When Charleston, S.C., began mulling a renovation to its 90-year-old municipal golf course, Troy Miller was an obvious choice to lead the effort. A native of Charleston with design experience at some of nearby Kiawah Island’s highest-profile courses, Miller studied at both the University of North Carolina Asheville and the University of Georgia, where he taught Golf Course Architecture. Miller’s plan for Charleston Municipal Golf Course is a design to bring the course into modernity by returning it to golf’s roots: his blueprints call upon Golden Age principles inspired by Seth Raynor’s nearby works at Yeamans Hall and Country Club of Charleston, with wider fairways, more short grass, and template features. “We’ll have a municipal golf course that services our local public, and also draws visitors,” Miller said. “I think that when people stop at the red light at Maybank Highway and Riverland Drive on their way to Kiawah to play the Ocean Course, and they look down and see that Redan green sitting there, it’s gonna get them excited to come back and play after they’ve played the Ocean Course and those kinds of courses.”
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LYING FOUR: So how did you get into golf design?
TROY MILLER: I grew up here in Charleston. My first dance in golf course architecture was when Pete Dye was doing the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island. I got to spend some time with Pete then as a very young kid, and then worked with him on subsequent renovations at Ocean. I worked on renovations with Fazio’s group on a couple of golf courses at Kiawah, as well as Nicklaus’ group, and actually worked with those guys — both Fazio’s group and Nicklaus’ group — at other locations as well, all through high school and college. And then I went to undergrad at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where every golf course in the city limits is a Donald Ross golf course. So I got to experience that and learn about a guy that, honestly, I was not exposed to as a kid — because here in the Low Country, it’s kind of a hole in Ross’ resume; there’s not any Ross golf here in the Low Country. The only thing we’ve got in South Carolina is up at Camden, at Camden Country Club. So I got to learn a little bit about Ross. Then I went on to the University of Georgia for grad school to get my master’s in Golf Course Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and I taught Golf Course Architecture there for a short period. I grew up in the golf business: my father was a golf professional. Getting exposed to Pete and the Ocean Course at a young age was pretty influential on me. Right after grad school, I went to work for Landmark Land Company, which is the old “oak tree logo” guys: Oak Tree Golf Club, PGA West, La Quinta, Kiawah Island, Palm Beach Polo. Pete did over 30 golf courses for Landmark in his career, and then we took golf course architecture in-house, and I was part of that team and eventually led it. We did golf courses in the Caribbean, Ireland, Spain, and various spots in the United States — Texas, Missouri, California, Maryland, New York. That was the crux of my career from 2004 through about 2015. I always like to tell people that I’ve been very fortunate in that I got to see the best and the worst that my industry will ever be, all in the first five years of my career — I came out in 2005, and was immediately on a plane with a lot of projects going. And then obviously, in 2007, the music stopped and they took all the chairs away. And I spent the next several years watching a lot of projects that got built that probably never should’ve been built — that were more a consequence of free-flowing capital than anything else — and seeing how the cream rises to the top, and those that really are great will survive, and those that aren’t won’t in a recession. When Landmark kind of started slowing down — our CEO passed away last year — I returned back to my hometown of Charleston and continued to have the Miller Golf Design stuff that I’d been doing under my own flag for a while. Primarily, I’m in commercial real estate development these days in Charleston and have got just a couple of golf projects. I’ve gotten really busy in golf over the past year — which I hadn’t anticipated, to be perfectly honest. I’m really excited about having golf projects here in my hometown — both Charleston Municipal Golf Course and one that’ll probably be making some headlines in the next couple of years, Patriots Point Golf Links, which is right on Charleston Harbor. It is an incredible piece of property that is wholly underserved by the product that is on the ground today.
LYING FOUR: Tell me a little bit about Charleston Municipal. How would you describe it to someone who’s never been there before?
