Championship golf course planned at former SC hunting preserve. Here’s when and where

Scott Ferrell played his first round of golf when he was 7 years old and ever since his life has centered around the sport.

Membership salesman for the PGA Tour, he also ran the design company for the legendary Gary Player and started a software company to support golf course superintendents.

He even reconstructed the very course where he played in his hometown of Marion, Virginia, Holston Hills Golf Course. It was a struggling municipal course until he and Jeff Little, who played with him in that first round of golf, turned it into a semi-private club.

Now after a 30-year career, Ferrell may have reached the pinnacle. He plans to take a 290-acre former hunting preserve in southern Greenville County and turn it into a championship golf course open only to golfers by invitation.

No houses. No pool. No tennis course. Golf in its purest form, designed alongside Andrew Green, a Baltimore golf course architect who has renovated several long-standing courses such as East Lake in Atlanta and Congressional in Bethesda, Maryland.

“We’re creating an enclave that will add a unique concept to the golf landscape of the Upstate,” Ferrell, who lives in Greenville, said in a news release.

He expects to draw locals as well as national members.

“National members will not only enjoy the relaxed club environment but take in the wonderful town of Greenville,” which is about 20 miles to the north.

It will be called Kawonu, the Cherokee word for duck, and located near the intersection of South Carolina 418 and Fork Shoals Road, west of Fountain Inn, and bordering on the Reedy River.

The news release said construction should begin this year with opening in spring 2027.

The project has not yet been submitted to Greenville County Planning Commission for consideration, county spokesman Bob Mihalic said.

Neither Ferrell or Green could be reached for further comment on the expectations for number of members, cost or how invitations will be extended.

The course will have a clubhouse, practice facilities and four-bedroom cabins.

“Our members are going to be golf people who love the game and enjoy the camaraderie that it brings,” Ferrell said in the news release. “We have the pieces in place to make Kawonu one of the great clubs of America.”