‘A tremendous renewal’: Sea Pines exec outlasts Hilton Head rollercoaster
Nobody knows the trouble he’s seen.
At least, that’s always been Cary Corbitt’s demeanor.
But because he is a leader at Sea Pines, the bellwether of Hilton Head Island’s modern development, we do know many of those troubles.
And as the jewel of Sea Pines — the 53rd edition of the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing — comes to town this week, Corbitt can give a reading of the island’s pulse from a rare perspective.
Corbitt started at Sea Pines in 1978. He was not in the parade of Harvard MBAs attracted by company founder Charles E. Fraser’s intellect and energy.
He was hired by Donald O’Quinn and golf pro Arthur Jeffords to tend the bag drop and driving range at the Plantation Club.
Forty-four years later, Corbitt will retire in mid-May as vice president of sports and operations of Sea Pines Resort.
Outside his office is an oil original by the late Coby Whitmore, one of America’s greatest illustrators and a former islander. It depicts Arnold Palmer, the lion of the game who won the first Heritage in 1969, helping a fledgling Sea Pines roar.
Corbitt was at that tournament, held on Thanksgiving weekend in his sophomore year of high school. He was a marshal on the third hole, with precious few fans to marshal.
As he walks out the door as a 67-year-old grandfather, he chooses his words with the care of someone who has survived the string of company ownerships that has been wilder than Myrtle Beach’s finest rollercoaster.
“With every regime and all the different personalities, I’ve learned things,” he said. “Some good, some bad, but all good experience. I’m totally proud of the opportunity I’ve been given.”
And as he walks out, he says things have never been better.
HILTON HEAD
Corbitt moved to Hilton Head in 1975, right out of Greenwood’s Lander University.
He and Wendy, his girlfriend since ninth grade, got married and moved into a unit at Mariner’s Cove, by the bridge.
There wasn’t a lot to go home to in the small town of McCormick, where his father was a dentist and where he developed a golf game that is today a 5- to 10-handicap.
Ever since that first Heritage, Corbitt says, he knew this is where he wanted to live, and that he wanted to work in golf.
But his entry to the island came through the late Bill Cork, an island entrepreneur and state representative who hired him to help with a couple of retail shops in The Market Place shopping center by Sea Pines Circle.
U.S. 278 was then a two-lane, tree-shrouded avenue. The island had only one traffic light. But its hospital would open that year. And the 1960s had been good for Sea Pines.
It already had four golf courses in place, and the Heritage was getting its first national television coverage.
Golf was driving real estate sales, but resort activities were a loss-leader for Fraser, whose joy was community development, not hotel and tee-time management.
The mid-1970s were unkind to the debt-ridden Sea Pines, with an oil embargo killing travel, and interest rates north of 15% hammering real estate sales and squeezing developers.
The rollercoaster was just getting in gear.
BANKRUPTCY
Corbitt can easily point to the low-point of his career.
“It was when Phil Schwab and Cuyahoga Wrecking Company owned us,” he said. “We were hosting a seniors tournament at that time (1986) and somehow, the prize money got transferred to some other account. But all the players did get paid.”
A lot of local vendors didn’t get all their money, however, and they even quit shipping golf balls to the clubhouses.
The Frasers had sold the company in 1983, and things did not go well.
Four years later, Sea Pines, and the Hilton Head Co., which together controlled most of the island’s development, ended up in bankruptcy.
“We didn’t have the resources to do anything,” Corbitt said. “They cleaned out the cash register every night.”
Capital was a company problem through most of Corbitt’s career.
The Fraser family — led by Charles and his brother Joe — were a high point.
Young Corbitt asked to spend time with Charles, going into his office with stuffed birds and old maps on the walls, and following him around on a number of Saturdays.
“He was very passionate about what he wanted to achieve,” Corbitt said. “He was headstrong in his ideas of how to achieve it. When he said something, you listened.”
But Fraser’s company got overextended and deep in debt by expanding throughout the Southeast, and its ill-fated decision to develop Palmas del Mar in Puerto Rico.
The company experienced massive layoffs. The downward spiral continued through the regimes of Vacation Resorts, Ginn Holdings and Hilton Head Holdings (and Schwab’s wrecking company).
The PGA Tour wanted to snag the Harbour Town Golf Links, and it threatened to cancel the Heritage without a letter of credit to guarantee prize money.
From that darkness emerged the nonprofit Heritage Classic Foundation, which has run the tournament since 1987, bringing stability and giving $46 million to charities and scholarships.
And eventually, a group of local residents formed the Sea Pines Associates to pull Sea Pines out of bankruptcy.
“They were all members we knew, and they were very involved in the community,” Corbitt said. “There was still not much for capital reserves, but they put money back into the facilities.”
Through it all, Corbitt was among many longtime employees of Sea Pines to stay the course, steady the ship, and present to the public an aura of success.
Replacing him will be John Farrell, a Sea Pines employee for 32 years and longtime face of the Harbour Town Golf Links as the company’s director of golf.
Harbour Town Yacht Basin harbormaster Nancy Cappelmann retired in December after 40 years with the company. Earl “Happy” Mitchell retired in 2009 after 45 years in hospitality work. And Acie Baker is in his 56th year in golf course maintenance at age 78.
BILL GOODWIN
Corbitt can just as easily point to the high point of his career.
It’s right now.
In March 2005, longtime Sea Pines property owner William H. “Bill” Goodwin Jr. and his family’s Richmond, Virginia, company, The RiverStone Group, bought Sea Pines for $23.4 million.
Today, its subsidiary, Sea Pines Resort LLC, is chaired by Goodwin’s son, Matthew.
And for the first time, Sea Pines has capital.
The Goodwins have poured about $100 million — debt-free — into capital improvements, including a new Harbour Town Clubhouse, a new Plantation Golf Clubhouse and Golf Learning Center, a new Sea Pines Beach Club, and the current redevelopment of The Quarterdeck restaurant at the Harbour Town Lighthouse.
The company has totally rebuilt the Atlantic Dunes and Heron Point golf courses, revitalized the Harbour Town course and placed a special room in the Harbour Town Clubhouse to honor the course designer, the late Pete Dye, who was a close friend of Corbitt’s.
“RiverStone has the wherewithal, desire and passion to maintain and improve Sea Pines,” Corbitt said. “It has been a tremendous renewal.”
As Corbitt’s tenure ends, both resort operations and real estate are off the charts.
After furloughs in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began, a gush of business has come like no one has seen.
“In May (2020) the faucet was turned on,” Corbitt said. “We had a great summer, a great fall, a great winter and an unbelievable spring of 2021.”
He credits Gov. Henry McMaster for being adamant about staying in business.
And it seems more people want to be outdoors, Corbitt said.
He believes it may erase the golf scorecard of the past decade that said the sport was dying.
“We see a resurgence in golf, but also tennis, pickleball, bicycling, and boating is through the roof,” Corbitt said.
Which raises the great issue of the day: A lack of workers.
“We need many, many more employees,” Corbitt said. “Everybody’s overworked. We’re trying to keep people from getting burned out.”
But hope springs eternal as the Heritage tournament, which has survived all the storms of Sea Pines as well as changes in sponsorships, begins anew.
“It highlights every aspect of what Hilton Head is about,” Corbitt said. “And what Sea Pines is about.”
David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.