DI_BOOK by Legendary Publishing & Media Group, LLC

DANIEL ISLAND CLUB

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

ISBN: ?????

Written by Elizabeth Bush

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

PRODUCED BY

Legendary Publishing & Media Group Legendarypmg.com 561-309-0229

Managing Partner: William Caler

President and Creative Director: Larry Hasak

Editor: Debbie Falcone

Senior Art Director: Matt Ellis

Business Manager: Melody Manolakis

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

DANIEL ISLAND CLUB

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

ELIZABETH BUSH

PRINCIPLE PHOTOGRAPHY BY L. C. LAMBRECHT

PUBLISHING & MEDIA GROUP

FOREWORD BY GREG KEATING, PRESIDENT AND CEO XIII

PROLOGUE XVII

CHAPTER ONE: A LAND OF PLENTY 1

CHAPTER TWO: CHARTING THE COURSE 15

CHAPTER THREE: THE EVOLUTION OF THE CLUB 31

CHAPTER FOUR: TEE SERVICE 49

Recollections from Beresford Creek Course Designer Tom Fazio 53 Recollections from Ralston Creek Course Designer Rees Jones 58 Keepers of the Green 64 Nature Nurturer 68

CHAPTER FIVE: MEMBERSHIP MOMENTUM 77 That Was Then, This Is Now 84

CHAPTER SIX: THE PARK CLUB EXPERIENCE 89 Facts & Figures 102

CHAPTER SEVEN: MORE THAN A MEAL 107 Cheers to the Club’s Beverage Service 114

CHAPTER EIGHT: HOMEGROWN HOSPITALITY 121

CHAPTER NINE: A SPIRIT OF GIVING 135

CHAPTER TEN: CREATING TRADITIONS 145 Magical Moments 148

EPILOGUE: THE NEXT CHAPTER 158

FOREWORD

THERE IS SOMETHING UNMISTAKABLE ABOUT THIS PLACE we call the Daniel Island Club. It’s more than the worldclass facilities, award-winning golf courses, extraordinary service, and stunning landscapes. The people—each of you—are the heartbeat of it all. As we commemorate this momentous twenty-fifth anniversary and reflect on our successes, I am filled with joy and gratitude. Indeed, we have much to celebrate on this significant milestone in our club’s history.

In the beginning, cows and cornfields dotted the lands that would become our club campus. Our Beresford Creek Golf Course would come first, in 2000, followed by our main clubhouse, the Park Club, the Ralston Creek Golf Course, the Cottages, expansions, and more. Despite all this change, one thing has remained: The Daniel Island Club is a place where members experience the very best in service and amenities. Our team of dedicated professionals provides an elevated level of care, compassion, and Southern hospitality that has become our trademark. And we will continue to strive to exceed expectations for the next twenty-five years and beyond.

Over the past quarter-century, we have embraced the beauty of our surroundings, enjoyed countless rounds of golf, relished exquisite dining experiences, and participated in momentous special events that have brought us closer as a club family. The dedication and passion of our members and team have been the driving force behind our success. The unwavering support has transformed our vision into a reality, creating a vibrant club community and a welcoming environment for all.

We thank you for inviting us into your lives and allowing us to be a part of your celebrations and triumphs, as well as the challenging times. We cherish the relationships we have with you and will always be honored to walk alongside you as you experience life—the big moments, the small moments, and everything in between.

Thank you for being an integral part of our story, whether you have been with us from the beginning or only the last few years. We are excited to begin writing our next chapter with you and celebrating the continuation of this amazing journey. Here’s to another quarter-century of memories, laughter, and cherished moments together.

Greg Keating, PGA, CCM, CCE President and CEO, Daniel Island Club

PROLOGUE

IT MAY SEEM AS THOUGH IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN HERE. In just twenty-five years, the Daniel Island Club has become an esteemed Charleston landmark—a stately fixture set among a natural wonderland of meandering creeks, expansive marshes, and open greenspaces that offer picturesque vistas. It is a place where genteel living, plentiful recreational opportunities, and time-honored traditions meet the very best in Southern hospitality.

In the year 2000, the club began to rise amidst an island town taking shape across from Charleston Harbor where farms once yielded bountiful harvests, cattle roamed among the sweet grass, the great blue heron and the snowy egret rested on the water’s edge, and coastal breezes carried warm salty air from the ocean. The project’s visionaries knew it would be special, this new private “in town” club with a park-like feel—and unlike anything the Holy City had ever seen.

Daniel Island’s stories run deeper than the roots of the centuries-old live oaks that stand in majestic splendor throughout the lush, Lowcountry landscape. People were coming here long before it was a “destination.” Once an isolated area on the Cainhoy peninsula, the island and the surrounding rural communities of Wando, Cainhoy, Huger, and Thomas Island existed “behind God’s back,” as described in Herb Frazier’s book of the same name. Of course, that sense of remoteness started to change more than three decades ago, when modern development began and more and more people discovered the unmistakable allure of Charleston’s hidden gem.

In 2025, the Daniel Island Club celebrates a quarter-century of service to its members. Through this commemorative book, we travel back through time to document the twenty-five-year journey, as well as what came before and what might come next as we look toward an exciting future. As you leaf through these pages, we invite you to join us as we pay tribute to the club’s significant milestones in this magical place we call home—where Charleston’s story, Daniel Island’s story, and our stories meet.

CHAPTER ONE

A Land of Plenty

“From ancient times when indigenous people thrived on the bounty of briny mollusks to the vibrant and bustling global port city that captivates both locals and visitors today, Charleston’s narrative has continued to evolve with each passing season. Every chapter in its history reveals captivating remnants of unique contributions to Charleston’s culture.”

—EXPLORE CHARLESTON

TO BEST TELL THE STORY of the Daniel Island Club, we must start from the beginning.

Long before golfers took their first swings on the pristine fairways of the Beresford and Ralston Creek courses. Before tennis balls soared over the nets at the Park Club, and meals sated diners in Harry’s restaurant. Before friends gathered at the clubhouse’s back lawn to watch a sherbet-colored sunset melt over the marsh grasses.

Before the first European settlers even arrived in the late 1600s to establish a new colony and new lives in a land of plenty that would become known as Charles Towne is where our story begins.

Opposite: Native American Illustration, circa 1200.

ETIWAN ISLAND

Many called Daniel Island home before the current community emerged in the late 1990s. The first to lay claim to the bountiful land surrounded by the Wando and Cooper Rivers, Charleston Harbor, and Beresford Creek were Native Americans, whose presence traces back thousands of years.

Researchers have found pieces of clay pottery on the island that date to a period between 2500 and 1000 BC. According to the book Daniel Island, written by Michael K. Dahlman and his son, Michael K. Dahlman Jr., nearly every excavated site on the island has revealed Native American relics, including some of the oldest ceramics found anywhere in North America.

“Archaeologists have uncovered arrowheads that date from 10,000 years ago, along with pottery shards that indicate (this) … was an important living area from at least 2500 B.C.,” wrote the Dahlmans.

“The first written record of the Etiwan occurs in the reports of Spain’s Captain Francisco Fernandes de Ecija who sailed from St. Augustine, Fla., and entered Cayagua (pronounced Kiawah) or today’s Charleston Harbor in August 1605,” the elder Dahlman wrote in a 2011 article for The Daniel Island News.

Tribes in the area included the Cayagua, Xoye (Sewee), Sati (Santee) Oriesta (Edisto), Ostano (Stono) and the Ypaguano (Etiwan).

Experts believe Native Americans initially occupied the area along the coast in the spring and summer and retreated inland in the fall and winter, traveling to and from the island in handcrafted canoes. But by the sixteenth century, the Etiwan tribe had made it their year-round home.

English reports also made mention of the occupants of Daniel Island as “Ituan, Ittiwan, and Ettowan,” and described them as living “on the island at the junction of the Wando and Ittiwan (present-day Cooper) Rivers,” noted Dahlman. At the time, the island was known as Etiwan Island.

Brockington and Associates, a cultural history management firm, has conducted extensive research on the history of Daniel Island, uncovering thousands of artifacts that provide important clues about the island’s occupation. The company discovered a significant Native American site near Ralston Creek in 2002, not far from the Daniel Island Club property, and identified a number of signs of Etiwan life on the island including hearth sites, trash pits, four dwellings, and one burial site.

“I think the most important thing that our research revealed

Inset: Brick Kiln. Opposite: 1696 Map of Charles Town.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

concerning the Native Americans who lived on Daniel Island and around Charleston Harbor is their adaptability, the way they utilized so much of their environment and surroundings to maintain themselves, their families, their communities, and at times, even larger social groups,” Eric Poplin of Brockington and Associates, said in a 2021 article for The Daniel Island News. “These people understood how to survive very well in this place where we live today. This demonstrates the abilities of people to make fruitful lives, much more than just surviving, in a most efficient and commodious manner.”

Historical records tell us that things began to change for the Etiwan in the late 1600s and early 1700s, with the arrival of European settlers. Initially, the two groups pledged to work together and support one another, with some Etiwan tribe members even serving alongside the English during the Yamasee War. The natives also traded goods with the new colonists, offering deerskin, maize, fish, and venison. Soon, however, as the European settlements continued to expand, the tribes were forced to relocate to outlying areas such as Goose Creek, Moncks Corner, and Summerville.

coastal tribes have lived for hundreds of years in relative obscurity,” wrote Dahlman. “Greater recognition occurred in 2007 with the establishment of a historical marker near Carnes Crossroads.”

In January 2025, a historical marker detailing the Etiwan occupation of Daniel Island was installed near Governor’s Park by the Wassamasaw Tribe of Varnertown Indians, who are among the Etiwan’s descendants.

A NEW IDENTITY

“The past is everywhere you look in Charleston–triumphs and tragedies, beauty, and brutality, infused in art and architecture and etched in stone. Preserved, and restored, step through the door to be transported back in time.”

— Historic Charleston Foundation

In 1670, the city of Charles Towne (renamed Charleston in 1783) was established on the west bank of the Ashley River.

“Today, in the Carnes Crossroads area just north of Goose Creek, descendants of the Etiwan, Edisto, Sewee, Santee, and other

Named in honor of King Charles II of England, reigning British monarch at the time, the town would eventually become the capital of the new Carolina colony and a primary hub of commerce and wealth. Ten years after its founding, the town moved to its present location on Oyster Point, where it would play pivotal roles in shaping American history.

Robert Daniell portrait by Henrietta Johnston.

Before the turn of the century, as more and more new colonists set down roots in Charles Towne, Robert Daniell, an enterprising English sea captain and merchant, arrived in the new land via Barbados sailing into Charleston Harbor sometime before 1677. King Charles granted him thousands of acres of land in the Carolinas, and Daniell established a waterfront home on the island between the Cooper and Wando Rivers. He also owned properties in downtown Charles Towne, in the area known as the Charleston Market today.

Named a landgrave by the Lord’s Proprietors, Daniell went on to serve important military and political roles and ultimately garnered appointments as deputy governor of the Province of North Carolina (1703–1706) and deputy governor of South Carolina (1716–1717). He died in 1718, and the island on which he lived

Jacques_Le_Moyne_illustration_of_Florida_Indians_1564_plate_22_Library_of_Congess

eventually bore his name, evolving from Daniell Island to Daniel’s Island, and, finally, Daniel Island.

The inscription on his family tombstone at St. Philips Church reads as follows:

Here lie the remains of the Hon Robert Daniell, a brave man, who had long served King William in his wars both land and sea and afterwards governed this province under the Lords Proprietors. He died on the first day of May in the year 1718. Aged 72 years.

Pierre Mortier drew the earliest known map of Daniel Island in 1696. It is part of the first map of South Carolina printed out-

side of England. At the time, the island was called S. Thomas Isle. Entitled “Carte Particuliere de la Caroline,” the map depicts the properties of several landowners on the island, including Richard Codner, Captain Robert William, Jackson Abot, John Norton, John Morgan, and Captain Robert Daniell.

Daniel Island’s history is deeply intertwined with that of its young mother city and the unrest it experienced. Charleston was the site of several battles during the American Revolution, including the Siege of Charles Towne in 1780. Historians have reported that Daniel Island was not unscathed during the war, as several skirmishes happened nearby. British troops also recognized the

Old image of Charles Town.

1733 map of Charles Town.

good strategic position Daniel Island offered as the entrance to the back country with a view of Charles Towne and the harbor. According to the Dahlmans, the island was raided several times and provisions were destroyed.

“Tarleton raided Daniel Island on April 28, 1780, driving off all the cattle and destroying a great deal of provisions that ‘scarcely left anything for those remaining on the plantations.’ He also left a small garrison to ensure that no passage to Scotts Ferry could take place.” Similar action on the Wando River side of Mount Pleasant

further isolated Charles Towne from support, the Dahlmans noted.

About seventy years later, in April of 1861, the first shots of the Civil War rang out at Fort Sumter. The following passage, taken from the Dahlmans’ book, offers a poignant description from the David Reilly family of what happened after the Union declared victory in 1865. It references Reilly’s ancestor, Private David Sparkman, a member of the United States Colored Infantry who fought for the Union during the war and is buried in Simmons Cemetery on the island.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

Old image of Charles Town.

When word of the end of the war reached Charleston, Sparkman was part of a squad that began to spread the word and search for any Confederate soldiers still in hiding. Dressed in the distinctive red pants of the 33rd, his squad attracted a throng of cheering citizens. According to Reilly family tradition, each step they took resounded with a single word—‘freedom.’ Freedom for Charlestonians, who were now able to accept the end of a war that had destroyed their city, and more importantly, freedom for all African Americans. As word reached Daniel Island, families banged pots, pans, and scrub boards and sang. Women were waving long dresses in joy and celebration.

duced for the U.S. Navy, the vessel launched in 1803 and drew praise for being constructed of “the stoutest and best materials.”

In the early 1900s, much of Daniel Island’s land was used for truck farming. A company known as American Fruit Growers started farm operations in 1921. Within sixteen years, it was producing sixty-three railcars of cabbage from 150 acres and thirty-seven thousand barrels of white potatoes from five hundred acres, as noted in the Dahlmans’ book.

In the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, brickmakers, planters, shipbuilders, farmers, and cattle ranchers occupied Daniel Island, ushering in new chapters in island history along the way. Some of the island’s exports included timber, naval stores, rice, cotton, bricks, lime, and produce. According to one historical report, the “very best” wood from the Lesesne Plantation on Daniel Island was used in the 1760s to build the Laurens Plantation on property that is now known as Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner.

Acclaimed shipbuilder Paul Pritchard completed Gunboat No. 9 at his shipyard at Fair Bank Plantation on Daniel Island. Pro-

THE GUGGENHEIM ERA

In 1946, investor, businessman, philanthropist, and former naval aviator Harry Frank Guggenheim purchased the lower two-thirds of Daniel Island. He added the rest of the island to his holdings about nine years later. He intended to use the property for hunting, cattle ranching, and timbering. At the time, Guggenheim was a powerful international figure, having served as head of the Guggenheim family’s mining and smelting operations in Mexico, and as U.S. Ambassador to Cuba from 1929–1933. Author Dirk Smillie offers an excellent description of Guggenheim’s contributions in his book The Business of Tomorrow: The Visionary Life of Harry Guggenheim—From Aviation and Rocketry to the Creation of an Art Dynasty.

“It took three generations of Guggenheims to build their

Etiwan Island sign.

wealth,” wrote Smillie. “Yet it was Harry Guggenheim who would guide the family’s next generations of business into modernity. Part angel investor, part entrepreneur, part technologist, Harry launched businesses whose impact on 20th-century America went far beyond the Guggenheims’ mines or museums.”

Guggenheim was the principal investor behind the groundbreaking research of Robert Goddard, who would come to be known as the “Father of Modern Rocketry.” He also supported the trailblazing aeronautical pursuits of his close friend Charles Lind-

bergh, who piloted the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

In 1935, Guggenheim purchased over ten thousand acres of land on the Cainhoy peninsula. He visited his Lowcountry property often to hunt, traverse the surrounding creeks, and socialize with invited guests at his lodge, which he called Cain Hoy and was located on the Cainhoy peninsula along the Cooper River. Among his many visitors were Lindberg, U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, and General James Doolittle, an American aviation pioneer who received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his World War II raid on Tokyo.

“Cain Hoy soon became Harry’s second home, a hub for family gatherings and social events, and a regular gathering place of ex-military brass for annual hunts and dinners,” Smillie wrote.

In 1953, Guggenheim celebrated a momentous achievement in one of his most favored hobbies—thoroughbred horse racing. His stables, which he named after his beloved Cain Hoy lodge, produced Dark Star. The prized colt went on to trounce Alfred Vanderbilt’s undefeated Native Dancer to win the Kentucky Derby that year. It was reportedly one of the biggest upsets in Derby history. The blue-and-white checkered flags on the golf courses at the Daniel Island Club match the colors of Cain Hoy Stables’ racing silks. Guggenheim described his racing philosophy in an article entitled “Captain Harry and his Cain Hoy Stable” for Sports Illustrated published on January 18, 1960:

The village of Pomeioc North Carolina, 1885.

Captain Harry sat down at a broad desk and tapped a pencil lightly on its glistening top. “When I’m asked,” he went on, “what we do at Cain Hoy to get the best results, I can honestly say there is no set formula. My favorite reply is an old one used often before: breed the best mares to the best stallions. Then get the best trainer and the best jockey. Then hope for good luck. Without Lady Luck on your side, you’re done. With luck and good organization, you can get somewhere.”

In 1971, Guggenheim died, leaving his Daniel Island property to the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and his massive Cainhoy parcel to his cousin Peter Lawson-Johnston Sr. in the

form of a lifetime trust. The foundation planted the first seeds for Daniel Island’s award-winning community in the late 1980s and early ’90s when it announced the land would be turned into a master-planned residential enclave.

The City of Charleston annexed the property in 1991 in what Mayor Joe Riley referred to as his “Louisiana Purchase,” further cementing the island’s future. By 1997, Guggenheim’s foundation had sold its holdings on Daniel Island to the newly formed Daniel Island Company, headed by Frank Brumley, George Brumley, and Matt Sloan.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Cain Hoy Polo gear.

CHAPTER TWO

Charting the Course

“If you build it, they will come.”

—FIELD OF DREAMS

THE CREATION OF THE DANIEL ISLAND CLUB had nothing to do with baseball. But this phrase, featured in a popular movie about the sport, could certainly have been a guiding principle. Perhaps it could even be altered to “if you build it exceptionally well, they will come in droves.”

Matt Sloan, Frank Brumley, Carolyn Lancaster, Bill McKenzie and others on the development team set out to do just that in creating what would become Charleston’s one and only “Island Town.” To draw home buyers and create a community, they anchored their high-end residential neighborhood north of I-526 with a private club that would help them hit it out of the park.

Above: Bryce Swanson, Rees Jones and Matt Sloan. Opposite: Beresford Creek holes 9 and 10 in 2006

“TREASURE ISLAND”

Any good idea begins with an inspiring vision, followed by meticulous planning.

More than three decades ago, as development swirled in Charleston, Mount Pleasant, and North Charleston, an unassuming island with mostly dirt roads sat quietly in the middle of it all.

With just a few inhabitants, Daniel Island wasn’t much more than “cows and cornfields,” as the locals often said. If you didn’t have a boat, getting there was a challenge. Interstate 526 was under construction but did not yet extend to the island. The only way to or from the island was Clements Ferry, and the ride to downtown Charleston was anything but short. Except for those hunting or farming on the island, there wasn’t much reason to visit.

to create a master-planned community, complete with residential and commercial properties. It was 1989, and as word of the plan spread, neighboring municipalities vied to adopt the previously orphaned land.

“The foundation could no longer justify holding an asset that valuable, because they had fiduciary duties,” former Charleston

While some saw little value on Daniel Island, others saw a diamond in the rough. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation took ownership of the island after its namesake’s passing in 1971. By the late 1980s, I-526 had inched closer and was scheduled to reach Daniel Island and extend to Mount Pleasant by 1992. Recognizing the island’s value as a location for growth, the foundation began to formally prepare

Mayor Joe Riley told The Daniel Island News in 2017. “I saw it as a very important strategic opportunity for the City of Charleston, and I knew my duty to the citizens and the future was to make sure that Daniel Island became a part of the City of Charleston.”

