A lost Alister MacKenzie course is coming back to life

It’s difficult to misplace a golf course. But golf course plans? They’re more likely to get lost. That’s what happened, anyway, with a blueprint drawn by one of the greatest architects of all time.

In 1930, Alister MacKenzie, the British-born designer of such storied courses as Augusta National, Cypress Point and Royal Melbourne, sketched out his ambitions for El Boquerón, an innovative layout that he’d dreamed up for a wealthy family in Argentina. 

His concept called for an 18-hole course with nine shared greens, each richly contoured and cleverly defended. It was a bold idea, but economic fallout from the Depression prevented the course from ever getting built. For decades, MacKenzie’s drawings were believed to have been lost. But they have since resurfaced. And now, nearly a century after it was first conceived, the course has moved beyond the planning stages. Ground has broken on a tribute to El Boquerón. 

This time around, the location isn’t South America. It’s South Carolina, and the ownership isn’t an Argentine family but 21 Club, a high-end private redoubt in the Sandhills east of Aiken, where construction got underway this week on what the club is calling The Mackenzie Course. 

Unlike The Lido, in Wisconsin, a painstaking recreation by Tom Doak of a fabled C.B. Macdonald design on Long Island, The Mackenzie Course isn’t meant to be a clone of the original. It is, instead, intended as an interpretation, faithful to MacKenzie’s El Boquerón routing but adapted to its Sandhill surrounding and with an expanded championship footprint, so that the course can be played at its Golden Age yardage or a modern length, or a hybrid of the two.

“We understand the responsibility that comes with undertaking a project like this,” said Wes Farrell, 21 Club founder, in a release that announced the news. “Our goal is to honor Alister MacKenzie’s vision while adapting it thoughtfully to our site.”

To oversee the project, the club assembled a committee of Alister MacKenzie experts, including the architect Brian Zager, whose resume includes collaborations with Doak at The Lido. The work is being guided by MacKenzie’s rediscovered El Boquerón plans as well as by his writings and other archival material.

The course is slated to be completed at an undetermined date in 2026. When it opens, it will be the first of two 18-hole designs at 21 Club. The second will be a course called The Hammer, designed specifically for match play by Rob Collins and Thad King of King Collins Golf.

All of this is part of an explosion of recent private golf development in the southeast, stretching across the Carolina Sandhills and into Georgia, that includes such properties as The Tree Farm, Old Barnwell, Broomsedge and Fall Line Golf Club. In keeping with its high-end target market, 21 Club also has plans for a state-of-the-art performance center and upscale member-owned cabins, as well as a family-friendly short course.