A round at Crossroads is sort of like one of those “choose your own adventure” video games. The experience is intended to change depending on the decisions you make at various points along the way. For a golfer more comfortable with a traditional point-A to point-B type of layout, this might be somewhat disconcerting.
That’s precisely what course designer Rob Collins had in mind when he and partner Tad King started thinking about what they wanted their reversible nine-holer to offer.
“Having options, choices, various ways to play, having the golf course reveal itself in a different way each and every day is fun,” Collins says. “If you look at The Old Course or some of the other great links’ courses, they have so many different shot making options available to the golfer. That really is the essence of golf.”
Palmetto Bluff, the storied residential, private club, and resort community in the heart of the South Carolina Lowcountry, is sited on 20,000 pristine acres. Stewardship of the land, managed by the Palmetto Bluff Conservancy, is matched only by the vast range of best-in-class recreational opportunities and amenities available including the newly renovated Shooting Club, the expansive Wilson Lawn & Racquet Club, a 12-acre working farm, and the full-service Wilson Landing Marina.
The reaction of the Palmetto Bluff Golf Club members to the new course has been overwhelmingly positive. Opened in spring 2024, Crossroads, along with the Jack Nicklaus-designed May River course, is available for limited play for guests staying at the Montage Palmetto Bluff hotel. Plans for Crossroads began in 2021 after community developers South Street Partners acquired Palmetto Bluff. With multiple golf communities in their portfolio, including Kiawah Island and The Cliffs, South Street had a pretty good idea that King-Collins would be just the right team to expand the golf offerings at Palmetto Bluff.
“There’s probably a perception of us in the industry of thinking about things a little bit differently,” says Collins. “We’re a firm that’s not afraid to take a risk or two and push the envelope. So sometimes a type of project like Crossroads is a good fit for a firm like ours, where we can try to see around corners and bend reality a little bit.”
If Crossroads doesn’t exactly bend reality, it certainly suspends it for a couple of hours. And how King-Collins, the design-build outfit behind Sweetens Cove, Landmand and the in-development Bounty Club, achieved this feat on barely 60-acres of land is a bit of a magic trick itself.
Set in what will ultimately be the center of the Palmetto Bluff community — hence the name “Crossroads” — the course consists of two separate nine-hole routings, The Hammer and The Press, that switch every other day. Teeing grounds and greens are swapped around and reconfigured to create two entirely different experiences. And you can play each of them in reverse. There are some greens that are used for just one of the routings, but maybe some days they come into play on the other. There are no tee markers, only flattish areas of grass that allow you tee up your ball wherever you want. The combinations are virtually endless. Call it happily schizophrenic and a whole lot of fun.
“It’s a golf course that’s never going to play the same one day to the next,” says Collins. “It’s always going to be changing. Whether it’s the routing or the placement of the tees and the pins on the greens, you’re always going to have a different experience and always be faced with a new challenge, a new opportunity to try to pull something off. To me, the antithesis of fun on a golf course is a layout that only asks one set of questions.”
Collins describes The Hammer routing as the more traditional of the two, but he doesn’t like to use that word. “Slightly less quirky” is how he describes it. “The Hammer is as down the middle of a routing as you can have if it’s possible to have anything down the middle at Crossroads.”
The Press takes a few more chances with more blind shots and risk-reward.
“The Press has a little higher tendency towards being unsettling to people who might desire something more of what they would consider traditional,” he says with a laugh. “It just pushes at the edges of tradition a little bit harder than the Hammer. But they have a lot of the same philosophy.”
And that philosophy, not just at Crossroads but at all their courses, is a by-product of the collective perspectives of the two men behind the firm. Collins calls himself an “unrigid” person. By that he means someone who doesn’t like to go by the book and is compelled to keep an open mind about everything.
“I’m attracted to uniqueness,” says Collins. “Tad’s the same way. Our golf courses are reflections of that aspect of our personalities where we like things that are a little unconventional. We don’t always walk down the center of the road. That’s just not who we are, and our golf courses definitely are a result of that.”
You could play Crossroads 100 times and learn something new about how to play the course each round. It’s always dangerous to make comparisons to The Old Course, but in Collins’ mind, the natural contouring and spirited creativity embodied by St Andrews were inspiration for what they did in South Carolina. It also happens to be the course that inspired a young son of the south to become a golf course architect.
“The Old Course is just the ultimate golf course for discovering something new every single time you go out,” says Collins. “There’s so much room to move, and it just begs you to use the ground. More so than any other of our golf courses, we’ve been able to apply those concepts at Crossroads.”
While allowing you to you think and be creative, Crossroads’ intention also is to create a sense of community. When you’re playing a traditional 18-hole course, you say goodbye to the group behind you at the first tee and see them four hours later at the 19th hole. At Crossroads, you might run into the same folks three or four times throughout your nine holes as everyone is crisscrossing over the same terrain. It builds a camaraderie among golfers experiencing the same adventure.
“Ultimately I would like players to take away a sense of happiness and enjoyment,” says Collins. “And a feeling of having seen something that was different. Crossroads engages you and it makes you want to come back.”
And that’s a choice that’s easy to make.