Thanks to Riley’s determination, Charleston ended up taking the prize in 1991, annexing Daniel Island to the city after beating out Mount Pleasant and North Charleston. Mayor Riley pushed against a gated community, arguing that the island should be accessible to all and honor the history of the land.

“It looks obvious now, because you see it, but it wasn’t obvious [then],” continued Riley. “It was all undeveloped. One of the important things that the designers did was study how the land had been used. Where there were paths or trails or roads, honor those.

Inset: This old dirt road, shown here in a 1990 photo, is now the entrance to Daniel Island Park. Opposite: The Post & Courier, November 11, 1992.

The older trees that had become iconic, honor those. Then build upon that existing pattern.”

The foundation brought in Brumley, an experienced investor and developer who had worked on multiple successful residential golf communities, including Kiawah Island, Amelia Island, Hilton Head Island, and Wild Dunes. A Charleston resident since 1974, who had hunted dove on Daniel Island, Brumley immediately saw the property’s untapped potential. “Where else do you find four thousand acres twenty minutes from downtown Charleston, totally undeveloped?” Brumley asked in a 2016 article in The Daniel Island News. “It had been leapfrogged because of the Guggenheim ownership for the last thirty or forty years, so you had this jewel just sitting out here with twenty-three miles of river and marsh front.”

Brumley’s brother, the late Dr. George Brumley, a respected philanthropist and physician based in Atlanta, also came on board, along with Matt Sloan, a Guggenheim family friend who was then working for the public policy firm Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler in New York. “Basically, my brother and I, and Matt Sloan, put the concept together for Daniel Island when we first got involved with the Guggenheim family and talked about their ideas and dreams for the property,” recalls Brumley. “And Matt and I both started to work with them just kind of on a management basis.”

As the Brumleys and Sloan sowed the first seeds of development on the island on behalf of the foundation, they spent time touring other master-planned communities across the country to draw inspiration. It didn’t take long for news of the pioneering settlement to start spreading. In 1995, the year before the island’s first residents would move in, the February/March edition of Charleston Magazine featured extensive coverage of the new development, dubbing it “Treasure Island” and the “Lowcountry’s hottest waterfront property.”

The first homes were sold in 1996, on the island’s south side, followed by the arrival of Bishop England High School the following year. Sloan would later call the school’s decision to relocate its campus from downtown Charleston to Daniel Island “a huge shot in the arm,” as it validated their efforts.

Frank Brumley reported it was the “best decision” they ever made.

In 1997, the team formed the Daniel Island Company and put together a $12 million offer to purchase the emerging community from the foundation, since that institution’s mission didn’t include developing real estate. The contract was accepted, and the Brumleys and Sloan continued their plans for the island’s transformation.

McKenzie came on board in 1998 as the company’s first official full-time employee, tasked with overseeing land design and government approvals. “We always kind of under-promised and over-de-

Mr. Brumley.

livered—that would be the way we approached things—and not do anything that set a ceiling on where things could go,” says McKenzie.

The group worked hard to bring in additional schools and churches, at the suggestion of George Brumley, who often said they provided “the basic fabric of the community” and were essential to success. “The goal on Daniel Island was going to be, and still is, that it would be a little sustainable town within the city,” says Sloan.

PLACE-MAKING

The opening of Daniel Island’s Exit 24 on I-526 in 1999 was a pivotal moment and a game-changer as it granted much easier access to the community. Home sales surged as interest grew in the evolving landscape. To take the real estate offerings to an even higher level, the development team knew a private club was vital. In fact, it had always been part of the master plan.

“We said, ‘Okay we’re building this brand on Daniel Island that was going to be a premium brand. But we can use the club as a way to elevate and build an ultra-premium brand-within-the-brand and have it be the best part of town,’ ” notes Sloan.

Lancaster, a veteran marketing executive who had worked on Kiawah, joined the team to help create “the brand” that would become Daniel Island and the vision for the Daniel Island Club. “We decided that in order to not just be regarded as a resort community, we needed to have a viable private club to elevate our real estate and be competitive in the market,” she recalls.

Lancaster and her colleagues knew that to get the prices needed to sustain Daniel Island, they had to distinguish neighborhoods, such as the south end, the north end, and “downtown.”

“One of my first tasks was to write a positioning paper to figure out how to differentiate this place. What makes it different? What’s the vision for it?” says Lancaster. “We tried to always have

Cattle ranching circa 1990.

these rallying-point cornerstones that all decisions were predicated on. We knew that we always needed to be true to the fact that we were part of Charleston. That we were an island. That we were a town. And that parks were a key differentiator for us.”

“The original goal was pure business,” adds Sloan. “When we started Daniel Island, Charleston was a fraction of the price of Hilton Head. Hilton Head was very well established all over the country, but primarily on the East Coast, and it was a known destination. We said, ‘Wow, the price points at Hilton Head are twice what

we can achieve here. How do we compete with that? How do we rise up to that level?’ Golf is king at Hilton Head, and we looked at the landscape here, and we didn’t see comparable communities to what was there. Charleston didn’t really have a newish golf course community.”

The development team was confident that establishing the Daniel Island Club would be a welcome and needed addition to the Lowcountry region. Setting the new club apart by making it feel more like a park than a private amenity was key. Once again, The

Post and Courier 1997.

Mayor Riley offered inspiration. He wanted the club to be welcoming and inclusive—and to be open to all, without gates. Even though it would be private, he wanted it to “feel public,” notes Sloan, and he wanted it to draw inspiration from the late Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed many of America’s most celebrated parks and landscapes, including Central Park in Manhattan (with Calvert Vaux), Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, among others.

“Nature is not a luxury, but a necessity,” Olmsted said. The renowned landscape architect saw the immense value in creating spaces that inspire and uplift those who experience them. “We need the calming influence of green spaces to cleanse our souls and rejuvenate our spirits,” Olmsted continued. “The beauty of a park lies not only in its design, but in the way it is used and cherished by the community.”

With Olmsted’s words as a guide, the team determined that the golf courses on the club property would not be located solely behind homes and invisible from the road but would have accessible views for all.

“We have giant arenas of golf—that was the term we used—so as you drive up to the club, once you get past the Park Club, you’re looking at nothing but golf,” says Sloan. “I think we have six holes in a row right there, so the public might not be able to play there, but the public can enjoy it. There are trails that run through everything. A member can hop on their bicycle and get all over the place.”

“The vistas were meant to be public,” he adds. “And I know

Mayor Riley is very pleased with the result. In a lot of communities, you never see the golf course unless you’re in the house, looking at somebody’s backyard. On both of our courses, the whole loop around Island Park Drive, you’re looking at golf views almost everywhere you go.”

Steve Dudash, an owner/principal for DesignWorks at the time, led the design process alongside the development team in

Above: ??????.

Below: Tom Fazio design meeting, 1998 with Steve Dudash, Rick Horger and Matt Sloan.

the early planning stages for the island and the club. The concept of creating golf vistas and other greenspaces was a central theme.

“I call it the value to the whole,” says Dudash. “You’ve got to be thinking about all of that, and that experience as you arrive to this golf course. As a golfer, you get the sense that you’re not overpowered by development. Every hole is not lined by homes backing up to it. You’re actually in nature, which is one of the best things about golf courses. The ones you really like are mostly about nature and being in a park. That’s the sense you get. It’s awesome from both perspectives.”

Keeping as much of the natural environment as possible was important, notes McKenzie.

“It’s natural beauty. Just going in and clearing everything takes it away. And you’re replanting. It’s trying to take advantage of the

existing conditions you have. I think the trees are very important. That area prior to development was cattle farms, and we worked really hard to avoid removing trees.”

Dudash praised Sloan, Brumley, and McKenzie for their intentionality in creating a spectacular place that would stand the test of time. “I’d say Matt and Frank and Bill, they’re town builders. They built a town out there,” Dudash continues. “They’re really not developers. There are other people, I think, they try to save money and to make their money in the development world. But there are others who spend money and know that they’re going to create value in the long term, and that’s what [the Daniel Island team] did. That was their mentality: ‘We’re gonna make it great, and it’s gonna have value forever.’ ”

With Charleston consistently ranked as one of the top cities in the world to visit by Travel & Leisure readers, the team understood the immeasurable value of their town’s address.

“We have a beautiful piece of property, good golf, and a good master plan,” says Brumley. “But as much as anything else was the

proximity to what I think is the finest community in the country, the finest city in the country, and just a wonderful amenity. If you’re in the development business, you want to snuggle up close to a town like Charleston, and you’re pretty well assured success if you don’t mess things up.”

“We’ve had to adapt over the years, but the original vision was to give these people who were moving here from other parts of the country a true connection to the city of Charleston… that we were part of the city of Charleston,” adds Lancaster. “It was a huge differentiator for Daniel Island.”

Since the club’s identity would be so deeply connected to the Daniel Island community, the team eventually decided to call it the Daniel Island Club. “We struggled with that early on,” Lancaster says. “Should it be named something historical? Something that speaks to the land and the history of the area? And what should the logo be? We finally settled on the fact that we were trying to create more awareness at that point for Daniel Island and more credibility, so we needed to be very straightforward and call it the Daniel Island Club.”

For the logo, the team reached out to a number of graphic designers, but none of their ideas seemed to fit with what Lancaster and her team wanted.

In the end, they decided the club’s logo would share the design created for the Daniel Island Company. The iconic emblem featuring a palm tree and wavy lines symbolic of water was inspired by a gate designed for the island by master blacksmith Philip Simmons, who was born on Daniel Island in 1912.

GENERATING A BUZZ

Giving new club members an experience rooted in true Southern hospitality would be among the developers’ many priorities. But to really understand what the club needed, they endeavored to find people who could offer valuable insights.

“When we started the club, we had no property owners,” recalls Sloan. “We said, ‘We’re gonna build this club and people will come, but we need to seed the club with centers of influence and also with people who just wanted to be part of the club.’ We used our rolodexes and approached people, and then people started approaching us. We formed a core group, and they became our advisors.”

By 1999, the Daniel Island Company needed to bring financial operations in-house and begin hiring for the new club, so Amy Moyer joined the team to tackle those tasks. Another important hire was Michael Fabrizio, who became the first groundskeeper. In the early days, the team worked out of Brumley’s office on Broad

Street downtown. Then they moved to a trailer on Thomas Island, where the company had set up a real estate office. The golf team that Fabrizio was assembling worked out of a trailer set up on the club grounds.

“They were working on the course, and they were still mapping out the layout of the course. It had a ways to go for sure,” Moyer says.

Once the developers fine-tuned the particulars of what the club would offer and how it would operate, they began to sell founding memberships. They hired a consultant with experience in launching clubs to help them generate interest. “I remember one event, we walked the course, and it was just dirt, and they drove us out there and they had a big party on what would be the 12th green,” recalls Moyer. “They had a band! It was all about getting people excited.”

When it came time to offer the first one hundred memberships, folks were lined up out the door. “The night before, everybody spent the night outside the trailer by the former Blackbaud site waiting to sign up for the club. They actually came and spent the night! They wanted to be one of the first one hundred,” says Moyer, who served as chief financial officer for the company for twenty-three years before retiring in 2021.

THE CLUB TEES OFF

While Moyer was busy taking those first memberships, the development team planned the physical layout for the new club and associated amenities. They knew they wanted the facilities to reside on a beautiful stretch of former farmland on the island’s north side

that was surrounded by creeks and marsh grasses and dotted with ancient oaks. The main clubhouse would sit at the edge of the parcel, overlooking Beresford Creek from the back, and would serve as the ending point for two eighteen-hole golf courses.

The next step was securing proven and accomplished designers for those courses. Both Sloan and Brumley had ideas about who should do the work, and renowned course architects Tom Fazio and Rees Jones were at the top of the list. “Back when we made our decisions, they were far and away the two biggest names,” adds Sloan. “They both had waiting lists to get on their schedule, and it was hard to get on Tom’s early on. We were a little nervous, because he was doing clubs that were much, much higher end than we were at that time.”

Brumley knew Fazio because they’d worked together on Wild Dunes in Mount Pleasant, and he assured the designer that Daniel Island would be a good bet. “Tom was a good friend at that point,”

Opposite: Article about Club.

Above: Groundbreaking, Matt Sloan and band.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

notes Brumley. “And he knew what we wanted to build. He understood what we were trying to accomplish.”

Fazio’s portfolio included multiple award-winning courses, such as Pinehurst No. 8 in North Carolina, Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, and the Victoria National Golf Club in Indiana. He eventually agreed to design the club’s first golf offering, the Beresford Creek Course. “I felt that having a well-known designer was key to it,” Brumley continues. “Fazio was very popular at the time for residential communities, as being both a very nice guy and also somebody who could design a course that was member-friendly.”

Fazio’s involvement would not only draw potential members, it also provided yet another attribute to distinguish the Daniel Island Club from other options in the region. “There wasn’t land elsewhere to build a club or golf course in town,” says Lancaster. “Everybody else was having to do them further out, like Bull’s Bay. We had this incredible opportunity to build what Tom Fazio identified as an ‘in-town club,’ which he never was getting a chance to

do anymore—something that was so central, so proximate to residential, in town, and where people lived. So, ‘in-town club’ kind of became a big differentiator for us.”

Jones came on board to design the Ralston Creek Golf Course, which is set against a backdrop of saltwater creeks and tidal marshes on the island’s north side. His would be the perfect complement to the Fazio course. “They’re both wonderful designers and very highly esteemed in the industry, but they do have a kind of different touch with things, a different idea, different focus, different details,” adds Brumley.

With construction in full swing and the first cohort of members onboard, the team turned its focus to drawing more interest, starting with an ad campaign meant to convey the spirit of the club. “One of the first ads that we did, the first photograph that we did, was club member John Sutterlin and his golden retriever walking behind him while he’s carrying his golf bag,” notes Sloan. “And the golden retriever has got a tennis ball in his mouth, and the sun is going down. It’s a beautiful moment that we thought checked all the boxes.”

That image of the club lifestyle also needed to integrate with the plans for the main clubhouse. As the focal point of the property, the structure needed to serve as a special and distinctive gathering place for members and guests. The clubhouse design combined classical elegance with an unpretentious air highlighted by nods to Southern style and design. “There was a period of time [in golf] where size of the clubhouse was important and how extravagant it would be. That was never what we wanted,” says McKenzie.

Groundbreaking, touring the club on 12th green.

“Ours is meant to be understated and very Charleston-y,” adds Sloan. “I was living on South Battery Street in a white-brick house at the time, and I wanted the clubhouse to be white brick, because I like white brick. I like it better when nobody ever paints it, and it gets a patina to it, and it begins to flake a little bit. It ages well.”

More inspiration came from Yeamans Hall Club, where Brumley was a longtime member. He admired their grounds and clubhouse design, which also featured white brick. “It was from the twenties,” says Brumley. “It was kind of an old-school Seth Raynor golf course that had a great feel with a beautiful piece of land and a lot of gorgeous oak trees. We got our design people involved and had a lot of trips to Yeamans Hall and looked at how we wanted the place to look. That’s what we came up with, and we were very

pleased with the design and how it turned out.”

In 2007, the overall Daniel Island development earned a prestigious “Award of Excellence” from the Urban Land Institute, which described the community as an important center for the region and a national model for smart growth. With more attention and more accolades, a steady stream of people from all over the country began to set down roots in Daniel Island’s emerging neighborhoods.

As Brumley, Sloan, McKenzie, Lancaster, and the rest of the development team learned over the ensuing years, the Daniel Island Club would become much more than any of them expected. And striving to meet those ever-changing needs would result in a home run for all involved.

Intro to golf on DI, Beresford 2001.

CHAPTER THREE

Evolution of the Club

IN MAY 1999, THE FIRST SCOOPS OF DIRT had not yet been moved and shaped to make way for the Beresford Creek Course. The I-526 exit onto Daniel Island wasn’t open. And the Daniel Island Club had just one employee: Michael Fabrizio.

There were maybe “three or four streets,” with “forty or fifty homes” says Fabrizio. “A thousand acres of wheat were in production on the south end,” he adds. “And there were four-hundred cattle on the north end that we had to get off the property before we could actually start construction.”

Hired as golf superintendent, Fabrizio was tasked with a bit of planning and surveying for the new course, marking center lines, and conducting day-to-day operations. There were no structures yet on the property, other than a small cart barn and trailer. “The neat thing about that time, and even before I started, was they kept changing the course routing a little bit here and there to minimize the impact on the grand trees. After about two or three changes, I can’t remember the exact number, they went from impacting like one hundred grand trees [subject to specific regulations from the city], down to sixteen.”

Fabrizio credits Daniel Island Company cofounder Frank Brumley and his team for prioritizing the landscape. “He wanted to make sure that the really good grand trees were not affected and saved, so it was a great process to go through.” Fabrizio had worked in golf maintenance at Wild Dunes, Dataw Island, and at clubs in western North Carolina and Florida. When he first set foot on the property on Daniel Island, it made an impression. “It was awesome. There were some pasture fields along Island Park Drive, along the golf course there. Those holes you see [now], that was perfectly flat crop fields. All that earth was moved by Tom Fazio, and he made it

Opposite: Clubhouse construction

Fazio, though, had to accommodate Mayor Joe Riley’s views on how the property should be developed. “He wanted public views of the corridor from the public areas,” Fabrizio recalls. “He didn’t want it hidden with bunches of mounds and stuff. And I remember the first shaping of those greens and tees along Delahow, right there at that intersection. Fazio had them [raised] up about six feet, and Matt Sloan told him, ‘No, you can’t do that. The mayor will kill me if you do that.’ And trust me, nobody ever told Tom Fazio what to do. Back then, he did exactly what he wanted. But Matt said, ‘You can’t do it. We’ve got to abide by his wishes.’ ”

As Fazio crafted the course, construction progressed on other club amenities, such as the main clubhouse, the first phase of the cart barn, four tennis courts, and a pool. When the Beresford Creek Course opened for play, Rick Horger, who worked for Fazio at the

Clubhouse rendering. believable. He made it look like that was natural land.”

time, noted the palpable excitement. “Tom doesn’t take on any project unless he knows it’s gonna be special,” says Horger, now a real estate agent with Corcoran HM Properties in Charleston. “He had the luxury of that, with his name and everything else. He had all the best clients, so there was no question it was going to be good.”

The stunning backdrop enhanced the package, adds Horger. “It’s fantastic. It is a beautiful piece of property that had been sitting here for years and years and years. And its closeness to Charleston—it was just a huge opportunity. Charleston was, I think, starving for golf. It still is.”

The first Director of Club Operations, Dick McPhail, came on board in May 2000, and Dawn Guidot joined as the first membership manager. That same year, Simons Cuthbert became the club’s first head golf pro and began assembling his team.

In November, he hired Tom Dean to work in the cart barn.

Dean knew as soon as he heard the plan for the club that he wanted in. “No gate?” he remembers thinking at the time. “This is going to be great. It’s going to be a family atmosphere. We’re not going to put a dome over it. This is a place I want to put in my time and my sweat equity and be a part of it, knowing I’m in at the ground floor.”

Potential new members shared that same enthusiasm. Ray Passailaigue, one of five custom builders on the island at the time, remembers a special event on the 12th green of the Beresford Creek Course.

“The first time that I went on the course, we were offered a founding membership,” says Passailaigue. “We parked on home sites that were there—there were no homes of course. The golf course had been shaped, and we were on a green. We had a big tent over the green, and they had a little three-piece ensemble. They had the architect there, and they explained the golf course, and then they said, ‘Hey, we’re going to offer you hundred people a founding membership.’ We joined that night and paid our $20,000.”

By the end of 2000, the club had about 140 members. The following year, an 18,000-square-foot main clubhouse opened with a small fine-dining restaurant, locker rooms, and a pro shop. A Ribbon cutting.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

grand opening took place on May 26, and all the members and staff were invited to take part in the festivities. The group gathered for a photo on the front lawn of the clubhouse to document the occasion. The picture still hangs in the clubhouse. Bill McKenzie and his wife, Christy, were among the many guests in attendance that day.

