The 18th at the Farmstead Golf Course in southern Brunswick County was, without question, the most unique hole anywhere in the Cape Fear region. It may even make some lists as one of the most unique holes anywhere in the world.
To start with, the 18th was long. Measuring 767 yards from the tips (679 yards from the whites) it was the only par-6 hole anywhere in the Tri-County area or the Myrtle Beach strand. The distance though is only part of what made it one-of-a-kind.
It’s true uniqueness came down to geography. With driver in hand, weekend golfers playing the public course from any t-box were standing in the state of South Carolina, on the outskirts of the town of Little River. By the time they finished the hole, they were standing on a green located near the clubhouse back in the state of North Carolina in the village of Calabash.
In fact, throughout the round, duffers hopped the Carolina state line on six different occasions. The 18th was the only time where they would make the transition from one state to another in the middle of playing a single hole.
“Was”! Yes we’ve been using the past tense. Late last month, The Farmstead Country Club closed its doors for good.
The twenty year old course was sold to a developer that plans to build a high end residential subdivision with a mixture of single-family and multi-family homes.
According to the Myrtle Beach Sun News part of the reason for the sale is course owner, 90-year-old W.J. McLamb wanted to free himself of the daily management of the business. “I figured at my age I needed to make some changes. I can’t keep up this pace for the next 10 years,” McLamb told the paper. “Things evolved and I decided I needed to get out.”
Golfers who recently played at Farmstead lamented the sale on the Golf Pass website, a message board where players review courses from around the country.
“Best conditions I’ve played anywhere in months,” wrote user Danabrown1, “Wish the course was not closing. Best layout and greens anywhere.”
“Too bad the course is closing,” wrote user Ngotarheels, “Good luck to all the new homeowners!”
(On the Left is what the former #12 hole at the Echo Farms Country Club looks like today. On the right are single family homes being built by H&H Homes where the back 9 of the old Echo Farms Golf Course used to be.)
The Farmstead Country Club is the latest in a trend that has seen course owners selling their property to future housing developments. In recent years Wilmington has seen the closing of the Echo Farms and Masonboro Clubs.
If you visit those communities today you can barely see a trace of what once was. At the old Echo Farms Course you can still kind of see the layout of the old number 12. The residents who live in the houses next to the par five fairway continue to keep a section of it mowed and trimmed. Meanwhile the rest of the course is now occupied by single family homes and townhouses.
A similar fate almost took place in Hampstead. The owners of the Belvedere Country Club put the property up for sale last year. Instead of being purchased by a developer, the sale was awarded to Iron Clad Brewery, which currently has kept the course open to the public.
In the Myrtle Beach Grand Strand area, considered to be one of the best stretches of golf anywhere in the country, the overall number of courses has dropped from 120 at the start of the century to just 90 that are currently open.
“The reason for the trend is multifaceted, but I think there is one key element,” said Scott Saxton of Just For Buyers Realty. “The popularity of the game had dipped in the last couple of decades, and I know it is getting more and more expensive to maintain the courses. So income is down and costs are up. Those are key factors, of course, but the big reason is the value of the land! These owners are sitting on big tracts of lands that developers want.”
Published reports estimated the sale of the Farmstead course at approximately $2.85 million.
“You can discard the trend as just being good business sense, but you can’t overlook the human element here, for some it’s really tragic,” said Saxton. “We saw this at Echo Farms. Homeowners bought their dream house, thinking they were going to spend the rest of their life looking at a beautiful fairway, and now there are condos and townhouses in their back yard.
In some cases homeowner associations have sough injunctions to stop the pending sales. While some celebrated temporary successes, most eventually quit the battle, feeling overmatched by the developers access to large legal teams.
And still, many homebuyers dream of living on a course. So far in 2021 a total of 460 golf course lots have sold in the tri-county area. Those properties include single family homes, townhouses and condominiums. They sold for a collective $232 million, with an average single price of $415,000.
Are those new buyers taking a risk? How do you know that the fairway that’s behind you today will be there tomorrow? The short answer is you can’t be sure.
Saxton and other buyers experts suggest reading the home owner association’s covenants before buying anywhere. In golf communities, that may give you a sense of the working relationship between the course and the residents. But even that only tells you so much.
“This may be a bad analogy, but it’s similar to buying an ocean front property,” said Saxton. “No one has a crystal ball. We don’t know where the next storm is going to hit, or how much damage and beach erosion it will cause. Similarly, there is no way we can predict when a developer is going to make an offer. Each home has a certain risk factor- and that is certainly true of golfing communities. What buyers have to ask themselves is whether the rewards outweigh the risks.”
Meanwhile McLamb, who also built and owns the nearby Meadowlands Golf Club, which winds itself through a large housing development in Calabash, has publically promised to keep that course open. It will be under the direction of his grandson who has been operating it for a few years.
“He’s very interested in it, so I decided to let him end up with it,” McLamb told the Myrtle Beach Sun News. “That’s good to keep something in the family, you know.”