Aiken Golf Club

The Aiken Golf Club is one of South Carolina's most historically significant courses, founded in 1912 as an 11-hole amenity for the Highland Park Hotel and expanded to 18 holes by John Inglis (a founding member of the PGA who had worked with the original designer of Shinnecock Hills and with Donald Ross in Elmsford, NY) by 1915. The initial 11 holes were developed by I.W. Fowler and E.J. Egerton; Inglis's completion of the final seven in 1915 and his subsequent role as club professional turned Aiken into a cultural anchor of the 1920s golfing scene in the Aiken / Augusta corridor. The club's most enduring first comes from May Dunn (the first female golf professional in the United States), who suggested Inglis add separate ladies tees, making Aiken the first club in the nation to have them. That piece of golf-architecture history alone puts Aiken on a narrow national list of gender-forward historic firsts, and the course's status as a working historical artifact of Golden Age resort golf makes it an easy add-on for any architecture-focused Augusta-area trip. For the Augusta / Aiken / CSRA trip visitor, Aiken Golf Club is the Golden Age historical round, paired naturally with Forest Hills (Donald Ross 1926 muni) and The River Golf Club (Jim Fazio) for a three-round Augusta-corridor package. Masters-week visitors specifically should route this in as a pedigree supplement to the higher-profile tracks.