“It was very momentous,” recalls McKenzie. “We had been working for eighteen months or so, and to see it finally come together—and members that had been waiting on that to happen. It was a good gathering. It was pretty much just acknowledging that we had done what we said we were going to do. It was the quality they had been sold, and we lived up to that.”

“We just knew everybody,” adds Passailaigue, who also took part in the gathering. “The party, it was awesome. It was what you would expect from a first-class situation.”

Randy Sumter was hired in 2001 as the men’s locker room manager, although he admits he was more of a jack-of-all-trades. “My job was just to take care of things here and there. I would do things here in the locker room, and go down to the tennis courts and take care of things there, and do different things around,” he says. “There were just a few of us here [at the time].”

The ranks grew quickly. Jeff Mahaffey joined the team the same year to handle maintenance duties. “When I first came here, there was no ballroom, and the kitchen was maybe a third of the size it is now,” says Mahaffey, who now serves as an IT/AV technician for the club. “Fine dining and the bar areas of Harry’s were separate areas.”

Beresford construction.

Greg Beavan also started at the club in 2001, as a golf shop attendant, a post he served in for about nine months before eventually working his way up to head pro (he relocated to Boston in 2012 and returned to the Daniel Island Club in 2017). “We had a little portion of the cart barn down there when we first started,” says Beavan. “And there was no clubhouse.”

While hirings and activities in the club’s first year were bustling, real estate sales in the new Daniel Island Park neighborhood were not—at least not initially. According to the development team, the club existed to elevate real estate on the island’s north end. At first, things were slow, says Fabrizio, until a major event in

the U.S. began to impact sales. “The first street—Dalton Street— there were probably eight or ten spec homes that were built in 2000 and 2001. They sat, and nobody came. Then 9/11 hit. Two weeks after, it was contract, contract, contract. People from the northeast wanted to get out.”

GREG KEATING TAKES THE HELM

By 2002, McPhail had left, and Greg Keating took over as vice president of club operations after he too was lured away from the Northeast. “I remember recruiting him and hiring him,” says Brumley. “He was at the Charles River Country Club in Boston,

Clubhouse contruction.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

and we went up there and interviewed him and talked to his people and were impressed by him.”

Beavan called Keating’s hiring “a pivotal moment in the club’s history.” “If he wasn’t here, the way he’s been here,” Beavan says, “I don’t think the club would be what it is.”

In addition to his experience directing club operations at two other facilities, Keating also served as a teaching and playing professional. When he took on the post on Daniel Island, he knew what needed to be done. “Make no mistake about it,” says Keating. “It was very quickly told to me when I interviewed, when I was hired, that my number-one priority, other than managing the club, was to assist the real estate company in selling property around Daniel Island Park, the club being the primary amenity for this side of the development.”

Keating quickly learned that Daniel Island Park was meant to have the “move-up factor,” in that residents would aspire to relocate into the upscale neighborhood. “Your residential properties here are similar to those on the south end of the island, but back in the day, lots were, I think, twice as much up here. That was kind of my teaching, or training, I should say. The club makes it the reason that the dirt over here is more expensive than the dirt on the south end of the island.”

Before Keating even arrived for his first official day on Daniel Island, he began working on an expansion project for the Park Club. “The clubhouse opened in May of 2001, and at that time we had four basically unattended tennis courts,” he recalls. “We didn’t have a tennis program. We didn’t have a tennis pro. We didn’t have

anything. My first project, which was actually sent to me when I was still in Boston, was the fitness center, so the fitness center was the first project that I built here.”

“The rest of the amenities,” Keating says, “were just kind of born out of need.”

By summer of 2001, the Park Club officially debuted, offering a refuge of comfort and relaxation, as well as opportunities for more active sports recreation. Among the enticing new features: a five thousand-square-foot swimming pool with a “beach entry,” a snack bar, changing rooms, and four Har-Tru tennis courts.

It didn’t take long for Keating and his team to realize that they were going to need more space. The development team’s original vision was sound, but the members’ needs were growing. “Originally, the golf club was going to be kind of its own thing, and it would be in the main clubhouse,” says Keating. “There was really not a thought of any of the normal club things, like ‘Where are we going to have Easter brunch? Where are we going to have our

Greg Keating and Rees Jones.

member-guest golf tournament festivities? Where are we going to have anniversary parties?’ There was no place. The only thing we had was the old dining room, which is where Harry’s is today.”

Keating and his team knew the existing clubhouse and dining space was too small. It was time for an expansion, so they began to craft a master plan. “Everything kind of dovetailed into, ‘What’s next?’ ” recalls Keating. “Development kind of led the vision for the club. Working for the developers that I work for, they just gave me the tools to do the job that I needed to do.”

A new fitness center opened in 2004, enhancing the wellness

offerings at the Park Club. By 2007, a forty-five thousand-squarefoot clubhouse addition debuted, featuring a brand-new kitchen and a large ballroom for events. During the construction, The Cabana Bar at the Park Club became the only place members could get food and beverages, since the main clubhouse closed for the renovations. In addition, the new Ralston Creek Course welcomed its first golfers that year, as well as the Palmetto Pride Classic, a Nationwide (now Korn Ferry) Tour event. All coincided with the completion of new residential areas in Daniel Island Park. It was a promise of things to come. A second pool for the Park

Club 1980.

Golf

Club opened in 2007, along with a new tennis pavilion, and multiple new courts. Keating knew that despite the crippling crash of the U.S. economy in 2008, the club needed to stay the course. Plans to complete a third expansion of the clubhouse were well underway.

“I say to this day, one of the best sales jobs I did on the partnership was to convince them to keep building the pro shop, the grill room [now Dover Grill], and the new locker room wing. We opened those in April of 2009.”

Carolyn Lancaster, part of the development team for Daniel Island and the Daniel Island Club, welcomed the opportunity to offer input on designs for the new interior spaces, particularly the women’s locker room. “In every other club that we toured, the women were always given these little chintzy locker rooms with-

out a view [or with] a parking lot view. The men had these grand places with card rooms, and everything had the view of the golf course. Women were always told, ‘Well, women don’t use their locker rooms.’ And I would say, that’s because they don’t have locker rooms they want to use.”

Lancaster says she held her ground, ultimately acquiescing that the women’s locker room could be smaller than the men’s but stressed that it needed to have a view. The new women’s space remained in the original building—taking over the room formerly occupied by the men’s locker room—with a view of the golf course, a card room, and beautifully appointed sitting areas.

When it comes to the development of the club, Keating also gives credit to cofounders Sloan and Brumley for their foresight to

Left: PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem, center, is interviewed during the awards ceremony of the Nationwide Tour Championship at Daniel Island Club on October 31, 2010.

Right: A hole marshal dressed in a halloween costume.

do the right thing when it mattered most. “I always used to call Matt and Frank the ‘anti-developers,’ because they would take property that would be stunningly beautiful for homes and put a golf hole on it. I was very impressed. If you look at the 10th fairway, they could’ve just as easily put homes on the marsh and put the golf course inside it. But they didn’t. They were great stewards of the land.”

U.S.HIGHWAYONE

They also took great care in not accumulating excess debt, notes Keating. “We had stockpiled $11 million to build that way.” So when a recession hit between 2007 and 2009, they were ready. “We were one of the only clubs that didn’t reduce their initiation fees at a really difficult time, when clubs were losing members,” notes Keating. “Our membership sales slowed, and I think our sales overall slowed, obviously because of the economy. But not having any debt, we didn’t have any issues, and the company moved forward, cautiously. When it came to the club, we didn’t downsize, because

our members were still playing golf and doing all the things that we needed [them] to do.”

Terese Dailey arrived in the midst of the recession as a controller in the finance department. “I will say it’s the resilience of not only the club, but the developer,” says Dailey, who now serves as director of finance. “It was the resilience and vision that I think helps you stick with it during a lot of that uncertainty.”

MILESTONES CONTINUE

By October of 2009, the club had landed a significant event that would add to its prestige. The Beresford Course hosted the Nationwide Tour Championship, the end-of-season event that determines the players that will earn their PGA Tour card for the next season. The tour signed a three-year contract with the Daniel Island Company as the main sponsor and Student Transportation of America serving as the host organization.

“My motivation for doing tournaments is to show the membership that this club is at that level of a national championship,” adds Keating. “It was cool, because when the tournament was on TV, a lot of the members got phone calls from their friends saying, ‘That’s where you live?’ ”

Keating remembers one TV announcer telling viewers, “This place is beautiful,” and “You gotta see these houses, they’re unbelievable!”

“That’s nice,” adds Keating. “It just gives recognition for the members. They should be proud of their club.”

In the ensuing years, the club hosted a variety of other events,

Rees Jones, Greg Keating ___ Bryce Swanson and Matt Sloan.

such as PGA of America sectional tournaments, qualifiers for the U.S. Senior Open, the fiftieth anniversary of the Trusted Choice Big “I” National Championship, and the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship.

In 2012, the former fine-dining space in the main clubhouse was transformed into Harry’s, a new restaurant offering named after Harry Frank Guggenheim, former owner of the land on which the club sits. The restaurant features photographs of Guggenheim along a timeline depicting his life and achievements.

“That’s when the club started thinking about making dining a more important amenity,” adds Lancaster. “And to start to position it as not just another dining venue in the club, but to give it an identity.”

Three years later, the club hosted an anniversary gala to commemorate its first fifteen years of service. Guests dined on jumbo shrimp cocktail, lobster ceviche, buttermilk fried chicken, prime filet of Montana beef, truffle whipped potatoes, lamb chops with pea puree, sushi, and more.

“From an event standpoint, the fifteenth anniversary party was really kind of special to me, because it was a big milestone,” adds Keating.

“That was off the charts nice!” adds longtime club member George Durney. “Everybody’s in black tie, and it was one of the classic memories where you really feel like, man, you’re someplace special.”

“You couldn’t walk in the building,” says Dailey. “We opened up everything just for members to come and celebrate, and they

Left: Old pub. Right: Harry’s restaurant. Inset: Harry’s restaurant sign.

were everywhere! I remember thinking, ‘Greg always said his vision was that he could see a day when the parking lot was full, when the pool deck was filled, when all the restaurants were booked, and there were people teeming everywhere.’ ”

By 2017, a newly renovated Park Club opened, tripling the square footage from ten thousand to thirty thousand. In 2019, another important shift took place when the club moved to a more

“member-centric” model. A subset of the original partners, along with Keating, purchased the Daniel Island Club from the Daniel Island Company. “That’s really been a nice shift from some of the comments we used to get,” adds Keating. “That we were not really an exclusive private club, we’re a real estate club, and all you have to do is know a real estate agent to get out to play. That’s not the case anymore. This is a member club.”

Cottage Wando interior.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

The club cottages were added in 2013. Named the Wando, Cooper, and Ashley, these three thousand-square-foot residences offer on-site accommodation to members, their guests, and their families, as well as access to transportation and other first-class amenities at the club. Sadida Chinnis, the club’s human resources manager, remembers everyone pitching in to make sure the grand opening was a sweeping success.

“When the cottages opened, it was all hands on deck,” recalls Chinnis, who joined the team in 2012. “It all came out of our offices. There were boxes of dishes… everything needed to be done.

I’m running back and forth between the dishwasher back into the cottages, we’re making beds… It was something to see!”

As the expansions and new additions continued, membership rose steadily. Then, another game-changing event shook the world.

THE COVID EFFECT

Navigating the global pandemic associated with COVID-19 would prove challenging, not only for citizens, but for businesses and organizations that were forced to close their doors or limit access to avoid spreading the disease. The Daniel Island Club, like many other establishments, braced for the worst, but it never arrived. Instead, the club experienced a surge in interest in its outdoor offerings as members craved opportunities to get together in a safe environment.

“During that time, the mayor shut down every business, but golf wasn’t shut down,” says Keating. “Somehow it was determined that golf was essential.”

Fabrizio believes it may even have altered the demographics of Daniel Island as more and more people sought to get out of congested, bigger cities. “Not just Daniel Island but Mount Pleasant and a lot of Charleston,” he explains. “A lot of people came from the north to get out of cities because of COVID, and they found they could work remotely. In my opinion, that caused increased interest in the island.”

Interest in the Daniel Island Club jumped, too. Soon, membership numbers started to skyrocket. “That’s when the wait list started,” says Director of Membership Sales and Service Rene Dover.

Donaldson. “At the beginning of COVID, we were worried. Then towards the end of 2020, we were about to start a wait list, and it was just insane.”

“Everybody was looking for a place to feel comfortable and feel safe and still do activities,” adds Director of Clubhouse Operations Jenn Paciotti. “Obviously, we had to follow the same restrictions as everybody else, but at the same time, people didn’t feel nervous about going out when coming here to the club. This was an extension of their home.”

“I think at the time we were estimating that [some] people

would play golf, and now your wife is playing golf, and your kids are, and then the pickleball craze, and all of this outdoor activity surged because that’s all people could really do,” says Erin Dudley, who managed events for the club from 2012 through 2020. “It just changed the whole DNA of the club.”

Renovations to the grill room were completed in 2022, while the country was still recovering from the pandemic’s effects. The restaurant was rebranded as the Dover Grill, a historical nod to the name of a tavern and a ferry that operated between Daniel Island and Charleston in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A new outdoor kitchen debuted that same year, and wine lockers were added to the main clubhouse lobby. In addition, major renovations were completed on the Beresford and Ralston Creek Courses.

LEFT: COVID employees. Right: COVID members.

A JOB WELL DONE

After starting with just one employee in 2000, the Daniel Island Club employs between three hundred and four hundred individuals in 2025, depending on the season. It has been a momentous and rewarding journey.

“We are not looking to make more real estate transactions,” says Paciotti. “We are not looking to be anything different than what we currently are. Moving forward after the next couple of years, the

main priority is member retention and holding on to the ones we have and making sure they are enjoying their experiences no matter where they are on the property.”

When asked what he is most proud of, Keating nodded to his employees. “My team,” he says. “The team that I’ve built. We have a culture here that offers a wonderful work-life balance. I thank all of our team and our members for getting us to where we are today—a club, I think, we can all be very proud of.”

Left: Pickle ball courts. Right: Wine locker.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

For Brumley, the drive onto the property still delivers on the initial vision and promise. “You just come through those whitebrick gates and big oaks on either side of the drive. To me, it’s what golf is supposed to look like. It has really settled in and just year after year, the neighborhoods have fallen into place around the club and courses. Our Board of Architectural Review has done a great job making sure that the houses look like they ought to be on a fine Southern golf course. It’s turned out the way we hoped it would.”

Peter Lawson-Johnston II, a relative of the late Harry Frank Guggenheim and a founding member of the club, also praised all that has been done to make the Daniel Island Club the meaningful place it is today. “I think Matt Sloan and his team have done a nice job,” says Lawson-Johnston. “And I think Harry would have been very, very pleased. It’s lived up to all the hopes and dreams they had for it to be an integral part of the community and a great place for people to connect with one another.”

Cottage.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tee Service

THE HOLY CITY HAS BEEN CALLED the birthplace of American golf, thanks to the Scottish and English merchants who reportedly formed the country’s first golf club on Harleston’s Green in 1786. The Preservation Society of Charleston notes that a shipment of 432 balls and ninety-six clubs first arrived from Scotland in 1743, allowing locals to try their hand at the sport.

Reporter Gene Sapakoff described the city’s first contests in an article for The Post and Courier in August of 2012:

Opposite: Beresford Creek hole 17

The ball folks smacked around a Charleston peninsula field also used for cattle and horseracing wasn’t a Titleist. It was a ‘feathery.’

There were no tee boxes or flagsticks, or putting surfaces. Research indicates Harleston Green was a rough but busy rectangle wedged between streets we know as Calhoun and Beaufain from Rutledge to Barre. Slaves apparently served as the earliest ‘finders’ (later dubbed caddies). They often cleared America’s first official golf club of children and animals, yelling ‘fore’ to forewarn. It would be about another 250 years before the sport would make its way to Daniel Island. Those involved in establishing the Daniel Island Club and its sprawling 485-acre property would likely say it took that long because it had to be perfect. Judging by the success of the Beresford and Ralston Creek Courses, it was well worth the wait.

couldn’t get here. The Mark Clark [Expressway] was in, but Daniel Island didn’t have an interchange yet. You had to go up to Clements Ferry Road and come back down.”

There were no residents on the island’s north side yet, but Horger did see plenty of other occupants. “It was kind of unique. We’re used to going in and it being this wide-open vacant land.

In the beginning, it was quite the pioneering experience for those involved in the planning. Club member Rick Horger was working for Tom Fazio when the acclaimed golf course architect was hired to create the Beresford Creek Course. “The first time we came out was 1998, with Tom,” says Horger. “We met at the old silo, at what is now the intersection of Woodford and Delahow Streets. Right at about where the No. 16 tees are for the Beresford Course. I was from this area, but I had never been out here before. You

What you had to do out here … literally we’re all out in fields, all where Holes No. 7 and No. 10 are today— which is Island Park Drive and Delahow—it was all cattle ditches. They kept the cows contained to certain areas, sort of like a fence. To walk the property, you had to crawl through all the cattle trenches, ditches, and the cows were everywhere.”

Still, when Fazio and Horger evaluated the property, it was easy to visualize the potential.

Fazio, who had not yet officially come on board, sketched out some preliminary concepts. “The course that Tom laid out started on the back of a napkin, almost literally,” adds Matt Sloan, one of the developers of Daniel Island Club. “He had golf in the center of the north side of the island, so it wasn’t on any premium property. He designed what was called a ‘core course,’ which means there’s no housing there.”

Sloan and his team wanted to go in a different direction, one

Inset: Matt Sloan and Ray Passailaigue Opposite: Fazio’s Beresford Creek, hole 17.

that allowed them to incorporate real estate along the course, a critical component of their overall plan. Once Fazio was hired, he created other designs, which were tweaked until a final rendering was selected.

“Tom Fazio’s designs, to this day, were all hand-drawn,” recalls Horger. “We had this giant long table, and we’d have the order— Matt Sloan, Steve Dudash, me, Bill McKenzie. Matt would throw out his ideas. Steve would say, ‘OK, here’s what we have’, and it would pass to me. And we would say, ‘We need a little more corridor space

here. What if we dogleg left instead of doing a dogleg right?’ Then it would go to Bill McKenzie, from an engineering standpoint. At the end of the day, you ended up with a plan.”

Construction began in 1999 and finished in the fall of 2000.

Sloan and club member Ray Passailaigue jumped at the chance to play the course before it officially opened. “We snuck out,” recalls Sloan. “And it’s hard, because the course is so visible. It’s an open arena, but that was the first time I ever played all eighteen holes there. I thought it was gonna be great!”

Creek, holes 8 and 9.

Beresford

RECOLLECTIONS FROM BERESFORD CREEK COURSE DESIGNER TOM FAZIO

I STARTED COMING TO CHARLESTON in the mid-seventies, around 1975, 1976. But 1996, that brings me to an era and a time. There were several years before that of planning for the Beresford Creek Course on Daniel Island. And the name Frank Brumley is key. I had known Frank, and I worked with Frank. He was a very gifted and talented person in real estate development and planning, architecture, and marketing and sales.

Frank calls me one day and says, “Tom, I’m going to run something by you. I have this piece of land that is going to come on the market, and I have a thought. I’m interested to see if you know somebody that would be interested in it.”

Frank was basically asking me if I had, because of my connections and past clients, somebody interested in being a part of the development of this property he had on Daniel Island. I went and visited, and he picked me up at the airport and we drove out to Daniel Island. I had no idea where I was going because this was frontiering. There was nothing. That’s hard for people to believe, that just a short time ago there were no buildings.

After spending the day touring the island, we just knew that the land needed to be master-planned. It was probably several more years before things started happening, and then all of a sudden, he puts together a team. We had a big round-table discussion with land planners, and that’s where the fun begins, because you have all of this space and now you have to figure out where you put the golf course? Where do you put recreation facilities? Where does the entry road go? What kind of concept should it be, and what is the feeling? All of those things were a part of the puzzle, part of the programming of structure for what Daniel Island would become.

