After collaborating with “golf royalty” to create courses globally, Scott Ferrell is teaming up with longtime Greenville resident and businessman Barton Tuck to kick off a golf club close to home.
“There isn’t a golf project like this in Greenville,” Ferrell says. “There hasn’t been a private golf club developed here in 30 years. I think the market is ready.”
Ferrell and Tuck are developing Kawonu Golf Club, a private, golf-only club on 300 acres, 17 miles south of Downtown Greenville.
While other clubs in the Upstate feature amenities for swimming, tennis and pickleball, Kawonu will be designed specifically for local and out-of-town golfers.
“That golf-only concept is appealing to people who are passionate about golf,” Ferrell says. “You don't find that within 25 minutes of Greenville. We're creating a place where you can get away without having to get away.”
Kawonu will be located at Fork Shoals Road and Hwy. 418 in Simpsonville. The closest similar courses are in Aiken or Beaufort, he says.
“We believe that our plans, our site, our architects, our team … We can raise the bar for golf in the Upstate,” Ferrell says. “I love Greenville. I've been here 17 years. It's a phenomenal place. I think having a world-class, golf-only destination project is going to make Greenville even better than it is.”
Ferrell has not always worked close to home. His career has taken him from coast to coast and around the world with the PGA and legendary golfer and course designer Gary Player.
Golf is a constant in his life.
“I grew up in a small town in Virginia, and we had a little club. I was 7 when I started playing. I fell in love with the game. My whole family played. We played, we watched, we worked at the golf course. I had a passion,” he says.
Relationships are another constant. “I'm still close to the people I’ve met along the way, even the 7-year-old I started with. We remain best of friends,” Ferrell says. “As Gary Player always said, ‘Golf is a friend-making machine.’”
Two decades after Ferrell first swung a club, he took a job with the PGA Tour and later with Player.
Originally from South Africa, Player won the Masters Tournament three times, the British Open three times, the PGA Championship twice, and the U.S. Open once. He received the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
“I traveled the world with him for 15 years. Most of what we did was international,” Ferrell says. “I saw places I never thought I might see. And I did it with golf royalty.”
As President of Gary Player Design, Ferrell helped establish golf courses in China, the United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria, Morocco, France, Honduras, Mexico, Canada, India and other locations.
“My role was to identify new projects. I located the developers who had the property, funding and permits,” Ferrell says. “We had talented architects who worked with Gary on the golf concepts and strategy. We would design the golf course and help market it through Gary Player.”
The organization worked in and out of China for about a decade. “There was a time (in the mid-2000s) that golf was soft in the United States and starting to grow in China. The whole industry flocked to China. I would run into my competitors at the airport in Shanghai.”
Ferrell worked on approximately 10 golf courses in China. However, later, 80 courses were bulldozed in Beijing as part of an anti-corruption movement. “They felt that golf was tied to the corruption,” he ...
