# Old Barnwell Golf Club vs. Cedar Creek Golf Club Aiken: The Aiken Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/old-barnwell-golf-club-vs-cedar-creek-golf-club-aiken/

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Course Comparisons / South Carolina


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Aiken, South Carolina, is a winter horse town that became a serious golf address, and its current choice spans the whole modern game. On one side, Old Barnwell, a private national club that opened in 2023 and was ranked in a national top 100 almost immediately. On the other, Cedar Creek, an Arthur Hills community course from 1992 where the public can book a tee time. One is where the national conversation is happening. The other is where Aiken actually plays. Both matter, for opposite reasons. The town field is in [the best courses in Aiken ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-aiken-sc/), and the state picture in [the best courses in South Carolina ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-south-carolina/).

## Old Barnwell Golf Club

Old Barnwell was founded by Nick Schreiber as a private national club, designed by Brian Schneider and Blake Conant, and opened in 2023 on 575 acres of sandy soil and rolling hills outside Aiken, surrounded by longleaf and loblolly pines. Every word in that sentence is a design argument. Sandy soil in the Aiken sandhills drains, plays firm, and gives golf the ground conditions the game's best sites share. Schneider and Conant, builders from the modern craft school, were given that ground and a national membership model, meaning the course was built for golfers who travel to it on purpose and judge it against the best they have played anywhere.

The early verdicts are strong. A Top 100 Golf Courses list placed it No. 71 in the United States, a remarkable landing spot for a course that has been open since 2023, and the NCAA has booked a Women's Golf Regional there for May 10 to 12, 2027, in partnership with the University of South Carolina. A regional championship is an institutional vote: the course can be set up to examine elite amateurs, and the club wants the examination seen. New clubs often hide behind exclusivity for a decade. Old Barnwell put itself on the record in year one.

## Cedar Creek Golf Club Aiken

Cedar Creek is an Arthur Hills design from 1992, a semi-public community course with public play, and its numbers are more substantial than the community-course label suggests: par 72 at 6,939 yards, with a course rating of 73.6 and a slope of 142. A slope of 142 is high. From the back tees, Cedar Creek will examine a good golfer properly, whatever the scorecard's modest setting implies. Hills built community courses across the country on exactly this model, a residential setting wrapped around a layout with real teeth at the back.

Cedar Creek's case is access and reps. It is the Aiken golfer's home game, the course where handicaps are kept honest week after week, and at public prices. A national club's guest round is an event. A public round at a 142-slope Hills course twenty minutes from the house is a golf life.

## The verdict

On architecture and ambition, Old Barnwell wins clearly. The site, the design team, the instant national ranking, and the NCAA booking describe the most important new club in South Carolina, and a golfer offered one round between the two should take Old Barnwell without a second thought.

Cedar Creek's concession, honestly given, is that this verdict is useless to almost everyone reading it. Old Barnwell is a private national club; the invitation is the entire barrier. Cedar Creek, public, nearly 6,940 yards, slope 142, is the course that will actually host Aiken's golf this Saturday and every Saturday after. Pick Old Barnwell if the offer ever comes. Pick Cedar Creek every week until it does, and do not let anyone tell you the weekly choice is the lesser one. A town's golf is measured by the course its golfers can play.

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