The golf season may be slowing down around the country but your friends in the coop are still cranking out some great content for our Club TFE members.
For those of you who may be new, Club TFE is Fried Egg Golf’s membership program. For $120 per year, you get access to exclusive content (like course reviews and industry insights), experiences (early access to events), and merchandise (who doesn’t love 10% off?). Our community of golf nuts continues to grow, and the work our staff is producing is only getting better.
As we get ready to turn the calendar to November, we wanted to take a minute to reflect on October and highlight some of our favorite offerings.
Member Video: Old Barnwell

High above Old Barnwell
This month we featured Old Barnwell, the host of our recent Club TFE Member-Guest event in South Carolina that pushes the envelope on contemporary golf course design.
Course Profiles
The creation of Sand Hills Golf Club in 1995 is a widely recognized turning point in modern golf architecture in the United States. While the effects of this new course may not have been realized until many years after its successful completion, the local golf ecosystem of the Nebraska Sandhills shifted soon after. Bayside Golf Club was a product of locals who wanted their own “Sand Hills” for their town. The course is what they call “extreme golf” and it certainly lives up to it.
Staying in South Carolina, have you heard of Chalk Mine 9? With golf participation on the rise due to the post-COVID 19 boom, the First Tee of Aiken and the University of South Carolina Aiken partnered to create a dual-purpose facility that would both meet the demands of the growing First Tee program and provide the USCA Pacers with their own practice facility. Six years of planning and a $3+ million spend delivered the finished product.
Design Notebooks
Design Notebook is our weekly roundup of golf architecture-related news and musings for Club TFE members, and this month we had a lot to talk about.
Our most-recent notebook was a big-boned write up that featured the expansion plans at Sweetens Cove that will see the once “Little Golf Course That Could” in Tennessee transform into a fully fledged buddies-trip destination. On top of that, we talked with the owner of a public course in Florida about the redesign at Miami Lakes (which was spurred on by an episode of the Fried Egg Golf Podcast).

Sweetens Cove plans
In a notebook earlier this month, we took the concept of a bunker in the middle of a green and really ran with it. We’re talking hand-drawn pictures ran with it, people. We also weighed in on a recent discussion of golf course architecture discourse in the social media age.
And we can’t forget the mailbag, where we answered a wide variety of our reader’s questions on golf course architecture.
Club TFE Events
October was also a busy month on the road for Club TFE members. Many participated in our event at Prairie Dunes while many others got a sneak peek at Brambles. We then capped off event season with two wonderful days at our 2024 Club TFE Fall Member-Guest at Aiken Golf Club and Old Barnwell. But we weren’t done there.
On Tuesday, October 22, 16 Club TFE members were among the first to hit shots at Broomsedge Golf Club on its opening day. The following day, we took another group of members to visit the timeless Old Town Club for a wonderful afternoon of golf followed by an evening of cocktails and a steak dinner. Club TFE has its perks!
October Club TFE Virtual Hangout
Every month we host a virtual hangout featuring members of the staff. This month we provided a couple Club TFE and Fried Egg Event updates (more to come on that front), gave some Halloween parental advice and answered many member questions, such as: What do we think of the TGL? Do personal feelings cause you to overrate or underrate a golf course? Push cart thoughts? You’ll want to stick around until the end where we all discuss our best/most embarrassing Halloween costumes.
Speaking of Halloween costumes, the annual Shotgun Start golf halloween costume episode did not disappoint this year. Listen on iTunes or Spotify.
Weekend Chat: Grass, Greens, and Everything In Between
After one of our events at Brambles (watch our All Grass is Local video if you haven’t yet), we loved was the zoysia greens and the way the ball ripped across the slopes as it lost speed. If you wanted to make a three foot slider, you had to be committed to the line. The zoysia got us thinking, how do you value the grass type when thinking about green complexes? The comment section led to some great discussion.
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