Rembert, South Carolina | In the past decade, South Carolina has become one of the more seductive places for golf in America, especially for demanding players interested in course architecture and appreciating Golden Age-inspired designs. In fact, in the late sixties they went to the state of Palmetto as hippies to Haight-Ashbury. But the attraction in this case is not free love and Owsley LSD. Instead, these pilgrims are signed by the new layouts that have recently opened, with a number of those who are now considered one of the best modern tracks in America.
Congaree is such a place and it has a great Tom Fazio course. Old Barnwell and the Tree Nursery are two others, where the first was made by Brian Schneider and Blake Conant and the last by PGA Tour player Zac Blair and architects Tom Doak and Kye Goalby.
Another addition to this always fascinating Bill or Golf rate is broom edge. Located in the South Carolina Sand Hills Some 40 Miles East of the State Capital of Columbia, Its Course Was fashioned by Kyle Franz, who cut his architectural teeth walling with doak some years ago at pacon, and and autonki dunski outpower dunski, and autonski outside, and outside, outside, and autonis, and autonis, and auton’s outside, and auton’s outside, and auton’s outside dunski koprowos, and auton’s outside, and auton’s outside, and autonis, and autonis, and aside dunes, and aside dunes, and aside dunes, and aside dunes, and autones, and aside dunes, and aside dunes, and augonisy duns. Air Force Veteran of the War in Afghanistan Who had Toiled As a Shaper for Franz Before Buying the Broomsedge Property and Co design of the course with his old boss.
The height changes are one of the most fascinating characteristics. Idem the spacious greens and caverneous bunkers who, together with the stands of Cathedral Dennen, endured the place with a feeling of Bigness, although the site is only about 200 hectares in size. The architects made great use of the gorges and riddlines that, like the Hummocks and Holten, are present in abundance – and, according to Koprowski, moved very little earth in the process.
Koprowski and Franz have described the course as a ‘flexible design’ and fairly fitting. A golfer has to make all the different shots at Broomsedge – who gets his appellation from the factory that grows throughout the building – and use almost every club in the bag. Club officials make it a point to mix the gardens, so for example the par-4 first that 434 meters on the map of the white T-pieces, sometimes plays longer or shorter. In a movement that architect George C. Thomas, the man who initially argued a century ago for the design of a course “design, when he built the layouts at Los Angeles Country Club and Bel-Air, they have even changed the distance on a certain hole that they also have to change par.
Having a trio holes with alternative greens, in the par-3 sixth and 11th and also no. 13, a 4-par, reflects that thinking. And with a dozen par-4s, a few par-5s and four par-3s, the par-70 number sets a real requirement for making shot, just like the captain, who was the much beloved nickname of Thomas, it had wanted.
BroomsEdge is also able to test players of all skills, with T -pieces measuring a sign of a sign of more than 7,500 meters and the front arrival slightly less than 5,000. There are six sets of T -pieces, and if golfers play the right one, they will also have fun, as I discovered when I used the whites here on my three loops. I never lost a ball and posted rounds in the high 70s and low 80s that were proportional to my handicap index.
As New World as it can be in many ways, Broomsedge also has a number of very strong roots in the old country. The sturdy and fast circumstances do it playing like a good links. And the minimalist design also evokes that part of the golf world. Then there is the structure of the club itself, which started to offer Preview Play in the fall of 2024 and officially came online in the spring. It’s private, sure. But the founders give limited access to non-members throughout the year.
That very hospitable ethos is what enabled me to come to BroomsEdge last spring for a competition called The Sweep Between the Outpost Club, an international golf group of which I am an ambassador member, and the Silver Club Golf Society, a national organization for competitive golfers founded by Steve Scott that is best known in the PGA for the PGA FRF -FREvessional who is best trial for the PGA -FRF -FREVessional who is the FRFF -FREvessional who is affessional profession for the PGA -Professional who is affessional professionation. Final of the 1996 US Amatur. The tournament was a one-day, 36-hole affair and I arrived early a day for a practice round. That gave me the chance to view the course without worrying how I played or how often I paused to take notes.
Now 41 and the married father of two children, Koprowski took a detour to become a golf course owner and architect.
“Designing a course is something I wanted to do since I was 8 years old and grew up in Zuid -Florida,” he said. “My father was a golfer. In fact, he had played at the University of Notre Dame and the Golf Team there. I remember that he took me to TPC Sawgrass to play when I was a child. I had it on Muni jobs near Muni courses in the vicinity of where I really felt, who really felt.
