26 TEE BOX The par-three eighth plays 40 feet downhill through a dramatic half-pipe chasm Grassing is nearing completion on the new Kyle Franz and Mike Koprowski-designed Broomsedge course in Rembert, South Carolina. “If you intend to design and build a minimalist golf course, routing is the single most important thing – so important that I developed a conceptual routing before I even put in an offer on the land upon which Broomsedge now sits,” said Koprowski. “I needed to feel comfortable that a great course could exist on the land; otherwise, there was no point in even buying the property.” The course will occupy 156 acres of the club’s 235-acre site, which boasts unusually dramatic elevation changes for the Carolina Sandhills. “We spent hours walking various alternatives,” said Koprowski. “By the end of summer, we arrived at the conclusion that the original routing sketch was about 75 per cent the correct solution. We moved around two par threes, but overall, our first instincts were mostly right.” The routing was created in October 2022 and, since then, some course features have changed. For example, Broomsedge will feature only one split fairway despite the original illustration showing many. “The land was always doing something interesting that allowed us to simply drape the holes over it,” said Koprowski. “And despite the expansive sprawl of modern golf development, we created a routing that is highly intimate, which is a big part of what makes many of the old classics great. If you can marry the right land with the right routing, I think you can often build a better golf course on 200 acres than you can on 500. “Broomsedge can still stretch to 7,500 yards, showing that you can still achieve distances to challenge elite players on a relatively small footprint. And you get so many benefits out of the compactness: standing on the first tee, you can see 15 different greens, the clubhouse will be visible from every hole, shared tee boxes, six holes that could theoretically change par from day to day, and alternating green sites to keep things fresh for members.” Broomsedge COURSE BLUEPRINT
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