Closed Cat Island golf course officially reopening this weekend. Here’s what’s planned
A revitalized Cat Island Golf Course — a George W. Cobb-designed course that fell into disrepair and closed for several years years — will officially reopen Memorial Day weekend with a fighter jet flyover and some ceremonial tee shots.
The golf course is only open for members but a ribbon cutting at noon Friday that will mark the official reopening of the course is open to the public, as is a flag raising ceremony and F-35 fighter jet flyover from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
At the Friday grand reopening, “one very special guest,” who is not named, will be among those who take ceremonial tee shots on the number one tee box.
The new owners are selling private memberships with a $12,500 initiation fee with monthly dues. The new owners bill the course as a “premier private country club nestled in the heart of Beaufort and South Carolina’s Sea Islands.”
The memberships are available to residents with homes on the course and those living off the island.
Tim Mervosh, general manager for Resort Development Partners, previously told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette that there’s a market for a private course that’s not located in a gated community.
The popular 18-hole golf course in the waterfront community of Cat Island had been closed since January 2019.
Last June, Resort Development Partners, a company specializing in operations and strategic planning for resort communities, bought the Cat Island club from Cat Island Group LLC, which had previously purchased the property at public foreclosure sale and then came under fire for selling memberships without reopening the course.
Resort Development Partners hired John LaFoy to overhaul the golf course to the original classic George W. Cobb design, with a focus on restoring the beauty and natural ecosystem of the surrounding tidelands. Cobb designed the original course as LaFoy was working for Cobb at the time and did much of the work. Cobb’s most enduring creation was constructed 120 miles northwest of his Savannah hometown. Cobb was a design consultant at Augusta National in the mid-1950s and he had a hand in the addition of the nine-hole par 3 course that opened in 1959.
“It’s a new golf course,” LaFoy told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet in September, when his upgrades for the course were still in progress.
This story was originally published May 26, 2023 at 9:28 AM.