The amazing part to me is, here we are twenty-five years later, and it’s there. It brings me back to those early planning meetings and the vision and concepts Frank had. They are there. They’re on the ground. You can walk them. You can play them. You can see them. It’s interesting how that evolves.

In terms of the view and the setting, the spaces, and the relationship of the open corridors, and the expanse of the land itself—that was all part of the plan to get that feeling that you are in this great environment. It’s the total package. In Charleston, almost anywhere you go, there’s quality

land and there are great experiences. There’s good vegetation and beautiful marshes and wonderful places. The case for Daniel Island was how to incorporate that with the total feeling of the community.

Daniel Island isn’t just one thing. It’s not just a golf course. It’s not just a recreation area. It’s not just a place to live. It’s a place to experience. There’s something about it, that the experience overall gives you a place you want to come home to. I think the end result of what you have when you look at Daniel Island is an award-winning fabulous place with that common denominator—great leadership.

It’s not so much about a favorite golf hole or even a favorite course when you come to Daniel Island. It’s the total picture. It’s the setting when you drive in. It’s the feeling, and that’s what Daniel Island is all about.

“The course was growing, and it was taking shape,” adds Passailaigue. “We didn’t have any flags. There weren’t any holes on the greens.” But he was impressed. The next time he played the course, it was for the opening day tournament. “It was a beautiful day, but there was a layer of fog on the driving range, and you could see the top of the trees, and you could see the bottom of the trees. But the fog was so thick in the middle, it was just absolutely gorgeous.”

Soon, accolades started pouring in for the new par-72 course, which plays 7,293 yards from the championship tees, traversing pristine marshes, creeks, and other waterways. In 2000, it was named among the nation’s top real estate courses by Golfweek magazine, and the following year it was ranked the twenty-ninth “Best Real Estate Course in the Country” by Golf & Travel magazine.

With the success of the Beresford Creek Course, planners soon

Above: Ralston Creek course, hole 10. Inset: Golf architects sign.

Opposite: Ralston Creek course, hole 10.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

Ralston Creek hole 9 panoramic.

RECOLLECTIONS FROM RALSTON CREEK COURSE DESIGNER REES JONES

THE NEW TOWN THAT HAD BEEN CREATED at Daniel Island truly impressed me on my first visit. Everything planned and built there has been done with the utmost care. I was pleased to have the opportunity to design one of the two golf courses. The developers allowed me to utilize the spectacular Lowcountry vistas and incorporate marshes in the experience and the strategy.

It was a great opportunity to build a special golf course within the city limits of Charleston. I knew we could build a golf course that the members would enjoy and would also be capable of hosting tournaments and championships.

It was important to utilize the natural features of the land. We highlighted the native trees and open meadows and were able to incorporate the marshlands throughout the entire golf course. All of these attributes enabled us to design a course of continuing challenge and pleasure for the members.

When designing a golf course, we really want each member of a foursome to have a different favorite hole. I think that was achieved on the Ralston Creek Course in that so many of the holes are both beautiful, strategic, challenging, and unforgettable. The positive feedback from the members regarding the playing experience has been rewarding.

The Ralston Creek Course was designed to host championships as well as accommodate all caliber players. The fact that the PGA Tour and the USGA have selected the Ralston Creek course to host their events acknowledges the fact that it is a highly regarded layout. All the tournaments and championships hosted to date have been successful.

It’s been rewarding that the Ralston Creek Golf Course at Daniel Island was initially honored by Golf Week and Golf Digest as one of the top new private courses in the country when it opened in 2006. What’s even more rewarding is the acknowledgement from the golfers as to how much

they enjoy the challenge and opportunity to play the golf course on a continuing basis.

Everything about Daniel Island is first rate. It is a great place to live and enjoy all the facilities that have been created there. In my mind the success of Daniel Island is that it has been so well planned. I am glad to have been an integral part of the success in the past twenty-five years, which will continue into the next era.

I think the next twenty-five years will be just as successful as the last twenty-five. The care taken by the developers, its consultants and designers should ensure the fact that the future will be bright.

got to work on the second golf offering at the Daniel Island Club— the Ralston Creek Course. For this one, they would tap another big name—Rees Jones.

“We always knew we were going to do thirty-six holes,” says Frank Brumley, Sloan’s development partner. “Early on, we had not yet selected Rees Jones for the second course, but as we went along, we got to know and understand what kind of course the Fazio course was and knew we wanted to have something that was

a little more difficult.”

“Rees learned the business from his father, Robert Trent Jones, Sr., who I think is one of the most prolific architects in golf history,” adds Sloan. “So, we thought the sort of heritage that Fazio and Jones brought to the industry would be great, and we were honored to have them. I believe we are the only private club in the country with Fazio and Jones on the same property.”

The par-72 Ralston Creek Course made an impression early

18.

Ralston Creek hole

on. Described by Rees Jones as a “stern test of golf,” the course plays 7,446 yards from the championship tees and features “strategically placed sculpted fairway bunkers and diversely contoured greens.”

“I just love the Lowcountry look because of the contrast and the openness of it,” Jones told The Daniel Island News in 2006. “And when [Matt Sloan] showed me where the golf course would go, I knew that we could build something that would stand the test of

time and would be a course that you would want to play every day because of the scenic beauty of it.”

“I do remember the opening of the second course,” adds Bill McKenzie, another member of the development team. “Greg Keating and I played—we were like the first two people to play the second course. It was cold! It was probably one of my better golf days. It was a better piece of land, naturally, and Rees did a great job with it.”

Ralston Creek hole 10.

After its debut in 2006, the Ralston Creek Course earned mention among the nation’s top new private courses by Golfweek and Golf Digest magazines. Since then, it has consistently ranked among the best in the state.

Together, the two courses have become known for offering an ace of an experience for players. “They play very, very similarly,” notes Director of Golf Operations Chris Edwards, who joined the in 2014 after serving as head golf pro at The Golf Club at Briar’s Creek. “In fact, a lot of people would say, even though Ralston is the harder course in their minds, the backside of Beresford is the hardest nine on the facility. So there’s a great mix here, and as a club, you need that mix. You need the ability for players to say, ‘I don’t mind which one I play today.’ That’s a balance that they are able to get here.”

stop set the stage for another series of events that would further solidify the venue’s appeal for professional competition.

CHAMPIONSHIP GOLF DEBUTS ON DANIEL ISLAND

In 2006, the Daniel Island Club hosted its first national golf contest.

The sport’s rising stars gathered on the Ralston Creek Course for the Palmetto Pride Classic, a Nationwide (now Korn Ferry) Tour event. The tournament was a triumph, not only for the players, but for its economic impact, which reportedly soared over $2 million. Although the Classic only came to Daniel Island for one year, the

In 2009, the first of three Nationwide Tour Championships were held on Daniel Island. The high-profile contest featured the top sixty golfers on the Nationwide Tour’s money list competing for twenty-five slots on the PGA Tour for the following season. All four rounds aired on Golf Channel, and writer Andy Reinstetter covered the action for Bleacher Report.

“The Daniel Island Club is a couple of miles off the interstate highway,” noted Reinstetter. “It’s a Wizard of Oz Munchkin-like moment. It is that dramatic of an entrance into an enchanted land of Lowcountry natural oaks, beautiful palms and saltwater marshes. … The beauty of the grounds with the purplish hue to the whim-

Bryan Kim celebrates his 2-up victory over Joshua Bai on Sunday in the 2023 U.S. Junior Amateur Final at Daniel Island Club’s Ralston Creek Course, in Charleston, S.C.

sical vegetation and the majestic clubhouse setting on high ground to the left as the player walks down the 18th fairway for the last time. Overlooking the vast marsh, the view is literally endless with natural beauty as far as the eye can see.”

Matt Every took home the trophy in 2009, followed by Brendan Steele in 2010, and Ken Duke in 2011.

“It feels pretty good to win, but it hasn’t set in just yet,” Steele told The Daniel Island News after his win. “Once I’m able to take it all in and realize what it means for me and my career and my life, it’ll be pretty amazing.”

“Hosting the Nationwide Tour Championship those three years was probably three of my favorite events to do,” says Greg Keating, the club’s president and CEO. “Just because it was so much fun and everyone was involved, and the community was involved. Watching these young players get their PGA Tour cards in our ballroom was so cool!”

The Daniel Island Club’s current head golf teaching professional, Michael Smith, recalls participating in a practice round at the PGA Tour’s Heritage Tournament and talking with one of the Nationwide Tour winners from Daniel Island. “It was very exciting to witness one of the guys that won here going on [the PGA] Tour the next year. When I told him where I was from, he was like, ‘That’s what catapulted my career!’ I remember thinking that was a big moment.”

More recently, the Daniel Island Club hosted the USGA’s 2023 Junior Amateur for boys. The USGA will return May 2026 with the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball Championship. “The commitment of two USGA championships to Daniel Island is a testament to the enthusiasm of the club and the challenge that its two courses will provide to competitors in both stroke play and match play,” stated the USGA’s Managing Director, Championships Mark Hill in early 2022. “We are proud to add Daniel Island Club as a championship host site.”

“To see Daniel Island on a national public channel and to see the construction and things like that still happening for us was a really big deal,” adds Erin Dudley, who was overseeing events for the club at the time. “The coverage that we got was extraordinary. It was a huge undertaking from a logistical standpoint.”

A starting field of 264 players hit the greens on the Beresford and Ralston Creek Courses in July of 2023 for the 75th U.S. Junior Amateur. Bryan Kim, an eighteen year old from Maryland, earned the top prize in the competition, defeating Joshua Bai 2 up in the final. The victory earned Kim an exemption into the 2024

A scenic view of a banner during the first round for the Nationwide Tour Championship at Daniel Island on October 22, 2009.

U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 and a spot in the 2024 U.S. Amateur at Hazeltine in Minnesota.

Daniel Island Club has hosted five USGA qualifiers, including three U.S. Open qualifiers, as well as the 2005 South Carolina Golf Association Amateur Championship and the 2018 Trusted Choice

Big “I” National Championship, as well as several collegiate events.

“It’s exciting to host these types of events,” says Edwards, although he admits it can be a delicate balance. “Certain people may complain that ‘I’m losing my golf course again,’ but they’ll also be the first to brag about the fact that we hosted,” adds Edwards, a native of England. “It’s a double-edged sword, but in the history of your club, you want to create that history to say, ‘This is the type of facility that allows us to do what no one else can, that can do it well, and can show well nationally.’ ”

MEMBERS DRIVE GOLF OPERATIONS

When not hosting major tournaments, the Daniel Island Club’s courses are thriving and bustling arenas where members and their guests take top priority. Greg Beavan joined the club in 2001 to work in the pro shop and ultimately moved up the ranks to head

KEEPERS OF THE GREEN

JUST ABOUT EVERYONE on the golf maintenance crew for the Daniel Island Club remembers the events of Monday, July 21, 2023.

By the night before, more than 260 players had arrived for the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, and stroke play was set to begin first thing in the morning. One problem: Four-and-a-half inches of rain had pummeled the club, leaving the courses saturated.

Daniel Island Club Director of Agronomy Joey Franco was on it. “We’re on a conference call at ten o’clock that night to discuss what we were gonna do to prep the golf course. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re going to have it ready at 7:00 a.m.’ We started at two in the morning to restore the golf course to get it ready for play and didn’t miss a beat.”

Overall, about seventy team members, including volunteers, pitched in to help, some of them even camping out on site. Most of their attention went to the washouts in the bunkers. It was a true test of the team’s ability and dedication, and their accomplishments were even more impressive given that the greens were basically brand new.

The year before, Franco had orchestrated the complete rebuilding and regrassing of all the greens on the Beresford and Ralston Creek Courses. Experts said it would be too soon to host a USGA championship on the newly minted putting surfaces, but with more than eighteen years of experience as a golf course superintendent, Franco was confident his greens could handle it. “Even the USGA—during their winter meetings—talk about Daniel Island all the time, because there’s a myth that you can’t host a championship on brand new greens, and we debunked that myth.”

Not only did the crew make the course playable, the greens were in tip-top shape by the time the players hit the first tees. Franco credits the success to the interconnected underground drainage system the club installed in 2022.

“I’ve built golf courses for eight years so I had the experience,” says Franco, who holds an associate’s degree in turfgrass management from Faulkner State University and a bachelor’s degree from Penn State. “Once we finally figured out what the problem was, we did brand new drainage, brand new everything. And they performed perfectly.”

The Ralston course underwent a renovation in 2019, although it didn’t fully address drainage issues because, Franco admits, the crew wasn’t aware how bad they had become. “It was in August, and you could visually see the grass die on the greens,” he says. “It was a never-ending issue, and we’d just regrassed them two years prior. I called the contractor, and we dug into the green and found the pipe. It was completely filled with mud, so there was no way for the water to get out of the greens.”

After talking with Director of Golf Operations Chris Edwards, Franco called the club’s President and CEO, Greg Keating, who was on a member trip in South Africa.

“We had planned in 2022 to redo Beresford’s greens, only because they were old and they were struggling, but then I told him, ‘You know what? We’re going to have to do both.’ Luckily, the ownership committed to that,” says Franco. “My peers and Greg Keating’s peers thought we were ridiculously crazy to do both golf courses, because typically you do one golf course one year and one the next, so you can keep the play going.

Carolina’s Green magazine.

But we did thirty-six greens in six months, and people have said they’ve never heard of that before. It was a lot of planning.”

A highlight for Aaron Hepner, superintendent of the Ralston Creek Course, was talking to the course’s designer, Rees Jones, when he visited the property during the renovation. “It was an honor to walk the course with him,” says Hepner. “In the first reconstruction, the hills had been softened. The members wanted the bite back, so he came back and put the bite back. It made the greens more challenging.”

The end result of all those collective efforts—two tournament-ready courses and a team that works hard day in and day out to keep them that way. “What we did for the Junior Amateur and what we do for member events is nothing different than what we do every day,” adds Franco.

The club’s work vaulted the Ralston Creek Course to 2023’s “Golf Course of the Year” by the South Carolina Golf Course Owners Association.

And while Ralston Creek is considered the club’s “championship” course, “Beresford Creek is in just as good a shape as Ralston,” says Franco.

He is quick to tout his team of more than sixty employees for their achievements, and he has worked hard to create a culture of integrity and good communication in the workplace.

“Within our department, we maintain a majority of the grounds that are adjacent to the golf holes,” he says.

“We also maintain all the landscaping and turf around the clubhouse and the Park Club, so we maintain collectively about 250 acres of irrigated turf. I have a great team.”

Above: Grounds crew. Inset: Tee marker.

golf professional. “Our goal is to take care of the membership and their daily needs,” says Beavan. “Not only running the day-to-day play, but running events for them, taking care of any tasks that they may have, or tending to guests they bring to the club.”

“When you’re looking at amenities, every single part of this whole club is committed to making sure that the amenities you have are the best you can possibly have,” adds Edwards.

In the beginning, member numbers were low enough that it was easy to get a tee time, but that was always destined to change.

Ray Franz, who started working in the cart barn in 2001, remembers those quieter days. “When I first started, the pro shop was actually in the cart barn, where the bag storage area was,” says Franz, who is an assistant golf professional. “And there were a lot of trailers and stuff, so we only had one course, and we didn’t have a lot of members at the time. So, playing golf out there, you really didn’t need to have a tee time. It was kind of nice.”

Tom Dean’s first day on the job was in 2000, when he was hired by the golf professional at the time, Simons Cuthbert. “The first day

I show up, he throws me a shirt.” recalls Dean. “We’re having a tournament. It’s the first member-member tournament. We want the members to meet each other. There was one parking lot, and we parked in the grass.”

Dean would go on to become outside supervisor for the cart barn and continues to help out today. “My whole point of view was that the service has to match the amenities. And me being in the service business model my whole life, that’s what I was all about.

“I couldn’t have landed at a better spot. It’s been twenty-four years. I have to say I’ve got fifteen to twenty guys here that I could call brother-members. There’s a lot of great people here. I’ve met and had some great conversations with amazing people. I feel very blessed.”

Another person on the scene in the early days was Matt Smith, who started at the club as a cart attendant in 2003 while he was

a student at the College of Charleston. He later moved up to first assistant golf professional and then to head golf pro before becoming director of membership and sales in 2016. “We used to do twenty, thirty rounds of golf a day back when I was there,” says Smith, who is now COO of the Old Sawmill Club in Ridgeville. “And that was a busy day. We had a small fleet of forty or fifty carts, a small little cart barn. The clubhouse was only maybe 17,000 square feet when you added the upstairs area, too. So, it was a small little place that blossomed with Greg’s vision and the ownership’s vision. [Greg] came up with a master plan to really set the club up for success. And really, it’s hard in this business to look ahead and have a vision like that. Most clubs react instead of being proactive, but the Daniel Island Club really was, and through Greg’s leadership, ahead of the game in most all areas, which is impressive.”

Moloney, and Austin

are a few of those he has mentored along the way.

Also impressive is the Ron Cerrudo Learning Center, named for the former PGA Tour player who led golf instruction at the club for twenty-one years. The center offers players at every skill level the opportunity to improve their play through one-on-one or group instruction and digital video analysis technology.

Michael Smith, who joined golf operations in March of 2002, has also witnessed many changes over the years. As head teaching professional, he has seen many of his students go on to find success in the sport. Club members Emma Schimpf, Christina Woodward,

“You want to feel like you have done something that sticks,” says Smith. “Like, hey, I created a program, or I created something that in seventy-five years it’ll still be done that way. Something that simple but significant. I always tell the parents our main goal is retention. If we can get them to come back, whether it’s with me or somebody else, or whether it’s a group or private lesson, then we’ve succeeded. It’s very rewarding.”

Gerard Sampson feels the same way about his experience at the club. He was hired in 2012 to work in the bag drop area. There were only two homes on the second half of the Ralston course at the time and maybe three hundred members, he says. “When you got out there on the back nine, you didn’t see a soul. All you heard was

Matt

Scott

NATURE NURTURER

IT WAS AN EXCITING TIME of exploration and discovery.

That’s what horticulturalist Luana Courtney remembers most about joining the Daniel Island Club as landscape superintendent in 2002. If the tide was low during her lunch breaks, she and her dog Ziggy would walk across land bridges from the mainland to what she called the “baby islands” to have a look around.

“The geese would land, 180 at a time, especially on the Ralston course,” she says. “Because there used to be tractor rut areas there that would catch tadpoles and mosquito larva. Before Ralston was developed, it was really a mosquito-ey place.” So much so, that Courtney ran a mosquito fogger around the island to keep the pesky insects at bay.

She also explored the plentiful native plants growing all over the newly developing community. “There was sweet grass, of course, and cord grass. And believe it or not, I did find some volunteer cotton growing off Beresford Creek,” she says. “Persimmon is something that I’m seeing everywhere [today]. I don’t know if it’s native to the area or if it’s from the farming days here.”

She also found plentiful American beauty berry. “That one is gorgeous,” she says. “The stems have those beautiful red berries, although it doesn’t look like much except for when it’s got the berries.” Most of what remains of them are, she says, along the fence line on the Beresford Course’s fourth hole.

The majestic grand live oaks and some of the palmetto trees she calls longtime “residents” in the community, and she singles out the stately palmetto at the entrance to the club as her “little love.”

Courtney is certified in landscape design and interior landscape/tropical plants and ornamental shrubs/plants, but she brings more than that to the grounds at Daniel Island. Born and raised in Hawaii, she loves to blend her unique background into her work. One of her signature touches is the Hawaiian ginger in the pool area.

At the same time, she knows her efforts benefit from the developers care about the island’s early landscape and its history. “Jeff Elliott and company have done a fabulous job,” she says. “I really admire him. He is really astute about everything he does, and he researches. I worked hand in hand with him and it was a great time.”

OH, DEER!

At the outset, Courtney developed a number of dramatic and notable gardens like the white garden, the bridal walk, an herbal garden, an organic garden, and a flower patch. “We were front page in Charleston Magazine,” she recalls, “and it was such a great time, especially the tours and things like that.”

These days, the deer have mostly demolished the gardens, says Courtney, who now tries to focus on plants they won’t be interested in. “The deer actually sleep at the front door of the clubhouse,” she adds. “They have made it to the point where the only thing that I can literally grow is ginger. Shell ginger, which is the variegated Mexican petunia.”

