The area's next golf course will be called Bartram Trail Golf Club, but if it needed a subtitle, Everyman's Course would be a suitable one.
Architect Rick Robbins, who made a site visit to the Columbia County course Thursday, has created what its owners envisioned: a golfer-friendly public layout.
The 18-hole course is owned by Bartram Trail CDC, Inc., a nonprofit entity created by the Columbia County Commission to develop the course.
The projected opening date for the Grovetown course is July 2005, but it could be ready before the 2005 Masters Tournament, if the weather cooperates.
"Rick has done a great job of trying to design a golf course that is going to make people want to come play it because they know they're going to have a good time," golf course superintendent Shane Schutte said. "That's what our goal is."
"I hope it's fair, visually pleasing and challenging, and that you're going to think about what you're going to do," Robbins said.
Part of the mission statement can be seen by looking at the scorecard for the course, which has elevation changes similar to Edgefield County's Mount Vintage Plantation Golf Club.
At a time when almost all new courses are more than 7,000 yards, Bartram Trail will be 6,705 yards from the gold tees, 6,229 yards from the blue tees, 5,549 yards from the white tees and 4,908 yards from the red tees.
"It's not meant to be a long course," Robbins said. "It is a daily fee public course."
In keeping with the golfer-friendly theme, the bent-grass greens will be medium-sized at an average of 6,200 square feet, and will be flat and receptive to approach shots.
"We'll also give a golfer a way out on all the holes so they actually have a side they can miss the ball on," Robbins said. "We don't expect the talent level to be where the golfer is threading the ball all day long."
The 53-year-old Robbins, who heads up Robbins & Associates International of Cary, N.C., has made "about 15" site visits since work began on the course in December, he said.
He normally checks the progress every two weeks, but waited three weeks before this visit because the course took on 18 inches of rain in June, slowing down work.
On Thursday, Robbins and his design team were checking out the rough shaping being done on Nos. 10-16. The front nine, along with Nos. 17 and 18, have already been shaped, and irrigation systems are being installed. Those holes should be grassed by Aug. 1, and the balance of the course by Sept. 1.
Robbins and his team even did some on-hands work on the 10th green.
"We redesigned it to fit the terrain because it had a little different topography than we thought," he said.
Schutte has been through this before. The superintendent was one of the first employees of North Augusta's River Golf Club, serving as the golf course superintendent from June 1997 until March 2004. The public course opened April 1998.
"It's a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun too," Schutte said of helping a course take form.
Now, he's working for a course that he says will be in direct competition with the River Golf Club for daily fee golfers.
"That is very unusual," Schutte said. "I still have attachments to the River Club and had a great time there for seven years. It was time to do something new.
"We'll stack up against the River Club," Schutte said. "We'll be in the same price range, for the most part, maybe a little bit cheaper because of our association with Columbia County. We're very concerned about making the course accessible to the residents of Columbia County and other areas, so we want to be affordable and we want to provide a quality product."
The course's shareholders have owned the land since the early 1990s, said Turner Simkins of Blanchard and Calhoun Real Estate Co., which is handling the 800-home subdivision that will be called Bartram Trail.
"Once the growth of the Interstate 20 corridor caught up with Columbia County, they wanted to provide a nice residential community with a golf course," Simkins said.
The club, which is managed by East West Partners Club Management, is located less than two miles from the I-20 Grovetown exit, and off Columbia Road.
"The bottom line is it has great access to I-20 and will be a high-end golf course, meaning championship caliber," Simkins said. "Columbia County is the fastest growing corridor in the CSRA and there is an absorption there we think we can fulfill."
Reach David Westin at (706) 724-0851 or david.westin@augustachronicle.com.
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