For the past two years, those of us in the golf business in the Lowcountry have cringed at the sight of the neglected, weed-choked fairways that were once part of the Rose Hill Golf Club. Given its high-profile location on U.S. 278 in Bluffton, the course’s sad state sent a less-than-promising message to those heading east toward Hilton Head Island.

Fortunately, that is changing. In January the Rose Hill Property Owners Association contracted with Signature Golf Group of Myrtle Beach on a long-term deal to manage the course and its facilities. The POA bought the 27-hole course in late 2007 from its bankrupt Texas-based owners. 

The course’s revitalization is already on display. The grass has been cut and the weeds eradicated from the four holes that border the highway. Signature Golf has announced that nine holes will be closed and converted into a passive park for the surrounding residential community. The greens of the existing 18 will be replanted with a Miniverde Bermudagrass known for its tolerance to heat, salt and shade – all natural enemies to Lowcountry superintendents. All bunkers will be re-sanded as well. Substantial improvements have already been made to the clubhouse. 

Signature Golf certainly has the track record to make a successful go of it at Rose Hill. But the next six months will be revealing. The company’s commitment to re-open Rose Hills in September is ambitious, even with the work that has already been done. And it will be interesting to see how the rates for the “new” Rose Hill compare to the price points of the more established neighboring courses in the Bluffton area. Signature’s positioning of Rose Hill in a somewhat stagnant market will go a long way in determining its long-term prospects.

But make no mistake, the company’s work to date is already a huge step in the right direction.

A list of the “50 Best Golf Courses in South Carolina” was released late last month, and it confirmed what those of us in the Lowcountry have known all along. The best courses in the golf-rich Palmetto State, public and private, are located right here in Beaufort County. 

The list was compiled by the South Carolina Golf Course Ratings Panel, consisting of 125 industry leaders, top amateur players and coaches and media representatives from the state’s four regions – the Upstate, Midlands, Grand Strand and Lowcountry. Equally diverse in terms of playing level and backgrounds, each member is charged with personally visiting the courses and ranking them according to routing, variety, strategy, equity (shot values), memorability, aesthetics and overall experience (including practice areas, clubhouse, etc.).

On the 2008 list, 16 of the 50 courses are located in Hilton Head Island, Bluffton, Beaufort, Okatie or Daufuskie Island. We had four courses in the Top 10, led by Harbour Town Golf Links at No. 1, Bluffton’s May River Golf Club at Palmetto Bluff (4), Hilton Head’s Long Cove Club (5) and Beaufort’s Secession Golf Club (9).

Not surprising, the “new” Heron Point course in Sea Pines – the old Sea Marsh layout radically improved by Pete Dye – made its debut at No. 25 on the list. But I was pleasantly surprised to see both of Fripp Island’s courses make the top 50, the Davis Love III-designed Ocean Creek at No. 43 and Ocean Point, the resort’s classic George Cobb design, ranked No. 28 after being left off the list two years ago. This Beaufort-area beauty is in its best condition in years and offers a half-dozen holes that view the Atlantic.

The SC Ratings Panel will release its list of “Best Courses You Can Play” in 2009, and while Myrtle Beach will dominate by sheer volume, you can bet that our highly rated public-access courses will justifiably represent.

For a complete list of the 2008 “50 Best Courses in South Carolina,” go to www.scgolfpanel.org.

In the Feb. 25 issue of The New Yorker, there was a brief about a newly-published book entitled “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” It’s a collection of very brief memoirs. Six words each, to be exact.

The project was originally started by SMITH online magazine as a contest in which readers were asked to tell their life story in six words. The magazine was inundated with entries to the point of nearly crashing its Web site. The editors culled the best and published it under a title submitted by a hairdresser from Minnesota.

Submissions came from the famous (Stephen Colbert: “Well, I Thought It Was Funny”) to the anonymous (a dominatrix: “Woman Seeks Men—High Pain Threshold”). There is the self-deprecating (a plumber submitted “Fix A Toilet, Get Paid Crap”) and the downright depressing (”After Harvard, Had Baby With Crackhead”).

