Greenville Country Club
1895 - 2005

In the spring of 1895, a small group of young Greenville men, soon to become known as the 'Piney Mountain Pioneers', loaded their wagons with shovels, rakes, sickles, saws and other tools and set out for Piney Mountain, SC.  Having taken possession of 50 acres of land conveyed to them by an Indian tribe then living in the area, their goal was to lay out the first golf course in this part of the country.  The property, a grassy meadow carved out of the hillside, was the site for the course, crude clubhouse and other facilities built only seven years after the first permanent-site golf course was laid out in a cow pasture nearYonkers, NY.

Only a few years later, a larger and more modern facility was needed.  The mansion and property of a one-time Provisional Governor of South Carolina were purchased and the new club, with 50 members, opened in 1905 as the Sans Souci Country Club.  The original three-story Victorian style mansion was refitted into a semi-modern clubhouse with dining rooms, locker rooms, a dance hall and verandahs.  The golf course was a nine-hole layout of 2,634 yards, featuring crossing fairways.  Two clay tennis courts were built and cricket was also played on occasion at the new club.  The initiation fee in 1905 was ten dollars, with annual dues of twenty dollars.