First Tee — Greater Charleston has unveiled plans for a nine-hole course in West Ashley with a single, unusual membership rule: you have to be a kid.
The nonprofit made the announcement on Friday night as it launched a $14 million capital campaign, informally described as a drive for the kids, to build a dedicated youth golf campus on 13.8 acres near the group’s headquarters. The organization said the campaign is already more than 70 percent of the way to its goal, propelled by an inaugural $1 million commitment from Cartter Lupton, who has donated every year since First Tee — Greater Charleston was founded in 2008 with eight kids in its first cohort and has grown to serve more than 25,000 children each year. A planned 11,000-square-foot learning facility will bear Lupton’s name and include indoor chipping and putting bays, launch-monitor simulators, a nutrition center, and classrooms.
The course itself, informally referred to as a course built just for kids, is being designed by two architects with local ties: Brian Schneider, who served as a lead associate for Tom Doak and designed the kids’ course at Old Barnwell in Aiken, and Troy Miller, a Charleston native who worked at Charleston Municipal and on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island. It will route through towering pines that Miller said would give the layout a rare maturity for a brand-new build. The property is being sized to conform to United States Golf Association rules requiring at least nine holes and 750 yards, the minimums for issuing a handicap — meaning members will be able to earn and keep an official handicap on a course built expressly for them.
Bucky Dudley, the group’s chief executive and a former Citadel golfer who helped found the local chapter, said increasing enrollment and dwindling course access forced a rethink. During the pandemic, youth practice slots were squeezed out of area tee sheets, and in some cases children were relegated to doing drills in parking lots. Even in a normal year, Dudley said, the chapter has had to turn away thousands of applicants because it could not secure enough on-course time from partner clubs, and thinking about those kids the chapter has had to send home was one of his main motivations.
Adults will be permitted on the course only when accompanied by a youth member — an inversion of the traditional country-club rulebook that Schneider modeled on the kids’ loop at North Berwick in Scotland. A hospitality truck operated by First Tee enrollees is planned to serve players, and Dudley said the campus could eventually anchor youth vocational tracks in turf management and hospitality. Site clearing is expected to begin in the coming months, with an opening targeted for January 2028.
