Florence County purchased the closed Wellman Club and had Rees Jones redo the bunkers and greens. The club is located in Johnsonville within an hour of MB. Well worth playing and cheap. Green complexes are very interesting with good bunkering around them and in the fairway. Nice collection of holes. Greens a little slow and fairways need another year of grow in. Highly recommend Wellman. Cart paths are shit at best - should have redone them when they reopened the course. Played it twice and wouldn't think twice about going there again.
Golf is just an excuse to drink whiskey and smoke cigars
A short weekend trip to MB got extended when a work commitment for Tuesday fell off so I decided to take UGP up on his recommendation. I agree with a lot of his description, especially the horrendous cart paths. First and foremost, this is not an expensive course to play: afternoon with a cart was less than $30. Second, conditioning was generally good. If you hit the ball between the tree lines (lots of old pines and some general woods as well line the fairways), you'll get a reasonable lie except in a few spots near the base of the trees and on a couple of holes where there were some bare spots on the fairways, most egregiously on 10. The greens were in much better condition than I might have expected given the problems UGP cited in the course's history. Tee boxes, fairways, and even the sand traps after two days of weekend rain were all very playable. If the county builds on the current conditioning, and there were crews out around the course today, it could be an outstanding place to play in spring 2024.
This course is actually well worth playing now in its current state though as it's interesting on almost every hole without being overwhelming on any particular shot. I didn't face a shot all day that was impossible to hit, but it was easy to run up a string of bogeys and pars. There was only one tricky, local knowledge shot all day, the approach into the second--if you're long (I was), there's a steep slope behind the green that runs right into a pond that you probably won't see from the fairway.
The length of the course is part of the reason for the course's difficulty. From the tips, you're looking at over 7200. From one box forward, over 6700. From the whites, over 6400, which is where I played. The senior tees are reasonable at a little over 5700, but from any tees, a lot of the approach shots are uphill into large, undulating greens so the holes tend to play a little longer than you might expect. There are no flat holes and even the few straight holes have some jigs and jags that make them appear less straightforward than they really are.
The green complexes are large and undulating. Although the greens aren't blazing fast, don't get above the hole. I think the green speeds I saw today were fast enough for the average golfer. Get the greens in better condition and cut them for tournament play, and wow, you could see some serious three putts throughout a round.
This is an undiscovered gem at this point. I teed off as a single at 1:10 p.m. and played in a little over 3 hours. I could have played faster if the cart paths weren't so bad (seriously, you either slow down or take the risk of losing some teeth on the bumpy cart paths) and because of the weekend weather, today was cart path only so lots of walks from the cart to the fairways.
It is a long drive from the central MB area--over an hour, and all but the last few miles are at 55-65 MPH so you'll drive about 60 miles to get there. But as a change of pace or as the first round coming in or the last round going out for a trip to Myrtle Beach, I think The Wellman Club is a winner.
Thanks for your post UGP! I would not have found this gem without it.
Nice report on the course thanks for sharing!
Brownwood Bandit
