of improvements goes on and on.
Reworking the bunkers comes next.
Meanwhile, superintendent Steve Stuber got the fairways in shape, effectively removing the “goat track” label.
A participant in the Golfpass survey wrote: “Haven’t played here in 2 years due to conditions deteriorating & then the required repairs. Well, it was worth the wait!!! From tee to green, simply marvelous conditions, especially for this time of year.”
The renaissance started prior to the COVID-inspired golf boom, beginning after the “goat track” critic really got the leadership’s attention. The club brought in Jimmy Koosa, a PGA of America pro who had been a consultant for architect Willard Byrd during the course’s construction, to provide guidance.
“I made suggestions,” said Koosa, a long-time fixture on the Midlands’ golf scene. “We knew what needed to be done. We just needed a schedule and, of course, the money.”
Members had purchased the club in 2008 “to keep the doors open,” Bueno said, “and we obviously had some financial struggles.”
Refinancing the original loan lowered the interest rate and freed up significant funding, and members provided some of the labor on maintenance jobs. Upgrading irrigation came first, then “Operation Sunshine” — tree removal to provide sunlight to promote growth of grasses throughout the course — followed.
“We would have work days and we’d have 25 or more members out there with chain saws or laying sod or whatever, just getting the jobs done,” Bueno said. “Members worked on their specialties.”
Predictably, play of the golf course increased and the average age of members decreased. The men’s golf association grew, and Koosa, now the club’s pro-emeritus, and director of golf operations Lee Barton conduct multiple camps for juniors.
Membership ballooned from 212 in 2017 to 538 today.
“People see value and they want to be part of it,” club vice president David Hamilton said.
The transformation has been achieved, Beuno said, with “one small assessment, and we had our first dues increase since 2016.”
The course is open to outside play and the cost, in the $70 range, is on the high end for this area’s public golf. Still, outside play has doubled recently. Now, with more members wanting more tee times, restrictions could be forthcoming on outside play.
“That’s a good problem to have,” Bueno said, and it’s one he probably did not envision that long ago.
Change “took a while and there are more improvements to come,” he said.
The result? The revived Timberlake course offers far more than a spectacular finishing hole.
Chip shots. USC’s high-powered women’s golf team won its second tournament in a week and third of the season, edging Virginia in the San Diego State Classic in Rancho Santa Fe, California. The Gamecocks, ranked fifth nationally, captured the match-play Threse Hession Regional Team Challenge in the first stop of their West Coast swing. Junior Louise Rydqvist led Carolina in the stroke-play San Diego event. ... USC’s men’s team shot a final-round 11-under-par 277 to finish strong and earn an 11th-place finish in the Puerto Rico Classic. Freshman Bo Carpenter posted his best individual round (4-under-par 68) and tournament finish (7-under-par 209) to pace the Gamecocks. ... Bridget Wilkie (Bluffton) claimed the girls’ title and Phillip Dunham (Ponte Vedra, Florida) took the boys’ division in the Sea Pines Junior Heritage at Hilton Head Island.
