Course Comparisons / South Carolina
Furman University Golf Club vs. Greenville Country Club Chanticleer Course: The Greenville Choice
Greenville's choice is the friendliest kind of unfair. On one side, a public university course anyone can book, with a Hall of Fame alumni list most private clubs would envy. On the other, the private championship course across town, a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design with a 150 slope and a renovation that made it longer and harder. A Greenville golfer does not really choose between them once. He chooses every time he books a round, and the right answer depends on whether he has a member to call.
Furman University Golf Club
Furman University Golf Club is a public course on the Furman University campus, home to the Paladins golf teams, designed by Richard K. Webel and Walter Cosby and opened in 1955. It plays par 72 at about 7,000 yards, a full championship length for a campus course, and it was ranked No. 16 in Golfweek's Best Campus Courses in 2015. Campus golf has a ceiling in most towns, a pleasant nine or a scruffy eighteen the students tolerate. Furman is not that. Kris Spence renovated the course in 2008, rebuilding all 18 greens to USGA specifications with Champion UltraDwarf Bermudagrass, which put modern putting surfaces under a 1955 routing and moved the course from charming to serious.
Then there is the alumni argument, which no other campus course in America can really answer. Furman's golf program produced LPGA Hall of Famers Betsy King and Beth Daniel, plus Dottie Pepper and Brad Faxon. Four names of that weight, attached to one public university course in Greenville, South Carolina. When a course can point at the players it raised as evidence of what playing it teaches, the evidence is hard to argue with. It is also public, which is the whole point: the course that raised Hall of Famers will take your tee time. Our Greenville ranking gives it the public golfer's crown in the city without a fight.
Greenville Country Club Chanticleer Course
Chanticleer is Greenville Country Club's championship course, a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design from 1970, private, and built to a sterner brief. Par 72 playing 6,864 yards with a 74.9 course rating and a 150 slope from the black tees. That slope is the loudest number in this comparison. A 150 says the course defends itself against the strong player specifically, hazards and green complexes placed where the scratch golfer's misses land. It has hosted USGA and Carolinas championships, the calendar of a course trusted with real fields.
And it is not standing still. A comprehensive renovation led by Beau Welling reduced par to 71 and lengthened the course past 7,000 yards, with the nines flipped. Read that as a club spending money to get harder and longer in an era when most private clubs spend money to get more comfortable. Chanticleer is being maintained as a championship test on purpose, which keeps it at the head of the South Carolina state ranking conversation for the Upstate.
Concede Furman's best point, because it is a strong one: access is a golfing virtue, not just a pricing detail. A public course of Furman's quality gives a city a shared golf institution, a place where a student, a visitor and a low handicapper can all test themselves on Hall of Fame ground. Chanticleer, however good, cannot do that job.
The verdict
On pure golf, Chanticleer wins: the Jones Sr. pedigree, the 150 slope, the championship calendar, and a renovation that pushed it past 7,000 yards at par 71. It is the sterner, more complete test, and if a member invites you, you go, every time.
Pick Furman anyway, and happily, if you are booking your own golf in Greenville. Seven thousand yards, USGA spec greens, a 2008 renovation by Kris Spence, and a public tee sheet on the campus that produced King, Daniel, Pepper and Faxon. Most cities make you know somebody to play golf this good. Greenville just asks you to call the shop.