Course Comparisons / South Carolina
Old Barnwell Golf Club vs. Houndslake Country Club: The Aiken Choice
Aiken, South Carolina, now contains the two poles of American private golf, fifty years apart. Old Barnwell Golf Club opened in 2023, a private national club designed by Brian Schneider and Blake Conant on 575 acres of sandy soil outside town, already ranked No. 71 in the United States on one Top 100 list and set to host an NCAA Women's Golf Regional on May 10 to 12, 2027. Houndslake Country Club is a 27 hole private club inside a residential community, three Joe Lee nines named Azalea, Dogwood, and Laurel, serving Aiken families since the 1970s. Comparing them is almost unfair, and that is exactly why it is worth doing carefully. They do not compete for the same golfer. They compete for the same town's idea of what its golf is.
Old Barnwell: the national club bet
Old Barnwell was founded by Nick Schreiber as a private national club, which means its membership was never meant to be drawn mainly from Aiken drive times. The model is destination membership: sandy soil, rolling hills, longleaf and loblolly pines, sandhills golf in Aiken County that asks for the ground game and gives a thoughtful player options a target golf course never offers. Schneider and Conant are the right architects for that brief, and the early returns, a national top 100 ranking within two years of opening and an NCAA regional already on the calendar with the University of South Carolina as partner, say the bet is landing.
On pure golf, Old Barnwell wins this comparison going away. It was designed, funded, and maintained to be judged nationally, and it is being judged nationally, successfully. A Houndslake member would concede the point in about ten seconds, because it was never the contest his club entered.
Houndslake: the community club that works
Houndslake has 27 holes, which for a residential community club is the most useful number in golf. Three nines mean members can almost always get out, junior golf can run while an event plays another nine, and the Azalea and Dogwood combination, the standard pairing, plays par 72 at 6,548 yards with a 71.7 rating and 139 slope. That 139 slope deserves respect. This is not a pushover community course. Joe Lee, whose nines GolfLink dates to a first opening in 1974, built playable golf with enough slope to keep a low handicapper honest.
Concede Houndslake the day to day argument entirely. If you live in the Houndslake community, golf is part of the neighborhood: the tee is minutes away, your kids learn the game on the same nines you play, and 27 holes absorb a membership in a way 18 never can. Old Barnwell offers none of that to an Aiken resident without a national membership, and its model, members flying in for weekends, can read as golf tourism wearing a club crest. Both are private, but they are private in opposite directions. One keeps the world out so a community can play. The other keeps the world out so a national membership can gather.
Our verdict, on the golf: Old Barnwell, decisively. It is the course that puts Aiken into national conversations, alongside the town's older claims in the best golf courses in Aiken and the state picture in the 5 best golf courses in South Carolina. Pick Houndslake if you are picking a life rather than a round, a neighborhood club where 27 holes and a 139 slope wait at the end of your street. Aiken is lucky in a way few small golf towns are. It got both, and it never had to choose.