Palmetto Golf Club
Learn more about the Palmetto Golf Club
(Excerpted from Palmetto Golf Club - The First 100 Years)
The Palmetto Golf Club in Aiken, South Carolina traces its beginnings to 1892. In the era when the Palmetto Golf Club was born, Aiken was truly in another world. The city served as a winter playground for many of the country’s wealthiest families. The names included in Aiken’s Winter Colony read like the society column of the New York Times. The Appletons, the Byers, the Hitchcocks, the Iselins, the Phelps, the Vanderbilts and the Whitneys, to mention a few. In the year Palmetto was founded, polo was flourishing in Aiken. Hunting was a favorite sport due to an overabundance of game. Riding horses through what is now known as Hitchcock Woods was also a popular activity.
The founder of Palmetto, Thomas Hitchcock, laid out four holes in 1892, where the present 16th, 17th and 18th holes are now located. This was the start of the Palmetto Golf Club in Aiken. In 1895, on land Hitchcock purchased from W. C. Tibbets, an additional five holes were added. The layout and construction of the revised nine-hole course was the joint venture of Hitchcock, H. C. Leeds and Jimmy Mackrell. Mr. Leeds had previously designed the Myopia Hunt Club in the Boston area. Jimmy Mackrell later served as Palmetto’s first golf professional.
Only a few records remain of those early years at Palmetto. However, sometime between 1895 and 1897, William C. Whitney purchased additional land from Mr. Tibbets and a complete 18-hole course was laid out and constructed by Hitchcock, Leeds and Mackrell. The newly acquired land also included a large farmhouse which became Palmetto’s first clubhouse. The original 18-hole course had Bermuda fairways and sand greens. It is the oldest existing golf course in South Carolina and one of the 10 oldest in the nation.
In 1901, the Board of Governors decided to build a new clubhouse. They engaged Stanford White of the New York firm McKim, Mead and White to design an appropriate structure. Mr. White was a close friend of W. C. Whitney and had previously designed the clubhouse at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island as well as Madison Square Garden and the Herald Building in New York City. The Palmetto clubhouse, as it stands today, was completed in 1902.
South Carolina’s Sunday blue laws were canceled for golfers as the result of an incident at Palmetto Golf Club. In 1927, Tommy Hitchcock, Jr. and three of his friends were enjoying a round of golf at Palmetto on a Sunday. The match was halted by a deputy sheriff who served a summons to the golfers, citing Sunday blue laws. Aiken’s judge ruled that golf was a game and could be played on Sunday as long as play was strictly for amusement. The decision was appealed all the way to the State Supreme Court, which upheld the Aiken judge’s ruling.
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