So what does this have to do with golf? Nothing really, except I began thinking about how the six-word rule could apply to some of our favorite PGA Tour pros. My suggestions are below…I’d love to hear yours.

My own bio of brevity? “I Actually Get Paid For This.”

• Tiger Woods: Even Better Than You Imagined. Yikes.
• Phil Mickelson: At Least I Have My Family.
• Vijay Singh: Annika Is Still Better Than Me.
• Ernie Els: I Swear I Was Relevant Once.
• Sergio Garcia: Youth, Arrogance and Still No Majors.
• Greg Norman: Screw Augusta. I Got Chris Evert.
• Rory Sabbatini: Who Can I Piss Off Today?
• Ian Poulter: Trust Me, Chicks Dig the Look.
• Boo Weekly: Fetch Me That Skoal Over Yonder.
• John Daly: The Trailer Park’s Got My Back.

Last week’s issue of Golf World featured a piece about a pending lawsuit filed against real estate developer Bobby Ginn, who has attached his name to four professional golf events, including the PGA Champions Tour’s upcoming Ginn Championship at his Hammock Beach development in Florida. Hmmm… Ginn, golf tournaments with larger-than-average purses, and lavish real estate developments in the midst of an economic downturn. Why does this all sound painfully familiar?

Maybe because I was involved in Ginn’s first foray into real estate development, his disastrous attempt to control as much as two-thirds of the undeveloped land on Hilton Head Island in the mid-1980s. His heavily leveraged deals involving the island’s two biggest development companies, the Sea Pines Company and the Hilton Head Company, collapsed like a cheap lawn chair in the midst of the nation’s savings and loan collapse. Bankruptcy proceedings ensued, island businesses were left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in receivables, and the PGA Tour came dangerously close to yanking the island’s signature event, the Heritage Classic. Those of us who manned the oars on this ship of fools fondly remember this era as “The Dark Age.”

Golf World Executive Editor Ron Sirak at least made mention of Ginn’s Hilton Head debacle in his piece. That’s a refreshing change from the media’s canonization of Ginn in recent years. For a more in-depth account, read Janet Smith’s excellent blog entry, The Resurrection of Bobby Ginn. Janet, the editorial page editor of The Island Packet, covered Ginn’s reign on Hilton Head Island and the bloody aftermath and has the best perspective on the man of anyone I know.

As Sirak notes in his piece, Ginn’s latest legal troubles–or, it seems, his troubling past–are of little significance to officials with the PGA and LPGA Tours. Ty Votaw, the former LPGA Tour commissioner who negotiated sponsorship of that tour’s Ginn Open, told Sirak that “financial guarantees are in place” for Ginn’s PGA Tour and Champions Tour events. I’m sure that comes as a relief to the 99 real estate investors who are taking Ginn to court, claiming they were sold overvalued land at Ginn developments in Florida. Or to Sterling Marlin, Joe Nemechek and the crew chiefs who sued Ginn last year during his brief, inexplicable foray into NASCAR team ownership … but that’s another story.

I truly hope that all of this has a happy ending … that Ginn’s professional tournaments thrive and his myriad real estate developments survive the housing market collapse. Just don’t ask me to drink the Kool-Aid.

You’re probably aware of what Starbucks did recently at all of its 7,100 locations throughout the U.S. But you may not know why they did it. You should.

“America’s favorite drug dealer“ (not my line, but from the Starbucks Gossip blog) closed all of its stores for 3+ hours, throwing thousands into panicked latte withdrawal during the critical 5:30 to 9 p.m. time slot. The reason, it was reported, was to re-focus its attention back to making coffee. Training sessions were conducted to ensure that barristas were doing their job – crafting espressos and other unhealthy libations – with the quality and efficiency that helped make the company so extraordinarily successful.

Yes, I know what you’re saying – “They’re making coffee, for crying out loud!“ – but Starbucks has wandered off into other areas in recent years, from music and book distribution to breakfast foods. Perhaps it was not so coincidental that the company got hammered on its P&Ls in 2007, and its economic woes forced a restructuring of the company that included layoffs of more than 600 employees.

