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Essentially, that's what Secession Golf Club did. The club is the sole occupant of Gibbes Island, which lies between Cat and Lady's islands. Its Web site claims "no real estate, now or ever, around the course."
But it isn't your typical golf course.
Its membership of 750 is filled, yet the course is rarely crowded. Why? Because only 50 members can live within 100 miles of the course. Only 12 live in Beaufort. The rest hail from around the world, with a third from Wall Street, said Michael Harmon, director of golf.
The appeal is the course's simplicity. On both sides of the clubhouse are wide porches lined with rocking chairs and patio furniture. The view out the back is breathtaking. The pristine course juts into the marshes with nary a tree to obstruct the vista. The course's hazards, in true links-fashion, are recessed, not mounded. Even they are understated.
"Members come to golf, but to sit on the porch, too," Harmon said. "The porch is just as important."
The club is named after the original Articles of Secession that were drafted in Beaufort in 1860, but its own history is brief. Bob Walton and Tim Moss, both from Hilton Head Island, thought up the course in the mid-1980s. They chose Beaufort because it is quiet and offers a can't-be-duplicated, small-town atmosphere.
Work on the course began in 1988, and it opened for play four years later, according to its Web site. There are no golf carts allowed, but golfers are assisted by caddies, who over time become friends.
The clubhouse opened in 1996, complete with 12 guest rooms on the second floor. Each room, for two or four golfing buddies, is surprisingly spartan. Beds, dresser, nightstand. The communal bathroom is down the hall. Rooms don't have telephones and if there is a television, one must listen to it through headphones. Distracting noises are not permitted. Cell phones are permitted only in one area outside of the club and in the business center inside -- not in the bar, not on the revered porch.
"Members come here to get away from the pressures of business," Harmon explains.
"Our members visit two or three times a year, primarily in the spring or fall," Harmon said. Their summers are spent at their home courses, the winters at even warmer locales.
Clubhouse decor is member-provided. Its walls, floor to ceiling, are covered by framed photos or paintings of members' home courses: Winged Foot, Augusta National, the Royal and Ancient, Carnoustie, Seminole.
The course stresses its Southern roots. A replica Civil War cannon sits in front of the clubhouse and is fired regularly.
On the course, each tee set is designated by the name of a Civil War figure: Grant (the longest), Lee, Stuart, Sherman and Jackson. Each hole is named after Civil War battles in chronological order: Fort Sumter, Bull Run, etc., and concludes, naturally, with Appomattox.
The club carries a local mystique. It's not visible from the road and few people have run across a member. There are no membership drives, no open houses.
Potential members must be sponsored by another member, so the club's name spreads by word of mouth, Harmon said.
The club employs 60 people, plus about 100 caddies, said John Marsh, general manager. It serves breakfast and lunch, and dinner if at least four people request it. Or members are welcome to bring in pizza from Upper Crust. There are few rules.
"We go for simple elegance," Harmon said. "It's very comfortable and easy here."
Keeping old-school, the halfway house dispenses food and beverages, all on the honor system.
But if Secession is not well known in Beaufort, it is in the upper strata of the world's private golf clubs. It hosts the Secession Cup each March for members of the world's top clubs in Australia, Scotland, Germany and England, Harmon said.
But the club doesn't exist entirely in a vacuum. It created a scholarship for local students after two members died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. The Jeff LeVeen and Stephen Roach scholarship doles out $100,000 in merit and need-based scholarships to local high school students each year, and the endowment for the eight-year-old scholarship already exceeds $300,000, said Harmon, who sits on the board. One of its first recipients was the child of the club's bartender.
The club also has free military and police days and hosts a United Way tournament each year, all gratis. But the club often defers being listed as a sponsor.
"It's not about who we are," Marsh said, "it's about who we are helping."