Lunch with Luana.

She also likes adding splashes of color with dusty miller (silver dust), lantana, and Victoria Salvia. While dealing with the deer can be frustrating, Courtney finds them endearing and has bonded with one in particular over more than two decades. She thinks there are about twenty or so that live on the club property.

She also see alligators, coyotes, and, during the colder months, an occasional otter. One morning, when she came in before sunrise to spray for mosquitoes, she even spotted a panther. “It was about five years in,” Courtney recalls. “She didn’t pay any attention to me. It was a full moon—such a pretty night. She came out from behind a dumpster. She was so big, and she just looked right at me and went over the first bin into the wax myrtles.”

BLOOMING SUCCESS

Courtney and her crew take care of all the landscaping at the Park Club, the clubhouse area, the golf courses, and the cottages. “When the club changes and grows so much, and you have all of these nooks and crannies, you do have to organize them and get them straight,” says Courtney.

From the beginning, Courtney has been allowed to make her own decisions, and when she’s not talking to the birds or singing with the owls, she’s thinking about what’s next on her planting agenda—and feeling especially thankful for the support she has received thus far. “It’s a great team,” says Courtney. “I just love talking to everybody. I feel so proud to be part of the caretakers of this place.”

Inset: Lunch with Luana. Cottage porch landscape.

birds, and it was very, very peaceful.”

As the club has grown to over 1,700 members, it has retained what Sampson, who became a starter at the course, considers its defining characteristic. “I think it’s just a personal touch. All of the team. And I think we all strive to give people the best service we can and the most personal service.”

“It’s been a very quick change in terms of adding membership,” says Edwards. “Obviously, you’re going through it. The first decade was really getting everything in place. Really building the infrastructure. Then, through COVID, it really jumped into a different gear. And the place has really changed a lot in terms of activity since then, since that 2018, 2019 mark. When COVID hit, things really filled up.”

In spite of the horrible tragedies that occurred during that time period, there was a positive aspect that naturally evolved from the

pandemic. “COVID was the best thing to happen to the golf industry, not just the golf industry in Charleston, but to the golf industry in the entire country,” adds Sloan. “It got people out. Then people started joining, and now our club has a waiting list for full golf dues.

“[The pandemic] changed a lot of things, like couples golf. It used to be a pretty sparsely attended thing, then during COVID it became enormous, and it’s stayed that way.”

Between the Beresford and Ralston courses, one clubhouse now accommodates about sixty thousand rounds of golf per year. “That’s pretty evenly distributed between two courses,” adds Edwards. “It’s about thirty thousand or so each. And now that we’re full, we’re maintaining those kinds of rounds. Which is a little different than eight years ago, when we weren’t touching those kinds of numbers.”

Managing the new volume means things have to stay organized. “There are people that use the courses in different ways,” Edwards says. “Some might play every day. They may bring clients in that might be local. It may be national members that bring in clients. It might be a wedding party. There’s a whole bunch of different types of applications for each member that comes through here.”

The club’s signature golf events include the annual Fall Hunt and Spring Chase, popular member-guest competitions. The Spring Chase was inspired by the rich thoroughbred history of Harry Frank Guggenheim, whose horse Dark Star of his Cain Hoy

2003 Fall Hunt champions.

Stable won the 1953 Kentucky Derby.

“We are in charge of executing and running those tournaments, and those are men’s tournaments, ladies’ tournaments, senior tournaments, and junior stuff,” says Beavan. “It stays active throughout the whole year.”

Golfer Johnny Dangerfield took home the trophy in the 2018 Spring Chase and had nothing but praise for the venue. After his win, he told the Canadian Herald Tribune: “Every tournament held at the Daniel Island resort is invariably fantastic.”

IMPROVING THE GOLF EXPERIENCE

The surge in new members and an active tournament calendar aren’t the only things that have impacted club life over the years. A bump in technical offerings has also changed the landscape, in many ways making golf operations easier and simpler for both staff and members.

“When we started, we had our big book and you would pencil in on the tee sheet,” says Beavan. “That’s how you did it. You would erase if somebody changed, and you just had one handwritten schedule sheet for each day. I remember if you were running a tournament, a lot of the times you would write their names on the scorecards and put little Sharpie marks on it to mark their strokes. It’s just different now.”

Today, the software program “Golf Genius” electronically tallies scores live from each player at each hole. “Not only is it a software that we can use to build the tournament and execute the tournament, but you put in the work upfront,” adds Beavan. “You can build your points or prizes, and all of these things are done from your cell phone. You get a little code and punch it in, and you actually put your scores in your phone for all of our tournaments. You can see the leaderboard, so you know what everybody else is doing out there, too.”

The club also plans to enhance instruction at the new learning center with the addition of golf simulators that will give players an opportunity to try golf courses from around the world.

“People will be able to go and say, ‘Let’s play Pebble on the simulator!’ says Edwards.”

Plans to fully design and permit the learning center improvements are underway. Construction will likely begin place in 2026 with a grand opening in 2027. In addition, recent driving-range improvements include an expanded front tee area, improved drainage throughout the range and short-game area, renovated bunkers, and additional targets.

?????????????????.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

Looking ahead to the future is exciting, adds Edwards. Being able to celebrate this twenty-fifth anniversary and capture that moment in the club’s traditional group photo makes it even better.

‘WE ARE THE NEEDLE THAT MOVES THIS PLACE’

Macario Martinez, who joined the golf crew in 2002, says he especially enjoys arriving before the sunrise, when all is quiet. “It’s special because it is very calm, and there is a sense of peace, a sense of the past. You’re out there, just in nature. It’s very beautiful.”

The camaraderie is what he values most, though. “If there is a big tournament, Joey will come and say ‘Thank you’ to everybody. He is the front person, but he always passes on all the compliments to us, and we feel very proud. This is teamwork. It’s not just one person. We push each other to become a better team, and everybody is working towards a goal.”

Joe Niles has been a part of that team for about sixteen years and is in charge of taking care of the crew’s $3.5 million worth of equipment, including the club’s gas-powered fleet of golf carts. Niles has seen a number of noteworthy events over the years, including

Cienda con precturiosto estrunt eruptat usapitiorum landandissit voluptatius et as et, ut que etur?

Udi cum con porectum denis doloribustem sin nost, que comnimus il endamus cipiet et et ut rehenti untur, commodia

the Nationwide Championships, collegiate tournaments, and other competitions. Getting to show off their work on the greens is always a highlight of the experience, he says. “It’s just that you’re proud to see your work after that, when they all like it.”

Also high on his list of memorable moments are those involving the surrounding natural splendor he gets to witness every day on the job. “I mean, there are times when the sun rises and you see the pink skies,” adds Niles. “It’s those photographic moments, and then, the deer, the foxes, the coyotes, and the squirrels.”

Hepner, who first joined the golf maintenance team in 2009 as an intern, says it’s been a rewarding journey for him as well. When Hepner started, he could go almost all day without seeing any members on the courses. “Now I see a couple of groups before nine o’clock in the morning.” he says.

Distinguished Service Award during his tenure at the club from the Carolina Golf Course Superintendents Association. “They’re right up there with the Kiawah private clubs, Cassique and others, even though it’s not an old course like Yeamans Hall,” he says. “They have the prestige.

With the quality of the facilities, the quality of the island itself, the quality of the golf courses, the quality of the maintenance of the courses, it’s definitely the elite of the Charleston area, if not the most elite.

It’s up there with the best.

—MICHAEL FABRIZIO

With the quality of the facilities, the quality of the island itself, the quality of the golf courses, the quality of the maintenance of the courses, it’s definitely the elite of the Charleston area, if not the most elite. It’s up there with the best.”

As for what’s next, the team is thrilled to be celebrating twenty-five years in 2025 and promises to keep up the good work.

“I’m excited about it,” says Franco. “Especially with everything we’ve done in the last five years, to get the growth that we have. I tell my team, ‘We are the needle that moves this place. If the golf courses are good, the steak tastes better. If the golf courses are bad, the French fries aren’t cooked enough.

Daniel

Former

Today, the courses feature a blend of TifEagle bermudagrass and Latitude 36 bermudagrass. For Michael Fabrizio, who served as superintendent of golf at the Daniel Island Club from 1999–2019, seeing the courses evolve and win praise as the best of the best is a true source of pride. “I put my heart and soul into it for twenty years,” says Fabrizio, who earned a

Island Club

Golf Superintendent

Every day, every decision that we make moves the needle on the experience of the members and their guests.’

“To be a part of twenty-five years is amazing, because there are a lot of things that happened over those years to make Daniel Island what it is. It’s a unique place.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Membership Momentum

MOUNT PLEASANT RESIDENT GEORGE RASK can still recall the day he officially became a founding member of the Daniel Island Club. It was more than twenty-five years ago when he first learned the new private club was launching on Daniel Island—Rask and his wife, Deanna, knew they wanted to be a part of it.

Rask heard there would be a sign-up day for founding members to join at the club’s temporary office on Thomas Island, so he made sure to stop by after work to get his name on the list. “I was the twenty-fourth guy to sign up.” he says. “We got in for $22,500.”

The fee for a full golf membership has now grown to $125,000, and there is a nine-year waiting list. Since joining, the Rasks have relished their time at the club. George still hits the club’s golf courses and also utilizes the fitness center, while Deanna enjoys playing cards. Asked if there is anything that stands out to him in terms of milestones or events over the years, he had trouble singling out one thing. “All of it,” says Rask, now eighty-four and retired. “I feel very privileged and lucky to be able to enjoy this lifestyle. The gym has been great. The golf has been great. The friendships have been great. I feel very blessed.”

Club member Mark Durishan calls the club “the center of our social activities, and where we’ve met the nicest people.”

Chris Battista, whose family joined the club after moving to Charleston from Arizona in 2020, has similar praise for their club experience. “Our family has found some of our dearest friends at the DI Club, and we have been able to enjoy kid playdates, golf, tennis, and even family vacations with them. The ability to have such a beautiful backdrop for sports, as well as family and adult activities, makes the DI Club such an unbeatable place to live, work, and make life-long memories.”

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

Bob and Kelly Martin have been members for about ten years. They say the club has provided their family with “a place to spend time with each other and friends. Between exercise, golf, or food, we usually have at least one of our family members at the club every day.”

These and other sentiments are likely the reason so many individuals, couples, and families have added their names to the club’s member roster over the years. Rask was certainly among the few to arrive in 2000, when the club first opened its doors, but today he is among the thousands who call the Daniel Island Club home.

Matt Smith worked for the club from 2003–2024, spending the last eight of those years as director of membership/ sales. “We had maybe 200, 250 members back in 2003,” recalls Smith, now chief operating officer of the Old Sawmill Golf Club in Ridgeville. “And that’s families. It’s a family membership. Today, I think it’s over 1,700 families.”

everybody became friendly there. In other places, you might know your neighbor, but you didn’t hang out with your neighbors. You’d pass them, you’d wave to them. That’s about it. On Daniel Island, everybody’s friends.”

The skyrocketing growth in membership has certainly changed the club dynamic in some ways, but the impact has been positive, notes current Director of Memberships Sales and Service Rene Donaldson. “I feel like it’s changed, definitely,” she says. “But it’s changed in a good way. It’s just grown more and more. I feel like the club is just one big family essentially.”

I feel like it’s changed, definitely, but it’s changed in a good way. It’s just grown more and more.

I feel like the club is just one big family essentially.

—RENE D O NALDSON Director of Memberships Sales & Service

Smith calls the club a central “meeting point” for a community that draws members from all over the country. “It’s really a great place for families to grow and be with other families,” says Smith, who met his wife, Jennifer, while working for the club. “Obviously, our membership base really came from the Northeast mainly, but

Having a waiting list was something the club’s hierarchy knew would come at some point. “We always talked about it,” adds Donaldson. “Then it was like overnight, and here we are. It was crazy just how quickly it happened.”

“We had such an increase in membership,” Director of Clubhouse Operations Jenn Paciotti says about the pandemic boom. “We started filling up very quickly. Then it was almost like we weren’t prepared for that growth to a certain extent. It took us a good solid year to catch up on what our teaming model should be, what does that look like, and how can we properly put people in the right places to take care of the masses right now?”

Opposite: Member collage.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

Another example of how the surge in membership has impacted club operations over the years is how in 2013 the club had one transportation vehicle that provided rides for members. In 2025 it has four.

“We take members to the airport, downtown Columbia for Carolina football games, April for the Masters, you name it.” says Donaldson, a USC graduate who started at the club in 2013 as a food and beverage intern after meeting Greg Keating at a Club Managers Association conference in California.

The club stays busy year-round, offering a myriad of family-friendly recreation and social events, yet another distinction that sets it apart. “It’s an in-town club,” says Kendall Bennett, systems operations manager and executive assistant to the president. “There’s just a real sense of pride of place. I would say we are the opposite of Kiawah. At Kiawah, 22 percent live there full time and the rest are flying in for a season. Our members here are full time. We only have about 20 percent that are flying in for a season, so our day-in and day-out interactions are with each other. We spend more time with each other than we do our own families.”

“Other clubs you drive through, you have dinner, and you come home,” adds George Durney. “We’re always here. Then you bring guests in or family in and they’re blown away. They’ll go to the fitness center, the pool, play pickleball. Then we’ll go have dinner at Harry’s, then we’ll play golf. And they haven’t gone more than two miles or a mile. They’ve had an experience like they’ve been to a top resort.”

After a shift in 2019, club members took over ownership of the club and it became more member-centric. That spurred a continual focus on improving the member experience. One way the club has done that is through increased programming, events, and better communication. “You have to remain relevant,” says Director of Finance Terese Dailey, who has been part of the club team since 2008. “Thankfully, the partnership has always said we will maintain this club to the standards that it should be. There are very practical strategies. But you’re stewards of money and expectations. And I take that very seriously.

Above: Members enjoying the pool.

Opposite: golfers walking up the 18th of the Ralston Creek course.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

“I look at our performance and say ‘We’re 1,700 members now!’ So I do have to acknowledge and be grateful that I’ve been able to be a part of something like that. We have come a long way. In the next twenty-five years, you’ll have kids coming back with their kids to say they grew up here. That’ll be fun to see.”

Paciotti has also enjoyed watching the club’s progress and the addition of new members over the years. She joined the team in 2018 with over a decade of experience in club management. “I think that in the past six years, when you look at the growth of

the club, you’re starting to see the younger kids get older and seeing them kind of enjoy different facets of the club. It’s not just coming to the events. You see them out golfing, you see them in tennis camp, you see them in kids’ camp, and then they’re having dinner with their families. That’s what we do. We’re in the relationship business.

It’s not what you do, but how you make people feel. I think that our club is so good at paying attention to how we make people feel.”

So good in fact, adds Donaldson, that the club really sells itself when it comes to prospective members. “It has a welcoming vibe.

From the landscaping all the way up to food and beverage. It’s a special place to be. Taking prospective members on tours, just seeing the excitement on their faces, walking them around, it never gets old.”

For Donaldson, two specific aspects of the club continue to be her favorite features: the driveway entrance under the oaks and the beamed ceiling in the Dover Grill.

“Just pulling into the clubhouse through the pillars, seeing those and just that drive down to the clubhouse. I just had a baby, and I wanted to come back to work! I love my job. I love our mem-

bers. It’s a job and it’s work, but it never feels like work.”

“It’s pretty darn near perfect,” she adds. “Pretty close to heaven.”

Rask thinks so, too, and is so grateful he took the time to join all those years ago. “I’m an avid golfer, plain and simple,” he says. “And so we thought, ‘Let’s take a chance on this.’ I think the club has been blessed to have the success that they’ve had, along with the fact that a lot of people want to move to Charleston or South Carolina. The Daniel Island Club has been a big beneficiary of that.”

2000

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

MEMBERSHIP TYPE INITIATION/DEPOSIT*

Founding member

2009

Daniel Island Golf

Invitational Golf

$22,500

$85,500

$60,000

Social N/A

2025

Daniel Island

(includes $10,000 surety deposit)

Invitational Golf

(includes $10,000 surety deposit)

National**

(includes a $2,500 surety deposit)

Sports

(includes a $2,500 surety deposit)

$125,000

$62,500

$52,500

Social N/A

No initiation fee, but $1,000 surety deposit

*Initiation fees were completely refundable until 2018. Today, only the surety deposit is refundable.

**Membership level added in 2010, with a $25,000 initiation fee.

Opposite: Siegel membership certificate..

Average age of members: 56–57 years old.

CHAPTER SIX

The Park Club Experience

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN SIXTEEN YEARS since Director of Fitness Michael Steele joined the Park Club aquatics team, first as a part-time front desk attendant then as pool manager. But he still remembers the game-changing advice he received in his first days on the job. It was from a book called Raving Fans given to him by Greg Keating, who then served as vice president of club operations.

“The author of the book basically says unless you can create a program or something where you have people just raving about it, don’t do it,” says Steele, who credits Keating with taking the club to amazing heights during its twenty-five-year run while maintaining the highest standards.

That fan-focused philosophy is one Steele and his team keep front and center when serving their clients at the fitness center, which officially opened in 2004 as part of the Park Club. Before that, only swimming and tennis were offered. Designed by noted

area architect Jim Thomas, the Park Club debuted in 2002 with a five thousand-square-foot pool, changing rooms, a snack bar, and four Har-Tru tennis courts.

That hadn’t always been the plan. According to Carolyn Lancaster, the Park Club was initially supposed to focus more on dining and socializing. “In one of the original designs, it was supposed to be more of a garden club, where the women would want to go, and we would have a dining room and meeting space in there,” says Lancaster. Soon, though, they realized it made more sense to

keep dining and meeting in the main clubhouse and use the Park Club for swim and tennis. Once they did, “the demand moved from that, and we went from one pool and a few tennis courts, then we added a grass court, then we added a tennis building, then we added another pool,” says Lancaster. “It just kept growing.”

Although the garden club idea had been scrapped, the development team still decided to call the facility the Park Club, in keeping with its park-like setting. It was a hit from day one. “It was extremely successful,” says Amy Moyer, a founding member of the club who served as chief financial officer for the Daniel Island Company until 2021. “Although there were not very many members at that time, they all used it. It was an awesome place.

To Matt Sloan, president and CEO of the Daniel Island Development Company, and to the others on his team, the Park Club

offered a unique selling proposition. “It’s two clubs for the price of one,” he says. “There are some people who never set foot in the Park Club because they’re all about golf, but then there are some people that never set foot in the golf club, because they’re all about swim and tennis and fitness. It’s a really terrific value-add. It’s something that nobody else in town has anything like, and it gets heavy use.”

The addition of the fitness center turned the space into a true sports facility, and the center went from serving just a few people a day to close to four hundred a day in 2025.

Tony Ashe joined the fitness center team in 2007, when traffic was sparse. “I remember just sitting at the fitness center desk and literally working all day, with four or five people in the gym,” says Ashe, fitness center manager. “You’d almost be bored, just because nobody was here. Now it’s literally nonstop. They are waiting to get

Left: pool.

Right: ????.

in. We used to open at 6 a.m., and now it’s 5—they are still waiting to get in!”

A second pool was added in 2007, as well as new tennis courts and a tennis pavilion, but the space and equipment in the fitness center would soon not be enough to serve the growing needs of the members. By 2017, a newly renovated facility opened with an additional four-thousand-square feet of space, including enhanced cardio and strength training areas. The $2.7 million project involved renovating existing space and adding new men’s and women’s locker rooms, showers, bathrooms, and an aerobics room. Additionally, The Cabana Bar kitchen was upgraded, parking was improved, and new tennis courts were added. Then, in 2019, a third expansion took place.

“It basically tripled,” says Steele. “I want to say it went from ten-

thousand-square feet to about right over thirty thousand. At that time we had five treadmills, five ellipticals, and five bikes. Now we have ten treadmills, ten ellipticals, and sixteen spin bikes.”

