Course Comparisons / South Carolina
Old Barnwell Golf Club vs. Aiken Golf Club: The Aiken Choice
Aiken, South Carolina, holds the widest gap in American golf between its newest course and its most loved one. Old Barnwell opened in 2023, a private national club built on 575 acres of sandy soil outside town, already ranked and already booked to host an NCAA Women's Golf Regional in 2027. Aiken Golf Club opened in 1912, in downtown Aiken, public, at very low local rates, and praised for decades as one of the best value classic courses in the country. If you get one day of golf in Aiken, these are the two doors. They could hardly be more different, and both are genuinely good.
Old Barnwell: the new national club
Old Barnwell was founded by Nick Schreiber as a private national club, designed by Brian Schneider and Blake Conant, and set on rolling hills of sand surrounded by longleaf and loblolly pines in Aiken County's Sandhills. The land is the argument. Sand based golf in the Carolina Sandhills is the region's gift to the game, and a 2023 design team working with 575 acres of it had everything a modern architect asks for.
The early returns are not shy. One Top 100 Golf Courses list ranked it No. 71 in the United States, and the NCAA chose it, with the University of South Carolina, to host a Women's Golf Regional on May 10 to 12, 2027. A club three years old does not collect those lines by accident. Members and guests only, of course. Old Barnwell is a national club, which means its membership is drawn from everywhere and its tee sheet is closed to nearly everyone reading this. We cover it in the best golf courses in Aiken because a ranking that ignored it would be a ranking that lied.
Aiken Golf Club: the people's classic
Aiken Golf Club dates to 1912, designed by John Inglis and built for the Winter Colony visitors who once wintered their horses and their golf games in Aiken, with lineage running through the Highland Park Hotel course. Owner Jim McNair Jr. restored it through the 1990s and 2000s back to its classic character. The result is short, walkable, firm and fast golf, public, at rates the payload describes plainly as very low.
Do not mistake the price for the quality. The praise this course collects, consistently, as one of America's best value classic courses, comes from golfers who play everywhere. Firm and fast is a design philosophy before it is a condition, and a 1912 course restored to play that way gives a modern golfer something resort golf almost never does: the ground game, alive and required.
The verdict
On architecture and ceiling, Old Barnwell wins. A top 75 national ranking, championship hosting ahead, and 575 acres of Sandhills in the hands of a serious design team is the stronger golf course, and it strengthens Aiken's standing in the 5 best golf courses in South Carolina.
Concede Aiken Golf Club everything else, because it earns it. Access, value, walkability, history you can actually touch, a round that costs less than the balls in your bag: the old course wins the day for any golfer who does not hold an Old Barnwell invitation, which is to say nearly all of us. And here is the uncomfortable part for the new club. If you played both and could only keep one memory, the firm, fast, hundred year old public course might win that too.
Verdict: Old Barnwell if the gate opens, and it is the better course. Aiken Golf Club for the rest of us, without a trace of settling. It is the rare comparison where the accessible option is also a classic.