TROY MILLER: It is an old muni. It’s a 1929 layout that’s got great bones — that’s the one thing that you hear people talk about a lot. It’s a golf course that was built shortly after Country Club of Charleston and Yeamans Hall, two of Seth Raynor’s greatest examples of architecture. And those were the only other examples of golf in Charleston. It was built by local laborers; a local golf pro laid it out with some inspiration from Seth Raynor at Country Club of Charleston and Yeamans. If you go out there and squint a little bit, you can start to see some of those template holes. And there are some obvious places where those features have just melted away over time. A big part of what we’re trying to do here is to expose the general public to an architectural style, from the Golden Age, that is wholly inaccessible to the general public on a national level. The only publicly accessible Seth Raynor course is Old White at the Greenbrier, and that’s at $450 a pop, so I don’t know how “public” you would consider that. We’re gonna be at $20 a round at the muni. From an architecture perspective, that gets me excited about this project. The other thing is where this site is located: on the Stono River in Charleston. The Stono River is a big, vast low-country river with large marsh basins out in front of a very beautiful river that leads out to between Kiawah Island and Folly Beach as it goes out to the Atlantic. And one of the byproducts that’s gonna happen out of this is that we’re opening up a lot of the views of the Stono River. From the 11th tee, you’re going to look down on a Redan green and then be able to look out with views of the Stono River all the way through the back nine. The expansion of a couple of big ponds on the back side will help with storm water, and also create the material to elevate those holes that are hard up against the marsh — which have also been susceptible to rising tide levels and coastal flooding. At the end of the day, what we’re going to end up having a is a back nine that is very scenic, and is actually going to be likened to some of the scenery you see — because of the architectural style — at National Golf Links on Long Island: looking across these large marsh expanses out across to water, with this Seth Raynor style of architecture in front of you.
The Gaffney Ledger (April 13, 1961)
LYING FOUR: So how does Charleston Municipal fit into the local golf landscape? There are so many unbelievable golf courses within an hour of Charleston. Where does the muni fit into that?
TROY MILLER: It is such a special place to Charleston and to low-country golf, not just because of its age but because of the culture it has. The municipal golf course was the first golf course in South Carolina to desegregate — public or private. So it has a rich history. And one of the monikers that you’ll see, “Fore Y’all,” shows that this golf course is for everyone. You will see people playing over there in boots and painter’s shirts, tradesmen and laborers — and we also have guys who are members of the clubs at Kiawah at Country Club who’ll come over there on Monday morning to play with their groups. It’s a really unique environment. We also have the Monday Night Blitz in the summertime, where you get two foursomes teeing off playing a scramble, nine holes starting at 5 o’clock, and they feed you a steak afterward. I’ve played with former Tour players in that event; Dan Marino used to play in that event with the owner of Kiawah; and you’ve also got the guy from down the street who is a plumber or electrician during the day. This is their golf course. So my hope is that this golf course will continue to serve that public. The idea isn’t to increase the rates after this big renovation; the idea is to give this golfing public something that they can be proud of, equal to the rest of the park improvements that we have in Charleston. It continues that same charge of Charleston that has happened over the past 40 years, to elevate and be one of the best cities in the world. We’ll have a municipal golf course that services our local public, and also draws visitors. I think that when people stop at the red light at Maybank Highway and Riverland Drive on their way to Kiawah to play the Ocean Course, and they look down and see that Redan green sitting there, it’s gonna get them excited to come back and play after they’ve played the Ocean Course and those kinds of courses.
LYING FOUR: From a design standpoint, when you’re creating something that players of all skill levels will be playing every day, what are some of the design elements that you gravitate toward to accommodate both ends of the skill spectrum?
TROY MILLER: I’ve always said that short grass is the ultimate equalizer. One of the absolute geniuses of Pinehurst No. 2 is that every 20-handicapper can get around that place. A golf course that is readily playable like that is always going to be the high-handicapper and the low-handicapper closer together. For instance, when you’ve got short grass around the green, you’ve got options — and when you’ve got options, you have to think. And good players don’t like to think. And the average guy knows that he can take out a hybrid or a putter, roll it up on the green, two-putt and make his bogey — versus being in two inches of rough, where he may or may not be able to hack it out. That’s a relatively simple shot for a scratch player, but all of a sudden, the short grass brings in an equalization around the greens, and I think that’s very important. These fairways are going to get wider. The idea is to create a golf course that’s strategic — where the proper lines of play are beneficial for the low-handicap player, and the high-handicap player just has more room to play. That’s a big part of it for me: always trying to maintain a safe line of play, and always giving an option to challenging yourself a little more by being on a more beneficial line.
LYING FOUR: I read that this will be Charleston Municipal’s first renovation in something like 60 years. As you’re going through this process, do you have to be cognizant of the fact that the design you’re putting in the dirt might be the dominant design for the next 50 years, and think about how this design will play 30 years from now or 40 years from now?