The equipment upgrade also included two rowers, three power mills (stair climbers), three recumbent bikes, and four upright bikes. The center also added a smoothie bar and on-site massage therapy. And while not every addition or enhancement the center has tried has been a success (paddle-boarding never took off), Steele calls the improvements an overall win-win. “The owners renovated this facility, and it came out wonderful.” he adds. “The club spent a lot of money, specifically on fitness and out by the pool to upgrade the Park Club area. It was clear even prior to COVID that a lot of people were joining these types of clubs not just for golf anymore. It wasn’t the main thing, but people wanted health and

Left: Early tennis.

Right: Pickle ball..

fitness, and it was blowing up. It still is. It’s even crazier now.”

The class schedule and attendance are great indicators of the facility’s increased popularity and growth. The center went from offering two or three classes a day to six or seven. Fitness classes start at 5:30 a.m. and are offered every hour on the hour until 1:30 p.m., and they are always packed, says Steele.

It’s also an environment that has drawn national attention. In 2021, the Daniel Island Club was ranked No. 30 among the “Top Ranked Private Club and Resort Fitness and Wellness Centers” across the U.S. by Club+Resort Business. The club ranked sixth nationwide on the list of the “Top Ranked Private Club and Resort Aquatics and Pools” in 2022 by the same publication.

One person who helps keep things moving at the facility is personal trainer and instructor Missy Feiser, who joined the Park

Club team in 2011. Feiser offers a number of fitness classes, including boot-camp style sessions, TRX, and Pilates. Her original affiliation with Daniel Island Club came more than twenty years ago, when she signed on as one of the club’s first members. She started working as an instructor at fitness centers in Mount Pleasant where she recognized several former Daniel Island Club members in her classes. That’s when Feiser knew Daniel Island Club’s fitness center had room for improvement. “I came back and was like, ‘Hey, are you interested in some Pilates classes, some things to kind of liven up the club and draw younger crowds?”

The club responded by offering Feiser a full-time position. The job made her one of the few to experience Daniel Island as both a member and an employee, which informs her approach and her appreciation for her environment. “To me, it’s really cool because

Left: New Fitness. Right: Class. Opposite: Gettin after it.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

I have both sides of it,” she says. “I can remember my kids out there swimming when they were babies. Some of the people, Michael Smith [head golf teaching professional], was my neighbor, and our kids grew up together. So it’s in all aspects of my life. Not just my day-to-day here, but in my friendships and how I’ve seen some people come and go, although others have been here since day one.”

Feiser calls the club’s growth both “great” and “wild,” as reflected in the rise in attendance in her classes—and the age range of the clients. She used to have classes with the same eight–ten people every day, and now it’s seventeen–twenty with a wait list, she says. “Just the amount of classes that we offer now, and the variety of levels. We have some classes where anybody of any age can take part. Then we have some that we specialize for the ‘senior circuit,’ but I

feel like we offer something for everyone.

The Park Club’s pools are no less active, especially in the summer, when kids are off school, summer camps are in full swing, and families make visiting the club a part of daily life. “The pools are always busy,” says Stuart Hawthorne, food and beverage manager of The Cabana. “It’s chaos, but it’s organized chaos.”

One member who says his family happily takes full advantage of all the Park Club has to offer is George Durney, who joined in 2006 with his wife, Ann, and family. “I’ve teased people about this over the years,” he says. “Ann and I—our cost-per-activity is about thirteen to fourteen dollars if you look at it. I use the gym every day.

I play golf three days a week, and she plays golf three days a week. I play pickleball three times a week. I go swimming two to three times a week. We are fully utilizing!”

Left: Cleaning organized chaos. Right: Kiddos mugging it up. Opposite: General pool shot.

Daniel

Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

LIFE-CHANGING CONNECTIONS

“It’s just grown phenomenally,” adds Ashe, who is most thankful for the friendships he has formed with team and members. “Just the people that I’ve seen, some of the members growing older. Just having that network with them and knowing them—it’s been life-changing for me. The opportunity that they give us to serve them is a blessing. Without them, there would be no us. I’ve seen people through my own hardships, like losing my parents. Members literally showed up at my parents’ funerals. That’s something I will never forget for as long as I live.”

Steele has had a similar experience when it comes to personal connections. Not only did he meet his wife, Diane, at the club, but as an ordained minister he has officiated at the weddings and even funerals of members and coworkers. “All of the good things that the club has provided for me—the relationships, the people—the common ground and the environment where I met my wife of now thirteen years, has by far been the biggest blessing. But then it’s also that I’ve been able to live the life and dream the life that we wanted to live. At the end of the day, how those things opened up and doors kept opening for those opportunities, that has been kind of the most special aspect for me.”

sure to surround them with people who are committed to giving them the most enjoyable experience possible. “Having like-minded people around has been really the key to my longevity,” says Steele.

“You have to see that in people. I know that friendliness and a smile, even though they’re free, are what people want. Especially in this day and age, in the culture that continues to creep in. When you get to know people by name, and people look in their eyes and smile at you, it’s the hallmark of the club.”

Having like-minded people around has been really the key to my longevity.

—MICHAEL STEELE Director of Fitness

Keeping the “fans” raving has been a priority for Steele, Ashe, Feiser, and the rest of the fitness center team—whether that’s putting balloons next to a club member’s exercise station on his or her birthday, asking a client how life is going, or attending a personal event to show a member support. “You’re not just a number,” says Feiser. “You want the gym to be a place where people want to go, because sometimes people need to go, but don’t want to go. But

once they’re here, if we make it enjoyable, they’re going to want to come back.”

TENNIS PROGRAMS CONTINUE TO SCORE

A teacher at heart and a devout man of faith, Steele loves having the opportunity to help members live their best lives. He makes

The member-focused programming also extends to the tennis pavilion and courts, where the baseline has been excellence since the first balls were served more than two decades ago.

program.

Ben Cook’s first day on the job at the Park Club was Labor Day 2008, after serving as director of tennis at the Woodside Country Club in Aiken. “We had eleven courts—eight clay, two hard, and one grass,” recalls Cook. “So it was definitely a little quieter paced, but I knew early on, this was the place I wanted to be.”

Cook started playing tennis at eight years old and went on to capture multiple titles and honors in the sport. At USC, he was named the Gamecocks’ “Most Improved Player” in his first year, and he was captain his senior season, the same year he was named MVP. After college, he earned multiple state, sectional, and national titles, including the 2019 USTA Mixed Doubles 40s championship. In 2024, he was inducted into his high school’s hall of fame.

As a tennis player who is also an avid golfer, Cook knew the private in-town club on Daniel Island was special. When he sat down with Keating to interview for the job, he was even more impressed. “I had been fortunate enough to go to some pretty high-end places

to play, and I felt like that’s what this was becoming,” says Cook. “That was kind of the vibe that Greg Keating was trying to set.”

On Cook’s first day on the job, he had a prediction for Keating. “I remember telling him, ‘Give me three years, and I’m gonna need more courts.’ He laughed at me and kicked me out of his office, but it turned out to be true.”

Tennis became increasingly popular, notes Cook, and soon it was tough for members to get time on the courts. It happened despite the economic uncertainty in the nation at the time. “Ultimately, [the economy] affected everybody,” says Cook. “It really did. Even the five-percenters. Our members who had the means to travel or the access to go other places, they just stayed home, and so where other places were hurting during those times, in a weird way, we kind of prospered a little bit. Because they weren’t traveling and they were utilizing the club more, that helped us both. Thankfully Greg Keating and Matt Sloan had the foresight to say, ‘Yes, the Daniel Island Club

Left: Ben Cook.

Right: LCTA tennis.

world’s a little strange right now, but now is the time to build.’ ”

Work started on five additional clay courts, and play continued steadily through the next decade or so, says Cook. Then COVID hit.

“I joke that Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with two-point-five kids, living and working in Manhattan realized, ‘Oh, we don’t have to be here anymore. Let’s get the heck out of here!’ ” says Cook. “[They] came here in droves and to some degree caught us off guard a bit. All of a sudden, our growth just kind of went vertical.”

The two busiest stretches run from mid-January to early May and post-Labor Day to Thanksgiving, Cook says. During those times, “It’d be nothing for us to flirt with three hundred people a day Monday through Thursday.

Ann Harrah has been a part of the club’s women’s league tennis program since 2005. She came on board after relocating from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The club wanted to start

coordinating the women’s tennis teams, so they created a position especially for Harrah. “When I started, I think we had four teams (men and women) for the whole year,” recalls Harrah, tennis team coordinator. “Now, when you add in CALTA [Charleston Area Ladies’ Tennis Association], I think we have twenty-nine teams, just on the ladies’ end.”

Her most memorable moments at the club so far include two of the teams (2.5 and 3.0) winning a sectional title at a 5.5 combo tournament in Alabama in 2022. They won states and advanced to compete against nine other states at the sectional event, where they brought home the top prize.

According to Cook, the club will probably have more than twelve hundred rounds a year of members playing league tennis. The increased demand over the years was definitely the driving force behind the expansions. “We just had a team that hopefully made tennis fun for a lot of people and gave them an outlet for new

Ann Harrah.

Left: ?????.

Right:

FACTS & FIGURES

AQUATICS

2022 No. 6 “Top Ranked Private Club and Resort Aquatics and Pools” in the U.S. by Club+Resort Business magazine

FITNESS CENTER

2021 No. 30 “Top Ranked Private Club and Resort Fitness and Wellness Centers” in the U.S. by Club+Resort Business magazine

TENNIS OPERATIONS

2023 No. 2 “Racquets Facility/Program in the Country” by Club+Resort Business magazine

Years players and somewhat experienced players, and even players who hadn’t played a lot. Hopefully, we just offered something for everybody—the moms, the dads, the kids, the grandparents, whatever the case may be.”

The club also hosts a high-end ladies’ amateur tournament in March that attracts players from more than a dozen states. With the addition of six new pickleball courts in recent years, the number of overall players on site is even higher. “We’re on track to have eighty thousand visits in a year,” says Cook.

The club’s focus on creating a thriving tennis campus has garnered national recognition. In 2023, the Daniel Island Club and its tennis facilities were recognized as the “No. 2 ranked Racquets Facility/Program in the Country” by Club+Resort Business magazine.

For Bernie Bell, who joined the club in 2012, playing tennis at “one of the finest facilities around” has been a highlight of his membership thus far. “The courts are always in great shape, and there’s nothing quite like the thrill of a good match,” he says. “The tennis facility and tennis players have been a big part of my life.”

Trudy Hicks and her husband, H. R., have been members of the club since 2002. Trudy had to take a bit of a break from playing competitive tennis a few years ago for medical reasons, but she’s happily back enjoying the sport once again. “I am out on the courts again for fun and dabbling in pickleball,” says Hicks. “I’ve played at the club for over fifteen years. I met some of my dearest friends out on the tennis courts in different clinics. Several of them, my husband H. R. and I travel with and hang out with all the time. The pros are great. There’s a real sense of family, and they keep it competitive but fun.”

One of the team members who works hard each day to make sure those courts are ready for players like Hicks and scores of others is Chris Hernandez. A native of Mexico, he first joined the club in April 2005 to help with maintenance needs. These days he works solely on the courts, making sure they are ready for members each day. That means getting to work by 5:30 a.m. to complete a number of tasks, including wetting down the courts, sweeping the surface, and making sure the lines are clear and visible.

Hernandez is especially thankful to the members for banding together to help his wife when she suffered an aneurysm. “It’s a community here,” he says. “It really is. It’s like a family. The people that have been here a long time, they know all the members. I’m grateful and I try to help. Whatever they need. Whatever they ask me to do. I always try to do my best.”

Another highlight for Hernandez was getting to meet Serena Williams while she was in town for the Credit One Charleston Open (formerly the Family Circle Cup and Volvo Car Open). The tennis great shook his hand while taking a break from practice at the Park Club courts. “She thanked me!” says Hernandez. “I was so very proud, because she’s so famous, and she took the time to shake my hand.”

Offering up the facilities to the pros who come from all over the world each year for the Charleston Open is just one of the many ways the tennis team stays busy. It’s unlikely the pace will slow any time soon.

Harrah and the rest of the team have enjoyed watching the membership and facilities grow over the last quarter of a century.

“It’s been amazing to watch the club grow from this itty-bitty place, to this massive, beautiful facility,” says Harrah.

Despite all the improvements, there are still additional plans on the drawing board. The club has begun the process of adding two new courts for padel, which combines elements of tennis and squash.

Cook describes his time at the club as “a wonderful journey so far.” Driving into work each day never gets old. “It’s really nice to work at a place where the facilities are so nice. I mean that’s golf, that’s tennis, that’s everything as far as the club as a whole. We really do have everything we need to succeed—the facility, the terrain, the landscaping, the creeks, the rivers.”

And an ever-growing legion of raving fans.

Park Club Entrance.

More than a Meal

IN 2001, TYLER DUDLEY WAS FRESH OUT OF CULINARY SCHOOL at the acclaimed Johnson & Wales University, formerly located in Charleston, and looking for a job. Dudley had worked as a sous chef at a couple of restaurants downtown but was eager for a challenge. Searching the want ads in the newspaper, he spotted an opening at a new club on Daniel Island that intrigued him.

“I’d been in Charleston for about a year and a half, so I didn’t really know much about Daniel Island,” says Dudley. “It wasn’t developed then like it is now. And they were hiring a sous chef.”

Although the Daniel Island Club wasn’t even open yet, Dudley decided to apply—and he got the job.

“The membership was clearly very small,” recalls Dudley, who also served as a dishwasher three days a week. “We weren’t doing a lot, just à la carte service for lunch, but no dinners. Just about two people a day sometimes. And sometimes nobody would come in.”

Dudley understood that a brand-new club needed time to

build its membership. He knew change and growth would come. He didn’t know, however, that it would come so quickly. “It was probably a month into it,” he recalls. “The executive chef left, and the general manager at the time, Dick McPhail, offered me the position. Of course, I was thrilled!”

When the club’s first dining venue opened in the main clubhouse, Dudley was ready to serve. “At the time, the club had just one operating restaurant, and the kitchen staff was on limited hours due to the actual number of members that the club had,” he says. “Opening night was filled with excitement and nerves at the same

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

time, and if I remember correctly, we did around thirty people, which seemed like a hundred. It was a great opening night and was the building block for our future.”

Former Daniel Island Company Chief Financial Officer Amy Moyer, a founding member of the club, fondly remembers gathering in that first dining room. “It was just a huge family, and we would all hang out in what is now Harry’s, but the dining room was separate from the bar area,” says Moyer. “And the bar area didn’t include a little front living room by the windows, that was a little card room for the ladies, I think. It was tiny, as you can imagine, and everybody would cram in there. It was just a fun, fun, place.”

Since then, the club has seen exponential growth in membership, as well as multiple additions and renovations to its culinary offerings. The first main clubhouse enhancement came in 2007, with the addition of a new ballroom and a larger kitchen. Food services at the Park Club in the early days consisted of a simple window-ordering system, but soon the poolside restaurant The Cabana would open with its own on-site kitchen, eventually becoming Charleston’s largest outdoor dining venue, with more than three hundred seats.

Hawthorne. “We’re so lucky that we have this membership that is just phenomenal. Seeing them every day, seeing their kids, seeing families, seeing their grandparents, it’s great. It just makes the job so much easier.”

In addition to The Cabana, there are also halfway houses on both the Beresford and Ralston Creek golf courses, giving players a spot to grab a drink and a bite to eat between holes. “The Beresford Creek halfway house is a grab and go,” says Dudley. “The Ralston Creek halfway house is another restaurant in of itself. We call it Captain’s Café. It’s got probably thirty seats outside.”

Stuart Hawthorne, a native of Ireland, has been food and beverage manager at The Cabana since 2022. “It has exceeded all my dreams and expectations of working in a place like this,” says

The grill room, a casual family-oriented restaurant was added during a second renovation to the clubhouse in 2009. Harry’s, the club’s fine-dining venue and a nod to former Daniel Island landowner Harry Frank Guggenheim, opened in the main clubhouse in 2012. Then, in 2019, plans took shape on a renovation that would transform the grill room into the new Dover Grill. “I joked that it kind of looked like Cracker Barrel before,” says Director of Clubhouse Operations Jenn Paciotti. “It was your stereotypical clubtype dining space. We were able to transform it into something really bright and inviting, and it really made the younger families feel more comfortable dining in there.”

By 2022, the Dover Grill project was complete, along with the addition of a new outdoor kitchen. All in all, the Daniel Island Club

Executive Chef Tyler Dudley.

Above: Early kitchen staff.

Below: Old Clubhouse dining room..

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

went from serving about ten to twenty meals per day in its first years of operation, to between seven hundred to one thousand by its twenty-fifth year—phenomenal growth that Dudley attributes to his core team. “That’s why we strive to train them and get them engaged as well,” he says. “We want those guys and girls to be part of this bigger picture that we have.”

Team member Altor Smith, the raw bar chef at Harry’s, understands the weighty assignment. A native of Georgetown, South Carolina, Smith started at the club in September 2018. Whether it’s

crafting a fire-and-ice shrimp cocktail, a colossal crab cocktail, or a bluefin tuna crudo, Smith always puts his focus on the members and making sure their experience is top notch. “It’s about the vibe of the members and the vibe they get when they come into Harry’s, and the experience that they get,” says Smith. “Either they’re here at the raw bar with me and the bartenders, or they’re on the floor [of the dining room]. The vibe, the atmosphere, the energy—they’re loving it.”

Smith’s favorite part of the job is the relationships he has made

Harry’s

with both members and his team. “I introduced two families last week,” he says. “They were about to leave, and I introduced them to one another, and they ended up staying an extra two hours, having conversations and getting to know each other. It was amazing. Then, come to find out they live in the same area, like two doors down from each other. That’s the value, stuff like that, and to see smiles on their faces with nice cocktails and drinks.”

Kyle Markgraf, food and beverage manager at the Dover Grill, couldn’t agree more. “The relationship between the members and

the employees is the best part of working at the Daniel Island Club,” he says. “It’s easy to build meaningful relationships if you take the time to do so. There are many members that support and encourage our teammates in their everyday lives. It’s been really fun to nurture these relationships while providing an approachable, yet high level of service.”

Patrick Gilling, food and beverage manager at Harry’s, says hospitality is part of his DNA. “Hospitality, for me, is making sure one feels as if they are the most important person in the room and

Harry’s

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

always thinking about ways to go above and beyond,” says Gilling, a native of Jamaica who joined the staff in 2019. “And hospitality also entails a little bit of relationship building, We provide a very welcoming atmosphere here, and we tend to see the same members two, three times a week.”

Gilling calls Harry’s “fine dining with a twist” and describes it as a place that members have come to love and appreciate. “What makes it unique is the food we offer,” he adds. “The food and also the team. And its history. And being the only real steakhouse on the island. It offers members a very kind of high-end experience, especially with the variety of wines that we offer.”

Getting to know the members is paramount, adds Gilling, and it goes both ways.

“They like to go somewhere where their preferences are known. We place very good emphasis on that. It’s important to us, because in the industry, we have a philosophy that whenever the members know the chef, the food tastes a little bit better. When they know the bartenders, the cocktails taste much better.”

Beverage Manager and Sommelier Luke Baker has worked at the club since 2017 and witnessed a surge in growth. “The club has changed a lot in the last seven years, I think. Especially in the last four years, the club really shifted in a very different direction,” he

Men’s grill.

says. “I think the club has evolved into a higher standard of service. That expectation is now set a little bit higher. We want that point of contact to be just elevated for every member.”

That means making sure team members remain focused on meeting the members’ needs, especially when it comes to menus. “There’s so much competition in this town,” says Dudley. “We want to stay competitive. We want to be able to lure them to stay here on the island. There are amazing restaurants downtown, and to compete with that can sometimes be difficult. But I think our chefs do an amazing job trying to stay on point when it comes to being creative and also staying within the trends.”

Keeping food offerings seasonal and hiring good, qualified people are the keys to success, adds Dudley. Then there’s menu writing, which is a collaborative effort. “We’ve got to ask the front of the house team what they see, and then we really kind of do a Q-and-A with our chefs and ask, ‘What do you think?’ Final approval will come through me, but for the most part, our frontline chefs, our managers, are also writing those menus and keeping things up to date for us.”

