The Fall Line is golf's next great exclusive club—and our experts got a first look

The Fall Line is the geological term for the transition zone in Georgia between Columbus and Augusta that separates the hard clay soils of the upper Piedmont and the lower southern elevations that millions of years ago were ocean. It is one of the country’s most significant sandbelts and has only recently been discovered for golf, highlighted by The Fall Line, a 36-hole private destination with an international membership of just 100.

The founders, a group of Los Angeles-based friends and business partners, initially approached Gil Hanse to design the course, though he declined due to its proximity to his Ohoopee Match Club that opened in 2019, 140 miles to the east. But the nature of the unique soils prompted Hanse to recommend the Australian firm of OCM, who have experience working in Melbourne’s sandbelt and had begun pursuing projects in the U.S.

The vast, 5,000-acre Fall Line property provided near limitless opportunities for OCM, inspiring the concept of two complementary courses, one designed with British heathland accents and one with Melbourne sandbelt influences. Opened first, the heathland-inspired East Course ventures through sparse forests of scrub pine with broad, inviting fairways that cascade across long inclines of land. A detour from holes 11 through 15 into a highland meadow provides outward views of the surrounding central Georgia ridges and valleys before the routing ducks back into the pines.

Many of the holes seem to inhale and exhale, playing expansive and then tight. Muscular bunkers with high, native-grass faces step abruptly into the fairways as if setting hard picks. Par 4s at seven, nine and 18 feign width but taper near the green, making players fit drives into shrinking sectors. Greens like the third and 11th, both par 5s, are surrounded by nothing but tight turf, nearly an acre of short-grass playground that encourages aggressive approach shots and imaginative chips. Thirteen greens are open at the front, accessible to running shots that carom off the tight, dry Zeon zoysia approaches and hole locations, especially on the diverse set of par 3s, can be tucked against spines, furrows and knobs.

Aside from the spin through the meadow, each hole plays in isolation and no par repeats itself until 12 and 13, back-to-back par 4s that are nevertheless quite different, one very short and the other very long. There’s nothing inherently special about alternating par every hole, but combined with this setting and this architecture it creates an immersive cadence, the sense that each new tee embarks on a strange voyage into the unknown.

The East was the only of the two Fall Line courses nominated for Best New this year as the West continues to grow in. We look forward to seeing how it fares in 2026. OCM won Best Transformation last year for its remodel of Medinah No. 3, and The Fall Line is the firm’s first win for a new course. As Cocking says, “It’s nice we can finally show some people what we’ve been up to the last four years.”

Brian Oar captured exclusive drone footage of The Fall Line (East) for Golf Digest:

SECOND PLACE
BROOMSEDGE GOLF CLUB

Rembert, S.C.
7,501 yards, par 70
Architects: Mike Koprowski, Kyle Franz

Broomsedge is the baby of Koprowski, a 41-year-old first-time club developer who has moonlighted the previous several years as a shaper with co-designer Franz. Living in Pinehurst, Koprowski saw central South Carolina as a potential soft spot in the expanding market of southeastern boutique private clubs and founded Broomsedge after locating this sand-based site 45 minutes east of Columbia.

The land, divided into two distinct sections, is animated, cut by hollows and gullies. The designers filled the footprint with an impressive playbook of diverse and rustic holes of considerable breadth and movement, Koprowski’s more reserved touch balancing Franz’s penchant for boldness. The results are harmonic, with instant standouts that include the split-level par-4 second modeled after Eastward Ho!’s sixth (where Franz was doing renovation work at the time) and the uphill, drivable par-4 15th with O.B. tight along the right.

THIRD PLACE
DARMOR CLUB

Columbus, Texas
7,241 yards, par 72
Architects: Doug Wright, Hal Sutton

Darmor is an intriguing mashup of things that might not seem to go well together but do, including a rough-and-tumble chunk of south-central Texas outlands, a design based on the template holes of Seth Raynor and a former PGA Tour player-designer as one of the architects.

But Darmor gets it right with plenty of width and some inventive takes on non-Raynor holes like Royal Dornoch’s “Foxy” par 4 and the par-3 “Dell” hole at Lahinch, with the wind and firm soils that make it play differently each day. Located west of Houston, Darmor Club is on the opposite side of Highway 71 from last year’s Best New Private Course winner, The Covey at Big Easy Ranch. Quite the 1-2 punch.

HONORABLE MENTION

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