WHAT WE BELIEVE
The six principles that guide everything we’re building.
Old Charlie won’t be for everyone. We’re nothing if not opinionated, and our perspectives about the game and the things we think are important have informed every aspect of this club and our approach to building it. For us, these are the things that matter:
1
Exceptional golf is the foundation, not a feature.
Saying we’re building an exceptional golf course isn’t about marketing. It’s the entire point.
Golf that’s worth traveling for, and golf that’s worth returning to. That’s been the goal from the very beginning. It’s really the only way a place like Old Charlie can work. So we got our first choice of designers on board, and then went looking for land that was worthy of what they could do. The exact location was almost incidental. What mattered was giving two of the best in the business a canvas that could produce something genuinely great.
What also matters is giving them the freedom to create without compromise. No houses lining the fairways, no saving the best views for real estate, and no concessions on the routing to accommodate some other amenity. We have an absolutely exceptional piece of property, and we have the very best design team we could have asked for to bring it to life.
Here, their masterpiece gets center stage.
2
Seriously good golf doesn’t have to be so serious.
Just because it's church doesn't mean you can't dance.
We love to call golf courses strategic. It sounds good in the magazines because it stands in contrast to boring. But what's the point of strategy if you're not actually allowed to experiment? All too often we build these amazing golf courses and forget that recreation is the whole damn point. Not here.
There is no doubt we're building a golf course that will stand up against some of the best in the world, but Old Charlie will not be a museum. It will never be curated. You can try things here. The hero shot on the closing hole, six consecutive times if that’s how many you need. The six-hole, single-elimination team event shootout. The longest putt on the largest green. The angle you'd never consider in competition.
A huge reason why we chose to offer unlimited golf and to limit our capacity to 72 players per day is because, for us, having fun on a golf course is all about having the permission and the freedom to play.
You’ll always have that here.
3
Stories > Scores
The scorecard always fades. The rest of it doesn’t.
At its best, a golf course isn’t really a golf course at all. At its best, a golf course is a memory machine made of dirt and sand and grass. The first time your daughter rolled in a putt on her own. Those after school practice days in high school when you’d play your last hole in pitch black darkness and laugh all the way up the fairway. The emergency nine, six-man scramble for more cash than you had the ability to pay.
We're building Old Charlie around the belief that those moments matter more than anything. It's why we're limiting our daily capacity, it's why we're building a social hub instead of a country club, it's why we're lighting up the par three and the putting course and bringing in live music every evening. We’re deliberately making space for the kinds of moments you’ll never forget.
We want you to leave with stories.
4
Your place, your rules.
It’s your golf course, and you’re an adult. As long as you remember both, there really are no rules.
Golf is supposed to be fun. The trip is supposed to be a release. Somewhere along the way, a lot of clubs forgot that and started enforcing rules for the sake of rules. We think it's a lot simpler than all that: if your idea of a good time isn't interfering with anyone else's, then have at it.
Take a cart and drive it where you want. It’s Florida, and you’re a responsible adult. Change your shoes in the parking lot. Play a sixsome with the boys. The point is, no one here is going to tell you how to dress or how to play or when to speed up or slow down. Just let the faster groups through, give the course the respect it deserves, and let the groups around you have their version of a good time, too.
Simple, right?
5
Exceptional service is personal.
“Do you want anything different today, love?”
When we were kids we'd sometimes go to this breakfast place in town called Faye's. It was also a mini museum of Richard Petty memorabilia, but that’s a story for another day. Miss Faye herself usually served us, and she always greeted us exactly the same way. She'd ask how we were doing, follow that up by asking after a few family members, and then: "Do you want anything different today, love?"
That woman saw us maybe ten times a year, yet she knew and cared as much about us and our needs as some of the best of our own family. That's what service means to us. We'll know you like your coffee before the round and your Buffalo Trace after. We'll know your buddy always forgets a glove. We'll ask about your family. Lots of places like to talk about how much they care.
We intend to show it.
6
We’re building a place worth returning to.
We have the opportunity to build a golf experience unlike anything else. We won’t waste it.
We’ve played a lot of really great golf at a lot of really great places, but the experience as a whole is what drives the ones we talk about and the ones come back to. We want Old Charlie to be at the top of that list for our members. Building something you’ll miss when you're not here is a good start, but it’s not the goal. The goal is the best golf trip you take all year, every year.
That means everything matters. The golf, obviously. But also the food, the people, the pace, the vibe, the way you feel when you pull up and the way you feel when you leave. We've only done our job if Old Charlie becomes the trip you plan your year around.
That’s our focus.
If this sounds like your kind of place, we'd love to have you.
We're building something we believe in. If you believe in it too, we’d like to invite you to be a part of it from the beginning.