In addition to the day-to-day operations, Dudley and his team are responsible for feeding and serving the masses during big events and tournaments, which often requires another set of skills. “We’ll use the term ‘tournament-ready,’ meaning basically we are ready if they say, ‘Tomorrow we’re doing a tournament for this and that.’ We’re ready for it,” adds Dudley. “Everything is in place. Every person is in their place. Everything on the golf course is immaculate and ready to go. We’re always having to navigate, change, move

Finn Casperson (left) and Fred Whittemore

CHEERS TO THE CLUB’S BEVERAGE SERVICE

WHEN MEMBERS POP INTO THE BAR at the Dover Grill, bartender Sander van Es is ready to serve before they even place their orders. “Anybody that walks in, that comes on the regular, what they drink, what they want, we try to get it down to the tables, before they sit down,” says van Es, who just celebrated his third anniversary at the club.

Beverage Manager and Sommelier Luke Baker started at the Club in 2017 as a part-time bartender for events before taking over the Cellar

and Wine Clubs. “Our objective is to provide members with unique opportunities to complement their wine cellars while providing education along the way,” says Baker. “We do this through monthly tastings with hand-selected wines, finely curated for their enjoyment.”

Working with local wine reps, the club often secures access to vintages that are unavailable or very hard to find in shops. The club also brings in winemakers and vineyard owners from all over the world to pro-

Left: Sander van Es.

Right: Luke Baker (right) with Robert Mondavi Jr.

vide first-hand insights into their process and products.

Baker works hard to make sure he can accommodate a wide range of tastes and interests when it comes to beverage selections. “Wine is my first love,” says Baker. “I’m very thankful that I have a membership that very often has it as their first love as well.”

Experience has taught him what the members enjoy most. Whether that’s a surge of interest in Napa Valley cabernets and wines from northwest Italy or a preference for classic cocktails—the Cosmo, the Martini, or the Old Fashioned. “For cocktails, I think we’re seeing a shift away from mixology in market trends, a shift away from overly done-up cocktails. People are going back to the classics. They want it simple. People want to be able to look at a cocktail and know all the ingredients that are listed there.”

Anticipating interests is all part of the job for Baker. When he started at the club, it stocked fourteen wines from France, for example, and now they have close to eighty offerings available from the country. “I think we’ve really expanded the wine program to a level that’s on par with just about any restaurant in America,” he says. Overall, the wine stock stands at roughly five thousand bottles. “We’ve really converted Daniel Island Club to be a mecca for wine within the Charleston community,” adds Baker. “When winemakers and reps go downtown, people ask, ‘Oh, are you going to the Daniel Island Club?’ My friends at Wine & Co., my friends at Hall’s, and other great wine spots around town know about us. We’re on the map now, and that’s really cool.”

Memorable moments for Baker are plentiful in his career thus far, but one in particular stands out. “Last year, our year-end Cellar Club dinner was probably, in my opinion, the best event that I’ve ever been a part of. We had white truffle, which is exceptionally rare and a difficult thing to get, so we were able to execute this event that was really exceptional for 110 or so people. That was a fun event to do.”

Another important offering that has contributed to the success of the wine program is giving members an opportunity to purchase wine using the club’s bulk rate. “We have a lot of buying power,” says Baker. “Because of that, we get a good price on wine. We used to send out an email once a year with a wine sale on it. This was tremendously successful, so I just said, ‘Well, what if we did this once a month?’ It gives people the opportunity to purchase wine without having to be a part of the Wine or Cellar Clubs.”

That focus on members’ needs is clearly making a difference. Every December, the club hosts a “Stock the Cellar” event, at which distributors offer tastings. In Baker’s first year on the job, the event sold about 1,500 bottles. Last year, the number was 4,400.

Despite the success, he’s always searching for ways to continue raising the bar. “I think we are at a point with the wine program where we say, ‘How do we take something that’s already great and make it better?’ We’re trying to convert a 95 percent grade into a 98 percent–100 percent grade.”

Cheers to that.

Bartender Chris.

things here or there, or just be open to change, especially with the amount of events that we do. We’re always kind of looking to expand on those and try to up what we did last year.”

Some of Dudley’s most memorable moments on the job include serving golfers and guests during the Nationwide Championships in 2009–2011, and the more recent U.S. Junior Amateur Championship hosted by the United States Golf Association (USGA). “That was huge for us,” he says. “That took over the club for seven days operationally. It was insane. We were over five hundred a day, easily. Golf Channel was here filming for two days. It was a big deal for us.”

Another significant experience for Dudley, both personally and professionally, was hosting the American Academy of Chefs as part of the American Culinary Federation for their year-end dinner. Dudley prepared a six-course dinner for hundreds of chefs from all over the country. “No pressure!” recalls Dudley, smiling. “It was just, for me, probably the biggest thrill of my culinary career. Being able to do that and do it successfully and getting the reviews

afterward and just the amount of work that went into it.”

Another highlight of Dudley’s time at the club? Meeting his wife, Erin (she was the banquet/events manager at the time), and earning the coveted “Certified Executive Chef” designation in 2010 after passing a rigorous test. He took a written examination, then tackled “the practical,” which involved cooking a multi-course dinner for a team of seven chef judges.

Dudley also embraces the special events the club puts on for members, such as the Thanksgiving Day buffet and the Oyster Roast the following day. The team started out serving just about a hundred people at the first Oyster Roast, which is considered the club’s signature event, but attendance has soared over the years. “Last year we did almost eight hundred people.” says Dudley. “It’s definitely our biggest event.”

Dudley and his team of forty give it their all, time and time again. Their most recent accolade came in 2022, when the club was honored with a No. 29 ranking on a list of the “Top Ranked Culinary Experiences” in the nation by Club+Resort Business and Club+Resort Chef.

Left: Pool bar.

Right: Grill on the Green. Daniel

Making sure they are providing the highest level of service is part of the work culture at the club. Smith is quick to credit the leadership team, especially Dudley, for creating a positive work environment. “It seems like, in my opinion, we got the pick of the litter. We’ve got management here that is very understanding, very compassionate with you, even when it comes to membership. That means a lot.”

They also have longevity when it comes to management. After twenty-four years, Dudley is still happily at the helm. “People will ask me, ‘Why are you still here?’” he says. “ ‘How have you done that for so long?’ And I always say it’s because of the continued growth that we have here. We are continually adding amenities. Obviously,

our membership has grown tenfold. And Mr. Keating, I’ve always given him credit for being such a visionary. He always sees the big picture, which keeps, I think, his core team intrigued and engaged.”

For now, Dudley is prepping for the next big event—because there is always something on the calendar—and appreciating every opportunity to continue the club’s success. “I’ve just kind of grown not only as a chef, but as a person,” he says. “If it was just the same club that it was when I was here twenty-four years ago, there’s no way I would’ve lasted this long. But as we continue to grow and we add so many things, it just brings excitement to every single day. We’re always evolving. To me, we’re a very progressive club. We’re always ready to move the needle a little bit and try something new.”

Captains Cafe.

Homegrown Hospitality

WHEN THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM at the Daniel Island Company started planning the Daniel Island Club in the 1990s, they knew it needed to be distinctive. The Charleston region had other clubs, all with soaring views, water features, and majestic live oaks, but this one needed to make its own mark. It needed to stand apart from the rest, not just from the local golf clubs, but the national ones as well. To differentiate it from the crowd, they knew a healthy dose of good old-fashioned Southern hospitality, served with plenty of smiles, would set the tone.

“We never set out to be the most exclusive club in the area,” says President and CEO of the Daniel Island Development Company Matt Sloan. “We never used the word ‘exclusive.’ We set out to be the friendliest, and I believe that mindset is still there.”

Sloan admits it was a tough sell to draw folks to Daniel Island, particularly for food and beverage services. Again, they contemplated how to make the club the most enticing option. “Back in the very early days, most of our members lived in Mount Pleasant. So how do you get them to drive from Mount Pleasant to Daniel Island on

a Friday night when they are driving past all of their favorite places? We said, ‘We could be friendlier, and there’ll be camaraderie because people will come out and see people they know.’ We also made sure we didn’t price ourselves out of the market. We said we were going to be a value. I know that rack of lamb sells for forty-four dollars downtown, but we’re going to sell it for thirty-six. Yes, we may lose money, but at least we’ll have people in the building.”

“It was very much Lowcountry family, genteel, relaxed,” former Daniel Island Company CFO Amy Moyer says of the club’s intend-

ed vibe. “Not a hoity-toity place, and yet still a little bit refined. Refined, but you’re wearing your mucking boots.”

The choice to lean it to hospitable hosting paid off. “The team has done a great job,” says Sloan. “You want to have an environment where people are friendly. That has prevailed, and that’s something I am really proud of. We have so many people who are new to Charleston. A club, you get the impression, is going to be cliquey—’Who am I gonna get to know?’ We’re the exact opposite.

“Camaraderie is a really big word in the club industry,” he continues. “It’s what you strive for. That’s what members take pride in, in the place, and they show it to their friends. They bring guests to Harry’s and when they walk in, they see three people they know, and they introduce their guests to the members. Then people find they have stuff in common.”

for appointments. All these years later, his calendar stays full. “I’m usually booked up,” adds Causey. “It is very seldom you can walk in. It’s grown like crazy.” Still, says Causey, “There’s no other place I’d rather be.”

We never used the word ‘exclusive.’

We set out to be the friendliest, and I believe that mindset is still there.

Treating members to top-tier service has been a cornerstone of the club, says Daniel Island Club President and CEO Greg Keating, who was named one of the golf industry’s “Most Admired Operators” in 2008 by Golf, Inc. “We want our members to feel like they’re on vacation all the time,” noted Keating in an article about the award in The Moultrie News. “I talk to the groundskeepers about getting down off their mowers and helping members look for lost golf balls.”

—MATT SLOAN President and CEO of the Daniel Island Development Company

Creating a warm, welcoming culture in an environment where members and guests feel cared for and valued starts with a team of employees who understand the mission. Like team member Burt Causey, who has been running the club’s barber shop in the men’s locker room since 2009. A native of Charleston, Causey has been cutting hair for forty-two years and remembers the early days at the club, when there were close to just three hundred members and no wait list

For Director of Golf Operations Chris Edwards, members are the primary focus.

“I think that really helps us achieve what other clubs may struggle with a little bit,” he says. “Constantly for us operationally, we want to make sure we’re hitting those points of contact when those members come in, drive in, drop the bags—the little contact things that we have in place here.

We train our team outside to do this when a car comes up. The function is to take the clubs out of the back of the trunk, but the deal is you make eye contact first, and you make sure they wind the window down, and you say hello. From that point on, that member

or guest feels like there’s a connection.”

Hiring the right people who can make those connections is paramount. Sadida Chinnis joined the team in 2012 as human resources manager. At the time, there were only about 140 employees. That number in now closer to three hundred to four hundred, depending on the season. Chinnis knows exactly what to look for when selecting people to join the team.

“I would say they have to be in the business of serving others,” she says. “They have to be resilient, because there are going to be good days and bad days. It’s that altruistic mentality of ‘I’m here to serve you, and I’m going to go above and beyond in order to get that done.’ ”

Stuart Hawthorne, food and beverage manager of The Cabana

appreciates the members, and also recognizes that management has played a huge role in employee retention. We’re very lucky we have a senior management team that continually asks ‘What can we do to make your life easier?’ Team retention in this current climate is incredibly hard, but when I have team members who’ve worked twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, twenty-plus years—it says an awful lot about the organization.”

“The club is very member-centric,” adds Patty Caughman, accounts payable manager. “We do have internal customer choices or different departments, but we do whatever it takes to please that member. You can see that by all the emails that come in, praising people for going out of their way, way out of their way, even to the point where they step out of their job to give somebody a ride be-

Chris (left) and lead bartender Sander van Es (right).

cause they locked the keys in their car. It’s the personal touches. They always try to find out whether it’s somebody’s birthday, anniversary, whatever it takes to make them feel special.”

Caughman, who has been on the team since 2019, was voted Manager of the Year in 2023 by her peers. “I was of course very, very honored,” she says. “But it could have been any one of us. There’s just so much camaraderie. If we see each other outside of here, it’s always a hug. That really says a lot about how we feel about each other working here.”

For Tony Ashe, manager of the fitness center, the motivational messaging starts from the top down. Early in his career at the club, he remembers Keating sharing some poignant words with the team during an employee meeting. “He said something that I will never forget, and I still use it today,” says Ashe. “He said, ‘It’s not what we do as a company, but it is what you do as individuals that make this company great—and each one of you bring something to the table that is phenomenal.’ He appreciated what each of us do. I just bring my best game every day. That’s what I do, and that’s what I believe in. It’s been very rewarding.”

Randy Sumter is one of the longest-serving members on the club team. He started in 2001 and currently works as the manager of the men’s locker room. Sumter says he loves taking care of the members and will frequently drive them to college football games and other events. “I tell people when they first start, just sit down and talk to the members and get to know them. That’s what I do, and that’s how I get feedback from everybody. Everybody’s great. I love the members, and that’s really why I’m here. It’s a great place to

work and a great place to meet people.

“It’s not just doing the tasks of the job and serving. It’s relating. Relating to the members. I get along with everybody around here. I have fun with them, and they have fun with me.”

Andy Wood started at the club in 2020 and has been managing the cottages and transportation services for the last four years. In that time, he’s seen occupancy rates at the overnight accommodations go from 30 percent to 40 percent to close to 70 percent. “I take all the bookings and kind of act as a personal concierge to set up tee times, dinner reservations, and transportation,” says Wood.

“Anyone that wants to go to the airport, downtown for dinner, or to a football game or to a golf trip, anywhere they want to go, we’ll take them and set them up with a driver.”

Serving members has been a pleasure, he adds. “I would definitely say that our biggest thing is that a lot of people in our position, the members might make you feel like you’re ‘the help.’

But I’ve never once felt that. They’re genuine and respectful and make you feel like part of the family.”

Like most families, the Daniel Island team shares many important moments, from the happy celebrations, like weddings, birthdays, and anniversaries, to more somber end-of-life events, supporting the loved ones of members who have passed. “There are

bench.

Three flags with plackard box.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

so many milestones of life that we witness here that people choose to share with us,” says Kendall Bennett, the club’s systems operations manager and executive assistant to the president. “Every holiday, their kids’ weddings, their celebrations of life—everything is right here. They’re not taking those things off site. They’re choosing to do that with us. That’s kind of humbling.”

Participating in members’ memorial services was always incredibly moving for former banquet and special events manager Erin Dudley, who served on the team from 2007–2024. “To have someone trust you to try and help them memorialize someone is a big trust exercise,” she says. “And to do that with care and grace.

Obviously, it’s not a happy time, but it made me feel really good to know that I was participating in something that was bringing somebody some condolence.”

In recent years, the club set up a memorial in front of the clubhouse to pay tribute to departed members. “There are three flags out front,” adds Bennett. “There’s the South Carolina flag, the American flag, and the Daniel Island flag. Then there is a little kind of placard with a box that you can open up inside that area. We put the obituaries of our fallen members in there, and we lower our flag to half-mast for about a week. That’s something we’re really proud of.”

There are many other special touches, explains Director of

Brookes bench.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

Finance Terese Dailey, and sometimes they are even extended to those who aren’t yet members. “I remember this couple coming in late,” she says. “They got stuck in traffic and something happened and then their hotel room didn’t work out. They arrived here and she said, ‘We’re cold and we’re hungry.’ It was 10 p.m. and Harry’s was closing up, but Bryant Plese, a food and beverage manager at the time, said just come in and sit, and he went back in the kitchen. The chefs had already gone home, but he made them hamburgers. She said it was just such a wonderful feeling of warmth and belonging already. And they were just here as prospects. I hear stories like that, of interacting with someone at the club, that gave them that experience of ‘This is where I want to be.’ ”

Delivering genuine, personalized service with a smile has served the club well since its inception and will continue to be a galvanizing charge in the years to come. As the club’s mission states, their promise is to “provide a genuine Lowcountry lifestyle, nurturing a feeling of belonging,” where personal and attentive service and exceptional facilities in a charming oasis are prioritized, and where a dedicated team creates lasting memories for members, their families and guests.

That message is evident in every department at the club. When Director of Tennis Ben Cook met with Greg Keating early on in his career at the Park Club, he set his sights high and hasn’t looked back. “We had a goal to make this the best family-friendly place on the East Coast. In fact, I specifically remember Greg saying that. And if there’s a place that’s better than us, okay, fine, but I’ve got to see it to believe it!”

A Spirit of Giving

PHILANTHROPY IS MORE THAN a charitable act or gift. It is defined as “an active effort to promote human welfare.” Its roots come from the Greek word philanthrōpia, which translates simply to “loving people.” At the Daniel Island Club, taking charitable causes to heart is just one of the ways the staff and members support the community.

Few know that better than club member Lori Bayer, who got some difficult news in December of 2017. “I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she recalls. “My world stood still that day, and the first call I made was to David Badger at the Daniel Island Club, who in turn called Chris Edwards, the director of golf. My husband was on the golf course and David immediately drove out on the course and picked him up so he could come home.”

Bayer says the next two years were a trying time in their lives, but the community and the Daniel Island Club walked alongside them as they navigated her treatments. “The club and the people

who work there are all very important to us,” adds Bayer. “They are our friends, too.”

The experience prompted Bayer to find a way to give back to breast cancer patients, and the club stepped up to help. In 2019, she and a friend hosted a breast cancer fundraiser at the club attended by seventy-two women. They played golf, enjoyed lunch, raffled off baskets, and placed bids on silent auction items. In the end, they raised $11,000 for a national breast cancer organization.

They were off to a promising start, but the following year, COVID happened. Their fundraising efforts were put on hold until

2021, when they hosted their second event. This time, they partnered with a local breast cancer group, and 150 women took part. The number of raffle baskets and auction items also increased, and so did their fundraising total, which exceeded $50,000. That prompted a change for 2023. “My husband, Paul, and I decided to start our own 501(c)(3) foundation in order to better support local breast cancer patients, and ‘Swing for the Lowcountry,’ aka ‘The Swing,’ was born.”

Armed with a catchy new name and a broader scope, the event hosted three hundred women who played golf, tennis, and pickleball—and this time, they raised $350,000. “The Daniel Island Club has always supported our event,” says Bayer, “however, as the years went on, Greg Keating paid close attention to us, and as we consistently improved what we were doing, he gladly stepped up and became our partner. For the last two years, the Daniel Island Club has stood beside and behind us to ensure that every possible dollar would go to women in need.”

Bayer and her team work hard to keep the organization lean, so that the most money possible can go to the cause. About ninety-two cents of every dollar they raise is spent directly on breast cancer patients in the Lowcountry. “We are a 100 percent all-volunteer board, and we work every day to ensure that we are serving these women,” says Bayer. “The Daniel Island Club is a huge part of our success through their partnership and generosity.”

Funds raised through The Swing put gas in the tanks of breast cancer patients, food on the table, help with childcare costs and utility bills, and assist with any other costs not related to insurance

or medical treatment, adds Bayer. “Breast cancer robbed me of a lot, but I’ll never stop fighting for others. The Daniel Island Club recognizes how critical this is for local women. The club is important to me, my family, and The Swing.”

Member Kendell Sutterlin is another witness to the club’s commitment to philanthropy. She and her family hosted a fundraiser at the club from 2007–2019. The event, officially titled “Abby’s Friends: Stepping Up to Cure Juvenile Diabetes” was named after Sutterlin’s daughter, Abby, who was diagnosed with the type 1 diabetes in April 2006. “In 2007, our Daniel Island community was small and

everyone knew one another and supported one another,” recalls Sutterlin. “We had several children on the island diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and we wanted to raise awareness for this life-long and potentially devastating disease. The Daniel Island Club was the clear choice. They always supported local nonprofits, and we knew this was the perfect place to bring our community together.”

According to Sutterlin, the club played a “pivotal role” in the event’s success by allowing the use of the golf courses on a Friday afternoon once a year. “This was made possible because of community support,” adds Sutterlin. “The majority of sponsorships/golfers

Abby’s Friends.

were Daniel Island Club members. It was amazing to see members paying $1,600 to $5,500 to play golf on their own course on a Friday to make an impact in our community.”

