# The Aiken Golf Guide

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/aiken-sc-golf-guide/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Guides / South Carolina


A leading golf course in South Carolina. Photo: N75746, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Aiken, South Carolina, in the Midlands, is not a resort town pretending to be a golf town. It is a winter colony town that happened to keep its golf, and the difference matters on the first morning you arrive. The streets are quiet, the historic district is real rather than themed, and the golf sits in the same low key register. You are not here for a resort itinerary. You are here because one of America's oldest clubs is in town, and because, a short drive away, its $25 neighbour plays in the same tradition for a fraction of the fuss.

The hook for Aiken, as we framed it, is exactly that pairing. Palmetto, from 1892, is one of America's oldest clubs, and Alister MacKenzie touched it. The Aiken Golf Club is its neighbour in spirit and in geography, and the contrast between a private club founded in 1892 and a cheap, accessible course down the road is the whole story of golf in Aiken in one sentence.

## Palmetto Golf Club: the reason to come

Palmetto Golf Club was founded in 1892, among America's oldest golf clubs, and it sits private in Aiken's winter colony historic district. Alister MacKenzie reworked the course in 1932 while building Augusta National nearby, a sentence that does more work than most course histories manage in a paragraph. MacKenzie was in the neighborhood for the biggest project of his life, and he stopped long enough to leave his hand on Palmetto.

The course is a classic, short by modern standards test with severe greens, and that description should be taken seriously rather than read as a polite way of saying easy. Short by modern standards still means a full round of golf where position and putting matter more than distance, and severe greens mean the round is not decided on the tee. Bobby Jones and Masters guests historically played Palmetto during Masters week, which makes sense in both directions. Aiken is a natural stop before Augusta, and a course with MacKenzie greens and a 1892 clubhouse is a natural place for that crowd to want to be.

Access is private, and costs here belong in the high estimate tier only. For most readers, Palmetto is the course you hope to be invited to, not the course you book, and we will not pretend otherwise. Its value in a town guide is not as a booking recommendation. It is as the anchor that explains why Aiken's golf culture is what it is: old, serious, unshowy, and still in use.

## The Aiken Golf Club and Forest Hills: the accessible half of town

The other anchors in this guide are The Aiken Golf Club and Forest Hills Golf Club Aiken, listed in the town's golf concentration alongside Palmetto, and we are candid about the limit of the record here. The batch payload gives no full record for either, no architect, no year, no yardage we can responsibly quote, and this guide will not invent them. What the hook does give us, and what every golfer who knows Aiken already knows, is the pairing itself: Aiken's cheap neighbour course is the accessible counterpart to Palmetto's private history.

That pairing is the order to play Aiken in, if you get the chance. Start with the accessible golf, learn the town's pace, understand that Aiken golf rewards patience and a good short game rather than a long ball, and then, if an invitation to Palmetto arrives, take it with that context in your head. You will play the severe greens better for having already learned that the town's courses punish the impatient.

We place Aiken in the wider state picture in [the best golf courses in Aiken](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-aiken-sc/) and in [the 5 best golf courses in South Carolina](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-south-carolina/).

## When to go, and the one mistake

Aiken's golf is best understood through its winter colony roots. It is a town built for people escaping northern winters, and its golf season rewards the visitor who arrives expecting mild Midlands weather and an unhurried round rather than a resort schedule. We do not have a season by season breakdown in this payload to quote, and we will not invent one, but the logic of a winter colony town points the same way every year: come when the town is itself, not when it is staging something for visitors.

The one mistake visitors make in Aiken is treating Palmetto as a bucket list tee time. It is not. It is a private club with a 1892 founding and a Masters week tradition, and the correct way to experience its golf is to earn or receive an invitation and then treat it as a privilege rather than a purchase. The second mistake, smaller but common, is skipping the accessible courses because the famous club is not available. Aiken's accessible golf is not a consolation round. It is the town's golf, played the way the town has played it for decades.

Come for Palmetto if you can get in. Stay, in any case, for the town that built a golf culture around it and never felt the need to advertise it loudly. Aiken does not shout about 1892. It just keeps teeing it up, in the historic district, in the Midlands, under the same quiet premise it started with.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.