Call it a PR stunt, but Tuesday’s move by Starbucks is an example of why companies should never lose sight of what made them successful in the first place. Those of us who dabble in marketing casually throw around phrases like “core competencies“ and “skill sets.“ The point is, you do what you do best, and you keep doing it. Extending your brand is all well and good as long as you can keep your loyal customers from bolting to Dunkin Donuts for their Caramel Frappaccino fix.

Spring golf season has officially arrived on Hilton Head Island. Inspired by the year-long 50th anniversary celebration by Sea Pines Resort in 2006, I’ve already begun concocting a similar celebration for golf on the island. Officially, that would be in 2012 (Sea Pines’ Ocean Course opened in 1962), so I’ve got some time.

Given the state of the golf industry over the past several years, we could use an excuse to party. But there’s no question that golf on Hilton Head deserves its own birthday bash. The sport has inarguably had the biggest impact on the evolution of Hilton Head Island as a vacation destination, and it can be traced to the extraordinary media coverage of the inaugural Heritage Classic in 1969. Arnold Palmer’s win and the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the Harbour Town Golf Links put the island on the map. It also called attention to the foresight of Charles Fraser and his concepts for responsible development, many of which remain in place.

But as a bad ‘70s rock band once sang, that was yesterday. Today, we’re in the midst of a new era for Hilton Head golf….and it’s pretty exciting.

It began in 2002, when Greenwood Development Corporation commissioned a major renovation of its flagship course in Palmetto Dunes, the Robert Trent Jones. Pete Dye was already putting the finishing touches on an equally ambitious effort at Harbour Town. Those efforts seemed to kick-start a series of refurbishments, upgrades and additions to Hilton Head’s resort portfolio.

In the past four years, major renovations have taken place at the island’s four major oceanfront hotels — Westin Hilton Head Resort, Hilton Head Marriott, Hilton Oceanfront Resort and Crowne Plaza Resort. In the last 18 months, three (Westin, Marriott and Hilton) have opened full-service spas.

In September of last year, Sea Pines unveiled Heron Point (the golf course formerly known as Sea Marsh) following a $9 million makeover by Dye. This past January, Heritage Golf Group announced the opening of a PGA Tour Academy at Palmetto Hall, one of only five such facilities in the U.S. Last summer, Heritage opened an impressive new clubhouse as the anchor for its 54 holes at Port Royal.

These were just the highlights. And more is on the way. While there’s been no formal announcement, Sea Pines is moving forward on a major overhaul of the Ocean Course that—permits permitting—could start as early as this fall. Imagine that: the course that served as a springboard for Hilton Head golf nearly 50 years ago will sport a fresh new look…just in time to ring in the next 50.

Welcome to “From the Fringe,” a blog about all things golf and Hilton Head – and a few other random thoughts thrown in for fun. My name is Brett Borton and I’m the executive director of the Lowcountry Golf Course Owners’ Association. What’s that, you say? Well, it’s a consortium of public access golf courses in the Hilton Head area, and my job is to oversee all activities of the group as well as to develop its marketing and communications programs.

I’m been involved in and around the golf business for more than 25 years. I make my home in the South Carolina Lowcountry, which is one of the most special places on the planet. I began playing golf at age nine, made my first visit to Hilton Head Island in 1970 and moved here permanently in 1982. I’ve chaired the golf steering committee for the Hilton Head Island Convention and Visitors Bureau and worked for The Sea Pines Resort and Greenwood Development Corporation, the owner/operator of Palmetto Dunes. I guess golf runs in my blood.

I also made a fair living by being able to cogently string sentences together. I’m a freelance writer and editor, having written features on golf destinations, resort travel and real estate communities for publications like LINKS – The Best of Golf, Golf Magazine, Golf Digest and Delta Sky.

But enough about me … my hopes for this blog are to enlighten you in a fun and conversational way about what’s happening on Hilton Head – and perhaps what’s not happening – from an insider’s point of view. I’ll do my best not to go all “Chamber of Commerce” on you. And I’ll also offer my take on a variety of issues pertaining to the game, the people around it and the issues affecting it.

Please engage me in conversation and let me know your thoughts on my posts. I look forward to hearing from you.

Here’s to the greatest game on earth!