Broomsedge Sweeps Golf Into Underserved Area Of The Carolina Sandhills

Farmers aren’t too fond of broomsedge. The clumping perennial grass can take control of grazing land if it isn’t managed and cattle won’t even munch on the hay-colored wisps if there’s anything else to chew on.

Now witches (the plant is used to make the sweeping end of handmade brooms) and golfers (it’s a cinch to find your ball in native areas where they’re planted) are another story. Located forty miles east of downtown Columbia is a golf club named after the pretty weed taking root in the Carolina Sandhills town of Rembert. Bermuda sod is set to be laid the week after the Masters and construction is progressing towards a November soft open for preview play.

The project is the brainchild of Mike Koprowski, a Notre Dame alum and air force vet who served as the chief of intelligence of an F-15E fighter squadron deployed in Afghanistan. Following his service an an intel officer, he accessed GI Bill benefits to continue his education, earning further degrees at Harvard and Duke. Next Koprowski went on to serve as a campaign director for several non-profits and policy and advocacy groups including Opportunity Dallas which he founded and the National Low Income Housing Coalition in D.C. before deciding to pivot to a longtime passion, fully embrace his golf course architecture jones and parachute into the design game.

Conceiving a golf course from a blank slate was the dream, but in order to gain the practical experience and gather the courage to take that plunge, he first needed to learn the ropes. So, what’s a bright dude living in Pinehurst to do when seeking a hands-on education in the ABC’s of course building? He cold emailed local neo-classical design school stud Kyle Franz. Franz’s Mid Pines restoration had garnered major plaudits and he was at work at another high-profile restoration, Southern Pines, just a hop and a skip down the road from Koprowski’s house. Mike’s ask, to come in as a ‘fly on the wall’ and help out in any way possible, was readily accepted.

Franz wrote back ‘Get in a machine, let’s see what you got!’ As if auditing a grad school course, at first Koprowski keenly observed the operation and took it all in like a sponge. But on Sundays, when construction would halt, he’d stay on site. Left to his own devices he continued his lesson plan, jumping in an excavator and rolling into the woods. He’d build a bunker and then fill it back in and repeat the process until his technique leveled up.

“I knew what the end product should look like. I just needed to learn the mechanics of the machine. Once I did that I started shaping on Southern Pines, helped out on master planning on Charlotte Country Club and shaped a little bit on Cabot Citrus Farms, Eastward Ho and on the practice facility at Raleigh Country Club,” Koprowski said.

Banking valuable real world expertise to compliment the architecture knowledge he’d studied, it was time to start weaving his dream. Throwing caution to the wind he set out to design his own golf course. Kyle Franz was game to come along for the ride as a co-designer but as an owner/architect Koprowski would ultimately have final say. The first step of that journey was spending a year location scouting.

“I probably looked at 25 different properties, most of them were good but they weren’t great. And if I was going to do something as stupid as this, it needed to just stir the soul,” he said.

“I was particularly interested in this portion of the Sandhills. There is this 30-mile corridor that goes from North Carolina down to South Carolina, this vein of sand that Pinehurst is on and there is lot of great stuff in Aiken but it always felt to me there wasn’t as much great golf in this area, east of Columbia. It felt like this could the place for a top 100 golf course,” Koprowski enthused.

Key criteria on his checklist was sandy soiled land conducive to shaping and a boon for drainage as a well as access to three phase power and relative proximity to a population center. But in order to have a shot of creating a true gem, without resorting to moving an insane amount of earth, the natural movement of the land was paramount. The site that is now called Broomsedge ticked all the boxes.

“This was the one that stuck out. The topography was so different. In the architectural world we call it chop—there’s just the right amount of movement for golf. There were some where it was too much and others that didn’t have enough topographical intrigue. This just felt like we could drape a golf course over this land and it would be awesome.”

Financial constraints played a significant role in shaping the vision for Broomsedge Golf Club. One sprawling 1,500-acre tract he found during his search had golf course bones for sure but was simply well out of his price range so purchasing the 200-acre footprint Broomsedge sweeps over for $630,000 was also a pragmatic choice. That was about as much as Koprowski could bite off.

“I couldn’t afford any more than that. I have a mortgage on my house, I make a normal living,” he explained.

While the safer route would have been to assemble an investor group in advance, he was in love with the land and took a leap of faith, taking out an agricultural loan to secure the funds.

Contemporary golf course development is typically the purview of either big institutional players or a deep pocketed individual—not just ‘some schmuck who buys some land and tries to figure it out,’ as Koprowski puts it.

“It was a shot in the dark. It was a risk but it wasn’t an insane risk. If it didn’t work out I could sell the land, God’s not making any more of it,” Koprowsky crowed.

Eighteen months later, after he’d done some preliminary work to showcase the potential of the land, Koprowski brought in a half dozen investors through networking who bought into his vision. He didn’t know a single one of them before but the tie that binds the group together is they all happen to be scratch golfers with an appreciation for fine architecture. The budget for the golf course build is in the $6.5 to $7 million ballpark.

A Taste For The Classics

A design devotee with a deep appreciation for the OG architects who birthed Pine Valley, Riviera and Aronimink, Broomsedge pays homage to the greats and has the feel of a collab between George Crump, Donald Ross, and George C. Thomas in the Carolina Sandhills.

Ground game architecture where balls can be run up onto greens is Broomsedge’s central tenet as is optionality—shorter off the tee can often be more advantageous than longer. There are big, burly blood pumping Crumpian land shapes coupled with Rossonian convex shaped green complexes. Thomas’ flare for implementing alternate routing and course-within-a-course dynamics come to the fore at Broomsedge, with three holes that play to different green sites from day to day like No. 11 which is either a wedge shot to a ‘Postage Stamp’ green a la Royal Troon or a redan-type shot that needs to be hit high left and swing down to a green below a valley. Reflecting Koprowski’s maxim that ‘having elasticity in a golf course keeps it fresh and fun,’ these variable features foster a dynamic experience.

Adopting a British Isles style membership model, the public will be able to play at select times at the private club capped at 250 members. Further along the roadmap there is a plan to build six golf cottages, creating a stay-and-play opportunity.

In America, high-end private clubs tend to be exclusive walled gardens inaccessible to the general public—unless they’re a guest of a member. In the UK even the highest rated clubs can be played by non-members on certain days and times.

“We want to be the friendliest private club you’ve ever seen, that’s what we’re going for. There should be more clubs that do this in the United States, there just should be. American golf is too stuffy. Great golf courses are meant to be experienced by those who love and appreciate them and that’s largely not the case in America. That to me is a tragedy,” Koprowski said.

With an eye to the future, Koprowski and his investors recently snapped up 158 acres right across the street, so if all goes well there is room for future expansion.