The Black Knight is on the move.
Gary Player, the South African golf legend known as the world's most traveled athlete, is relocating his golf course design group and corporate offices from West Palm Beach, Fla., to the southern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Greenville County, S.C.
He's also building a home there, on a hilltop overlooking a golf course he's designed to be environmentally friendly.
It's a place that fits his view of the way the world should be – naturally beautiful, conducive to good health and fitness, and with a golf course that's challenging yet fun to play.
“So many golf courses are built so when you play them once and it's so tough, you say, let's get the hell out of here,” Player says. “We want to make people come here and enjoy themselves, and enjoy nature, because everybody is moving at such a pace now. We want them to come here and have their batteries restored.”
But the project has not gone without controversy.
A local environmentalist group called Upstate Forever appealed a state regulatory agency's approval needed for developer Jim Anthony to go ahead with construction of the course along the North Saluda River. The group claims that the project could damage a habitat of more than 400 species of rare plants and more species of trees than in all of Europe.
Anthony says the river was in bad condition before he bought the property and he's restoring it and plans to make sure the golf course doesn't damage it.
Player agrees.
A new home
Player isn't the kind of guy to stay in one place for long. After all, being from South Africa, and still spending much of his time on his ranch there, means anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere is a significant trip.
In winning nine PGA Tour major championships and nine Champions Tour majors, Player has logged an estimated 14 million air miles, leading the World Golf Hall of Fame to recognize him as the international ambassador of golf. At the age of 72, he's spent three years of his life in airplanes.
He does plan to spend plenty of time here in the mountains of upstate South Carolina, but how much, he won't say.
“I never know where I'm going to be for how long,” he says. “I'm just a gypsy.”
Yet there was something about this place, and about Anthony and his vision, that attracted Player. He's not being paid to move here.
“You don't give up your offices in West Palm Beach and come here and you don't come and build a home here if it's just for money,” he says. “The main reason I decided to come here was when I saw what Jim Anthony is doing here.
“Having designed 300 golf courses around the world, I've seen many developers go in, make money and get the hell out of there – and some of them really ruining the projects – whereas this man is in to stay," he adds. "I saw the quality in his work – that he had feeling for trees, feeling for water, feelings for the little flowers in the forest. This is my kind of thinking.”
Anthony founded the Cliffs Communities in 1991 on the philosophy of sensible development of luxury residential communities while protecting the integrity of pristine environments. The Cliffs' properties include seven private master-planned residential communities in the heart of the Carolina Preserve between Asheville, N.C., and Greenville, S.C., bordered by over a million acres of national forests and state parks in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Gary Player Signature golf course is being built at the Cliff's newest development, called Mountain Park. It will encompass 5,000 acres at elevations as high as 2,000 feet.
The development will include an estimated $136 million worth of infrastructure and amenities, including the 18-hole golf course; a 300-acre pedestrian village designed in the style of a mountainside town of Northern Italy, including an inn, cafes and upscale shops; and the home of the new headquarters for the Gary Player Group.
Also planned are an arboretum developed in conjunction with Clemson University and an organic farm, which will harvest all the fruits and vegetables for the Cliffs’ clubs and dining venues.
Environmental concerns
The course will be a workshop for researchers from Clemson University, who are working in cooperation with Cliffs Communities to develop more environmentally sensitive golf course management practices. That makes it all the more ironic that the project has been targeted for criticism by the local environmental lobby.
At the heart of the controversy is the North Saluda River.
In an appeal filed by Upstate Forever, several environmental groups argue other sites weren't considered for the golf course and special conditions to reduce the course's environmental impact on the river are riddled with ambiguities and will be almost impossible to truly enforce.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control approved water-quality certification for the project after negotiating 16 conditions to minimize the impact on the North Saluda, including a 25-foot buffer between the golf course and the river.
Player, who plans to make this one of the most organic golf courses in the country, says the river will be in better condition after the course is built than it was before Anthony bought the property.
“It's funny how people will pick on golf developers and nobody ever picks on a farmer," Player says. "I'm a farmer as well as a golfer and a golf designer. We've got to get things in balance.”
Despite a few bumps in the road, Player is happy to be a part of the community, and to have a new home, a new place to continue living his dream.
“We're delighted with the offices and the way the golf course is going,” he says. “Everything is going along very well.” GCI
Photo: Andrew Redington, Getty Images