TROY MILLER: Yes, it absolutely is. If you go back and start looking at the golf courses from the 1920s that have stood the test of time, versus some of the stuff that we were building in the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties — some of those golf courses are more obsolete than golf courses that were built generations before. I think that’s where the genius of those guys in the Twenties was: creating some elasticity in the golf holes, and making sure they were going to be playable for future generations. From my perspective, the integrity of the golf course is something that’s very important as part of this renovation. When you start talking about how it’s gonna play in 50 years: we do face rising tides each year in Charleston, and trying to elevate these golf holes to try to protect the integrity of the golf course from the Stono River is a big part of that conversation. I’ve seen the Ocean Course change dramatically over the last 30 years, based on erosion and accretion of the beach and some of those salt ponds along the far eastern tip of Kiawah Island. Obviously, a golf courses are living, breathing things that change, and protecting them from those potential changes are a big part of what we’re doing here.
LYING FOUR: I’m really glad to hear you say that. I wrote a story earlier this year about how golf course architecture is — or is not — responding to climate change. And you can argue until you’re blue in the face about the politics of it, but the reality is that it is happening. And if you’re a coastal golf course, you’ve gotta have a plan. I’m really glad to hear that you’re being proactive about it.
TROY MILLER: That is absolutely correct. I get more than a gentle nudge in that direction: my wife is a meteorologist here in Charleston. She’s very tied-in with the climate change community and understands that climate change is affecting our day-to-day lives. There are so many good examples of this: Pebble Beach with the sea wall on 18. I mean, at the Ocean Course, we’ve been through three iterations of the 18th green. The initial one that was built for the 1991 Ryder Cup; then after a while, they moved it closer to the ocean; and then it had to be rebuilt because it was closer to the ocean and experienced some erosion around it, so it had to be moved to sort of a middle location. There’s a lot of that. And certainly, in a city like Charleston that is so low-lying — and has been subject to a hurricane or major storm every year for the past five years — it’s very much on our radars here. And it’s not just the sea level rise component of it. There’s more extreme weather, whether you’re talking about extreme drought or extreme flooding from these more severe storms that are hitting areas and creating flash flooding. This needs to be dealt with in golf, and I think a lot of the renovation work that you’re gonna see over the next decade or so is going to relate to that.
LYING FOUR: You spent a lot of your formative years watching courses that probably never should’ve built wither away. But at the same time, here we are in an era where rounds per year are flat, but a place like Charleston Municipal can be doing 50,000 or 60,000 rounds per year. What does that say about the future of golf?
TROY MILLER: I think it’s all about the right product for the right market. We were a one-size-fits-all golf community for the better part of the 1990s and 2000s. We were building a lot of golf courses that were chasing the one before it: to be a championship golf course that was 7,000 yards or more and fit into a community that was going to sell frontage — and we did that for 20 years. And often, the golf course was laid out by a land planner wherever the land was left after they got done laying out the neighborhood. That was one of the real benefits that I had working for Landmark Land Company, which always was first and foremost a golf developer. I always had the opportunity to build the golf course on the best piece of property that was available. And then we worked together to figure out how the rest of it fit into that. In golf, you’re either gonna be the best, the cheapest, or the most convenient. For us, we never wanted to be the cheapest; we were not always gonna be the most convenient; but you can always be the best. That was the way we looked at it from a golf architecture perspective. Going forward, I am very much of the mind that the right product for the right market doesn’t always mean 18 holes of golf, and doesn't always mean 7,000 yards of golf. Charleston Municipal Golf Course is a great example of a readily playable golf course that is in a great location with a great golfing public, and it serves the purpose of serving everyone. I took my 5-year-old to the Cradle at Pinehurst this past spring, and my 5-year-old carried his bag and walked nine holes and played that golf course, and it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had on a golf course in my life.
LYING FOUR: Isn’t that place awesome?
TROY MILLER: Yeah. And I think about what that serves. It’s on 10 or 11 acres of property, and I think about that opportunity not just for a resort — or what you’ve got at Sand Valley or Bandon or any of the others — but I think about what that could do for a community or a small town or a university, with limited amounts of land. There’s a lot of opportunity for golf to keep growing and be exciting, so long as we’re not tied to the same old ideas of what golf is.
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