The last Abby’s Friends event took place in 2019, stopped by the arrival of COVID the following year. But throughout its run, the charity raised more than $3 million to assist the Medical University of South Carolina Pediatric Endocrinology Department, Camp Adam Fisher, Camp Sweet Escape, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. “I am beyond grateful to everyone who helped with Abby’s Friends over the thirteen years from the Daniel Island Club,” says Sutterlin. “From the owners of the Daniel Island Club, the management

team, the golf and maintenance team, the food and beverage team… everyone treated Abby’s Friends Charity Golf Classic and Gala like their own event. I had someone in food and beverage say to me once,

‘I feel like this is our event, it is very close to our heart.’ Working with the same DI Club team for thirteen years was extremely special. We were family, coming together with a common goal to help others.”

The club has worked with other charities as well during its twenty-five-year history, including the Pro-Jam, which benefited the Student Transportation Association of America Education Foundation and Carolina Studios. The event raised an estimated $3 million during its eleven-year run at the club.

Above Left: ??????? Above right: Neighborhood House Christmas—Staff and Friends. Inset: Pro-Am Jam logo.

Another successful program at Daniels Island Club is PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere). The program teaches golf to veterans and active-duty military personnel to enhance their physical, mental, social, and emotional well-being. It was brought to the club in the spring of 2016 by Ron Cerrudo, who asked fellow club golf pro Michael Smith, a veteran, to help. Both became certified to teach in the program, and when Cerrudo passed away in 2024, Smith took over. “The club has been super supportive, which is great,” says Smith, head teaching professional at the club. “We do well with it, and it’s very well received. When signups start, thirty spots are gone in ten minutes.”

“PGA HOPE Carolinas is incredibly grateful for the continued support and dedication shown by Daniel Island Club,” adds Mia Hayasaki, PGA REACH Carolinas program manager at Carolinas PGA. “The impact on local veterans has been truly life-changing. The club’s commitment to PGA HOPE goes far beyond hosting clinics. It’s about creating a safe, welcoming space where veterans can find healing, purpose, and community through the game of golf.”

team of graduates to represent their section at the 2023 PGA HOPE Secretary’s Cup in New York. “This was an unforgettable experience of camaraderie, inspiration, and pride,” she says. “We’re honored to work alongside such a dedicated club and look forward to many more years of partnership in changing lives through golf.”

This was an unforgettable experience of camaraderie, inspiration, and pride. We’re honored to work alongside such a dedicated club and look forward to many more years of partnership in changing lives through golf.

—MIA HAYASAKI PGA REACH Carolinas Program Manager

According to Hayasaki, the club’s support made it possible for a

Keating says philanthropy has always been an important component of what Daniel Island does. So far, the club has made about $1 million in contributions, including cash donations and charity sponsorships, and another $800,000 to $1 million of in-kind donations. “The club will continue to do that and be what I consider to be a good neighbor as often as we can, without impacting the member experience,” adds Keating.

“We have raised millions of dollars, which is somewhat atypical in the club industry,” says Daniel Island Development Company President Matt Sloan. “We are able to do that in large part because the members are tolerant, and they support it.”

The charitable efforts aren’t limited to supporting outside causes. “Our most recent thing for us that I am super proud of is we started the Daniel Island Club Employee Assistance and Scholarship Fund,” notes Keating. The program

provides funding to employees in need of assistance, whether that be for education or other expenses.

“The employee fund is near and dear to my heart,” says Director of Finance Terese Dailey. “Being able to set up the employee fund for members and to be able to contribute to something that is for the employees—I love it. I love that it’s a group of members on the advisory board to help make those decisions. [The money is] for scholarships and for emergency funds, so that’s a really big deal.”

Since its inception in 2021, more than $200,000 has been raised for the Employee Assistance and Scholarship Fund, of which $89,000 has been awarded to around twenty-one recipients, according to Dailey. The fund is currently in its fourth round of disbursements.

Longtime member George Durney served as the emcee and auctioneer at the Employee Scholarship Auction in 2024. “That was kind of my pitch to people to give money,” he says. “You’re seeing the people who work here more than you see your own family most of the time. The people who are working at the pool, I see them every weekend. The people at the gym—I’ve watched these kids in the gym grow up. It’s really member-driven for the team,” he continues.

In 2023, the club also launched an online employee recognition program to provide an incentive

for excellent service. With an $85,000 investment by the club, the program is off to a great start. It’s based on a points system, and employees get rewarded for a job well done. “It has been very successful.” says Sadida Chinnis, human resources manager. “It allows employees to recognize one another. They can give other employees ‘kudos’ for a job well done on certain things, for helping out. Managers are given a monthly budget in order to recognize their team and employees.

“Between that and the scholarship fund, I think those types

of initiatives are just increasing the morale and making sure they’re happy enough and they want to stay,” adds Chinnis. “That’s what’s important.”

“I always try to tell people when I’m interviewing them, you’ve got to just tell us what you want, what your goals are, and we will get you there,” says Kendall Bennett, systems operations manager and executive assistant to the president. “Then with the establishment of the employee fund, that really drives the back end of that statement. That’s huge. There’s a lot of support behind those words now.”

Staff gives back at Neighborhood house in 2016.

Creating Traditions

“Be our guest, be our guest, put our service to the test.”

LUMIÈRE AND MRS. POTTS from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast certainly knew how to build anticipation for an unforgettable experience. While you may not see Disney characters dancing and singing on the grounds of the Daniel Island Club (unless it’s during one of the kids’ summer camps), the team has at least one thing in common with their animated counterparts. Both are dedicated to creating a place where every guest feels like it’s the happiest place on earth.

“I think that the evolution of this club is an experience every day,” says Jenn Paciotti, director of clubhouse operations. “We’re in the happiness business, and we’re here to exceed expectations and to create memories.”

One of the ways the club’s dedicated team does this is by offering dozens of special events and programs each year that become traditions and enhance members’ experiences. “We knew early on that creating community was very important, that we had strong event activity and programming offerings,” says Carolyn Lancaster, who was part of the development team. “We picked out times of the year and events that would become traditions, like the two primary golf tournaments each year and the Oyster Roast the day after

Opposite: Spring Chase trophies

Thanksgiving. We created those activities, and then they became rallying points in the major social structure of the club.”

Lisa Beavan was one of the first to manage events for the Daniel Island Club. She worked with President and CEO Greg Keating at his previous job in Boston, and he asked Beavan to join the team in 2003. “When I started working for Greg, I was an intern at a club in Boston,” says Beavan. “I remember watching him and thinking,

‘This guy, he knows. He’s young, and he knows what he’s doing. He has that charisma, that character. It’s not fake.’ I was like, ‘Alright, hitch your wagon to that one. I know this guy’s going places.’ ”

So Beavan did just that, eventually following Keating down to Daniel Island. “When I first came to interview, Greg drove me around in a golf cart. I remember him showing me what the course was going to be, and the silo was still there. The forest was there,

Fall Hunt trophies.

and the homes on Dalton and Delahow were starting to come in, but everything where Ralston is, was nothing. To see it transform was amazing.”

Beavan became membership and events manager in 2004, overseeing programming before some of the present-day expansions of the club’s facilities took shape. “I was on the team that helped do the expansion, and we opened that in 2006,” adds Beavan. “I’ll never forget, the last wedding we did was out on the sideline, where the ballroom is now. The construction fence was just going up, and the mother was mortified!”

Once the facilities grew larger, so did the scale of events hosted at the club. The team planned a Christmas event at which Santa

arrived by helicopter to an eager crowd of youngsters. A Mother’s Day brunch debuted, along with Fourth of July festivities, Easter events, themed poolside parties at the Park Club, wine tastings, signature golf tournaments like the Fall Hunt and Spring Chase, a plethora of kids’ camps, and more.

“Thanksgiving and then the day-after-Thanksgiving Oyster Roast has been one of the most sought-out events that we host,” adds Paciotti. “Everybody has their family in town. Everybody’s sick of eating turkey, so that day after, it’s cooler weather outside, and we put the football games on. They’re shucking their own oysters. We have live music. It is a super fun event for us to host.”

Founding member Amy Moyer, who served as chief financial

Oyster shucking.

MAGICAL MOMENTS

Some of the more popular events, programs, and traditions hosted at the Daniel Island Club.

TOP ANNUAL EVENTS

• A Day at the Carrot Patch

• Easter Brunch

• Mother’s Day Brunch

• Memorial Day Weekend Fair

• Fourth of July Street Festival

• Labor Day Lobster Bake

• Halloween Carnival

• Thanksgiving Dinner

• Day After Thanksgiving Oyster Roast

• Member Holiday Cocktail Party

• Santa’s Village

• Wine & Oysters

• Chef’s Tables with Chef Tyler

• Day at the Arcade

• Inflatable Game Day

• Military Appreciation Gala

• Ladies’ Holiday Luncheon

• Carols & Carriage Rides

• The Swing

RECURRING EVENTS

• S’mores Nights

• Dive-In Movies

• Wine Tastings and Dinners

• Trivia Nights

FUN/NOTABLE EVENTS

• Sixth Anniversary Party (June 2007)

• Santa Day (December 2008)

• Labor Day Picnic (September 2009)

• Member Cookout (June 2010)

• Men’s Fall Hunt Reception (October 2011)

• Valentine’s Day Dinner (February 2012)

• Lunch with Luana (April 2013)

• Adult Painting Class (January 2014)

• Yoga with Lululemon on the Croquet Lawn (May 2015)

• Fifteenth Anniversary Party (June 2016)

• Solar Eclipse Viewing Party at the Pool (August 2017)

• New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball (December 2018)

• Memorial Day Hot Air Balloon Rides (May 2019)

• Dinner en Blanc (September 2020)

• Food & Wine Festival (March 2021)

• Throw It Back to Prom (March 2022)

Members enjpying Santa’s Village.

Creating Traditions

Clockwise from top left: Family Christmas portrait, Santa gets “handsy”, Labor Day Lobster Bake, Halloween costumes.

Daniel Island Club The First Twenty-Five Years

Spring Chase trophies.

officer for the Daniel Island Company for twenty-two years, can remember some of her favorite “back-in-the-day” events. “The New Year’s Eve parties used to be phenomenal,” she says. “Every single person went, and they were just amazing. Of course, we didn’t have the ballroom then. They were in the old dining room, and then you’d walk outside and there’d be a big tent out there. Those parties were just so wonderful. I remember the first day-after-Thanksgiving golf tournament and then the Oyster Roast. There must have been forty or fifty people there. We could all fit on the little back patio outside of Harry’s.”

The Fall Hunt and Spring Chase, both member-guest golf tournaments, debuted in 2001 and 2002 respectively, and remain highly popular. The Fall Hunt was inspired by the idea of country gentlemen armed with shotguns gathering in the countryside with their dogs on point, ready to begin their quest for prey. The brass trophies for the tournament were created by artist Jonathan Moeller of North Dakota, who captures the three essential elements of the competition in each prize: a dog on point (second place); a hunter aiming his shotgun in the air with his trusted canine companion at his feet (first place); and the end of the hunt, prize in hand, the culmination of the perfect partnership (champion).

The story behind the Spring Chase begins with Cain Hoy Stables, a thoroughbred racing stable and horse-breeding operation owned by former Daniel Island landowner Harry Frank Guggenheim. He named his stables after Cainhoy Plantation, a property he owned on the Cainhoy peninsula. Guggenheim’s horse-training facilities were located in Columbia, South Carolina, and Kissimmee, Florida. The stable’s racing colors were blue-and-white blocks with white sleeves and a cap. Those same colors adorn the flags on the Daniel Island Club’s two golf courses. Moeller also designed the bronze trophies for the Spring Chase. Each bears the number 10, which was the number of Guggenheim’s famous Dark Star, a thoroughbred that won the 1953 Kentucky. Both events score big points with members year after year.

“We have close friends that are members still to this day who even gave us a baby shower for our boys who are now juniors at Clemson, and a lot of those friendships were made during the Fall Hunt member-guest tournaments or the DI Cup member-member,” says Kevin Brookes, who joined the club with his wife, Catherine, in 2002. “I have thankfully found myself in some of the tournament shootout/playoffs, and it has always been a family affair to come up and watch me compete with my guest or in the member-member.

Guggenheim’s famous Dark Star

It is always a blast with all the members and onlookers surrounding the fairways and greens with one-hundred-plus carts watching and cheering on their favorite team.”

By 2008, a bit of fear began to set in nationally when the economy started to dip. Erin Dudley was working alongside Beavan at the time. “We obviously were all scared and fearful of what the future might be,” recalls Dudley. “But during that time—2008, 2009, 2010—the events side of things at the club continued to grow.” Club events stayed relatively standard, but the private-event side—meetings, weddings, etc.—started to grow. Soon it became clear that membership and events needed to be run as separate entities.

Dudley took on the events and Beavan handled membership and sales. By 2017, the club was hosting some thirty weddings a year. The ballroom and banquet facility can accommodate three hundred people seated and five hundred people for reception-style celebrations. “Charleston was continuing to just boom, and the wedding business in Charleston was, too,” adds Dudley.

While the private-events side of the club “fared quite well during the recession,” she says, by 2019 the club decided to shift more focus to the members to amplify their experiences. That meant a reduction in the number of non-member weddings and other outside events. “That was a conscious choice,” notes Dudley.

“There are only so many Saturdays a year, and I think it was the right decision, too. It was, ‘How can we elevate that member experience?’ If you’re going to do that, there’s going to be a shift somewhere in there.”

Courtney Lynch started at the club in 2019 as a rotating manager in food and beverage and is now the banquet and events director. “The cool thing is my background is in hospitality events, culinary,” she says. “That’s what I went to school for, so I’ve been in the

hospitality industry for almost twenty years. When I transitioned into the events department, the goal was to make our events bigger and better and [more] memorable for our members. So that’s a task that I had to take on and run with and make sure that I exceeded the expectation.”

One event dear to Lynch’s heart is the Santa’s Village the club sets up every December. “It’s about five hundred people, give or take, right here in front of the clubhouse on the croquet lawn,” says

Fifteenth anniversary party.

Lynch. “We have Santa come in [for pictures], but then we have activities and things for the kids. One year, we had a Ferris wheel, one year an ice-skating rink. To be able to see those moments, and then it’s one of those things where we say, ‘We did it,’ and we high five each other, and then we go, ‘What are we doing for Easter? How are we going to make that event bigger and better?’ ”

In 2016, the team got to plan one of the club’s biggest events to date—the fifteenth anniversary party. “That was a big undertaking, but it was really quite special, because we opened up the whole clubhouse,” Dudley recalls. “I basically had a little map, and when someone walked in, you knew what was happening in Harry’s,

what was happening upstairs, and what was happening in the men’s locker room. That was fun for the women to get to go to an event where they got to go into the men’s locker room. Then, I was on a cherry picker with the photographer to get this huge wide-angle picture of all of those members. It was a pretty spectacular night.”

Dudley met her husband, Tyler, at the club and has many fond memories of her time on the team. She left in early 2020 to take a position with the DI Development Company. “One of the really wonderful things about having a long tenure there for me was that you really got to know a lot of these families,” says Dudley. “Through special events, weddings, I would get to do a member’s

child’s wedding and then come back on Easter and they’re pregnant or they have babies. You really kind of get to watch the evolution of happy times, which for me, was really, really special.”

Beavan has some meaningful, personal club memories as well. She also met her husband, Greg, at the club and had her bridal photos taken in the former ladies’ locker room. When the couple married in the Bahamas, several members and staffers attended. “I’m so grateful,” she says. “My favorite part of my time there was the bond with the members. Watching those kids grow up from the first Breakfast with Santa event to now, seeing that they’re in college or getting married and just the relationships with the members.”

It goes both ways. The Brookes family has had many unforgettable experiences at the club over the last twenty-three years. “So many,” says Kevin. “New Year’s fireworks, and July 4th, Santa, Easter bunny with the boys growing up, Fall Hunts, sunsets out on the back patio by the fire pits. Our boys were born on Daniel Island and from birth have grown up with the members and their kids. So many amazing times as a family at the pool and golfing.

“The club’s team has always been absolutely incredible with these events and their service to the members. It is hands down one of the best clubs we have seen when it comes to service to the members and guests.”

“Although there are a host of very memorable moments at the club, I would have to say that the family winter carriage rides and s’mores are some of our favorites,” adds member Chris Battista.

Juan Acevedo, who joined the club with his family in 2001 shares a similar sentiment. “Many activities that we attended, such

as Christmas with Santa, Easter Egg Hunts, 4th of July celebrations, brunches at the club on Sundays with the kids, and many more will forever be engraved in our memories. As if that wasn’t enough, the way we have been treated by every single team member throughout the twenty-five years since we joined have made these twenty-five years very memorable.”

Ensuring an appropriate level of funding dedicated to special events is front and center for Paciotti. The budget for all club functions in 2018 was considered relatively modest, she notes, but since then it has increased substantially. “That just goes to show you how much more we focus on our member experience here,” she adds.

“We’re doing all sorts of things for our membership, and it’s for all ages and interests. That gives everybody a reason to say, ‘Hey, let’s go to the club this week.’ ”

Easter brunch.

EPILOGUE

The Next Chapter

For the past quarter of a century, the Daniel Island Club has focused on building. Building out our physical campus to reflect the best the Lowcountry has to offer. Building a talented team of professionals dedicated to outstanding service. Building unparalleled experiences that consistently exceed expectations. Building a vibrant community of members of all ages and backgrounds. Building a reputation as Charleston’s premier in-town club. Building a legacy of excellence.

As we look ahead to the next twenty-five years, we build once more—this time on the strong foundation we’ve already created, with our eyes set firmly on the horizon. Already, plans are in place for new amenities and services, including a par-3 golf course, a new boutique-style lodge for overnight stays, a learning center complete with a state-of-the-art golf simulator, padel courts, and more.

No matter what lies ahead for the Daniel Island Club, one thing remains certain—you, our cherished members, will always be the cornerstone of all we do. As our Daniel Island Club family grows, so too will we, with the club’s promise guiding us every step of the way...

We promise to continue to provide a genuine Lowcountry lifestyle, nurturing a feeling of belonging. We prioritize personal and attentive service and exceptional facilities in a charming oasis, where our dedicated team creates lasting memories for our members, their families, and guests.

What memories, experiences, and milestones will we be reflecting on in 2050? Only time will tell. For now, here’s to twenty-five more incredible years in this extraordinary place we call home.

Onward and upward we go!

Opposite_ Cottages.

DI_BOOK

DANIEL ISLAND CLUB

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

DANIEL ISLAND CLUB

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

ELIZABETH BUSH

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

A Land of Plenty

ETIWAN ISLAND

A NEW IDENTITY

THE GUGGENHEIM ERA

CHAPTER TWO

Charting the Course

“TREASURE ISLAND”

PLACE-MAKING

GENERATING A BUZZ

THE CLUB TEES OFF

CHAPTER THREE

Evolution of the Club

GREG KEATING TAKES THE HELM

U.S.HIGHWAYONE

MILESTONES CONTINUE

THE COVID EFFECT

A JOB WELL DONE

CHAPTER FOUR

Tee Service

RECOLLECTIONS FROM BERESFORD CREEK COURSE DESIGNER TOM FAZIO

RECOLLECTIONS FROM RALSTON CREEK COURSE DESIGNER REES JONES

CHAMPIONSHIP GOLF DEBUTS ON DANIEL ISLAND

MEMBERS DRIVE GOLF OPERATIONS

KEEPERS OF THE GREEN

NATURE NURTURER

BLOOMING SUCCESS

IMPROVING THE GOLF EXPERIENCE

CHAPTER FIVE

Membership Momentum

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

The Park Club Experience

LIFE-CHANGING CONNECTIONS

TENNIS PROGRAMS CONTINUE TO SCORE

FACTS & FIGURES

AQUATICS

FITNESS CENTER

TENNIS OPERATIONS

More than a Meal

CHEERS TO THE CLUB’S BEVERAGE SERVICE

Homegrown Hospitality

A Spirit of Giving

Creating Traditions

MAGICAL MOMENTS

TOP ANNUAL EVENTS

RECURRING EVENTS

FUN/NOTABLE EVENTS

Creating Traditions

EPILOGUE

The Next Chapter