Koprowski is quite skilled in reading topographical maps in the Air Force, a skill that certainly helped when he entered the Golf Industry.
Not long afterwards, Koprowski bought the memoirs from Pete Dye: “Bury Me in a pot bunker”. At that time, says Koprowski, he was officially bitten by the course design bug.
It took years before he acted on that impulse. After the Notre Dame, where he graduated in 2006 with a degree in political sciences and history, he spent four and a half years at the Air Force, a towbar with a tour in Afghanistan.
“I was Rotc in Notre Dame and stationed in Alabama and West -Texas before I ended up at Bagram Air Base in that country,” he said. “I was an Intel officer attached to an F-15 hunter-squadron. And no, I didn’t fly.”
However, he was quite skilled in reading topographical maps, a skill that certainly helped when he came to the golf company.
But Koprowski found its way to the game for a few more years. Firstly, he achieved master’s programs at Duke and Harvard, respectively, in international relations and education, after which he stopped in Tennessee and Texas for jobs and eventually Washington DC “I did a lot of policy development and analysis there,” he said. “Usually things with economics and housing.”
Only at that time did he finally decided to scratch the course architecture that he had felt for the first time as a child.
Scenic Broomsedge joins a collection of strong courses South Carolina.
In 2019, Koprowski Franz sent what he won a “nothing, nothing won” e-mail from the blue to the emerging architect. A few weeks later, Franz offered him a job to the crew that was again doing southern pines outside Pinehurst.
“The first thing Kyle me to do early was to investigate the greens and determine the size and shape of the original, which had shrunk a lot over the years,” said Koprowski. “Not long after, I was on a bulldozer, digs and formed. It was great to be involved in bringing that golf course back to life.”
Koprowski worked together with Franz on various other projects, including a new course construction at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida and a restoration job in Eastward Ho! In Massachusetts.
In 2022 he only decided to go out, to buy the building for Broomsedge, put together a founding group and then involve Franz to design the course with him.
“I fell in love with the country,” said Koprowski of the package used for wood and also as a hunting reserve because of the healthy populations of Bobwhite Kwartel, Turkey and white-tailed deer and that he insured for $ 630,000. “I thought it was a perfect place for a course, especially because it was in the same sand vein that connected Pinehurst with the Aiken area (where Old Barnwell and the tree nursery are located) but in a region where there was a lack of golf.”
He says it took a little more than a year to ‘get everything in order’, with construction starting at the end of 2022.
“The golf course itself cost around $ 9 million to build,” he said. “But taking everything into account, the total price was around $ 13 to $ 14 million.”
There is more money to spend, because Broomsedge still has to build a permanent clubhouse, restaurant and bar or build one of the houses that Koprowski hopes will be a popular part of the cluber experience.
That meant that there was little left for those of us who participated in the Sweep to do, but experience the golf course. What a pleasure to do.
“Every time I play broom edge, I see something new. A little bump here. A dip there. And those things make it a course that I can’t wait to play every day.” – Trevor Murphy
I appreciated the obstinacy of the beginning, with four 4-PARS different lengths and back-to-back par-3s on nrs. 5 and 6 and a 3-PAR at the eighth (a fleshy hole that played approximately 240 meters from the whites). Both the front and rear nines ended with par-5s, with the 18th a special Testy Finisher, which called for a precise approach to a angular green fronted by a lake. Regarding the holes with the alternative greens, they reminded me of the eighth and ninth holes in Pine Valley – and let me smile when I remembered that the architect of that great layout, George Crump, was a different inspiration for Koprowski. I also thought it was great how the club changed them from one day to another.
Oh, and I chuckled the faux broom -edge tufts that Koprowski has installed on the top of the flagsticks, and the brush brushes he uses as Teemarkers.
At the end of my third and final round I thought of how the main golf professional, Trevor Murphy, had described the course for me on the day I arrived.
“I loved the natural contours of the country as soon as I saw it,” he said. “And Mike and Kyle used them so well to create a lot of deception, and to keep things interesting. Every time I play in a broom edge, I see something new. A little bump here. A dip there. And those things make it a course that I can’t wait to play every day.”
I felt the same way and it also agreed with what one of my OC teammates had said when our round was ready.
“Although BroomsEdge reminds me of many of the really great places I have been able to play, it is also like nowhere else I have ever seen,” he said. “I can’t wait to come back.”
Me, too.
Photos: Mike Koprowski
© 2025 Global Golf Post LLC
#BroomsEdge #participates #impressive #list