Jim McNair knows he could charge more at his golf course.
“But we’re happy where we are,” he says. He means the greens fees start at $30. But he’s content with his location, too, in Aiken, S.C., just 25 minutes from Augusta, where the Masters gets underway this week. If you keep up with headlines in the game, you know that Aiken has emerged in recent years as one of the hottest golf destinations in the country, with a proliferation of exclusive enclaves.
McNair’s course is something different. He runs Aiken Golf Club, which his father purchased in 1959 and which he took over in 1985. The club itself goes back much further. Established in 1912, it began with 11 holes, built as an amenity to a hotel, and was later expanded to 18 by John Inglis, a golf professional and founding member of the PGA of America who’d worked with Donald Ross in New York.
Then the Depression hit. Hammered by the downturn, the hotel eventually shuttered and the city of Aiken stepped in to keep the course alive until Jim’s father, James Sr., a scratch player and respected teaching professional, took over. Under his watch, the course operated as Highland Park CC, a family-centric club that became a magnet for juniors and aspiring pros alike, many of whom went on to distinguished careers in the game.
When Jim inherited the operation in 1985, he understood that sentiment alone wouldn’t sustain it. Scraping by on a threadbare budget, he ran the pro shop and doubled as the superintendent. By the late 1990s, with aging infrastructure and new competition crowding the market, desperate times required a full redo.
“I realized it was now or never,” McNair says.
With help from the city, he rebuilt the course from the ground up. It reopened in 1999 as Aiken Golf Club. At its centennial in 2012, McNair was formally recognized as a co-designer alongside Ross and Inglis.
The course into which he’s poured his life tips out at less than 6,000 yards on an intimate site. Small in scale, it has an outsized personality. With doglegs that take the driver out of your hands and sloping greens defended by well-placed bunkers, it’s a strategic delight, widely recognized as one of the best values in the country and a standout in an area that GOLF recently explored in depth.
McNair’s contributions to the local golf scene extend beyond the course he owns. He also designed and built the Chalkmine, a par-three layout that serves as a practice ground for local collegiate players and a home base for First Tee programming. It’s another small-scale project with an outsize impact.
To learn more about golf in Aiken and McNair’s work in the area, check out the video above.
