Aussie firm’s latest work is awarded America’s Best New Private Course.
The Fall Line is the geological term for the transition zone in Georgia between Columbus and Augusta that separates the hard clay soils of the upper Piedmont and the lower southern elevations that millions of years ago were ocean. It is one of America’s most significant sandbelts and has only recently been discovered for golf, highlighted by The Fall Line, a 36-hole private destination with an international membership of just 100.
The founders, a group of Los Angeles-based friends and business partners, initially approached Gil Hanse to design the course, though he declined due to its proximity to his Ohoopee Match Club that opened in 2019, 225 kilometres to the east. But the nature of the unique soils prompted Hanse to recommend the Australian firm of OCM, who have experience working on Melbourne’s Sandbelt and had begun pursuing projects in the US.
The vast, 5,000-acre Fall Line property provided near limitless opportunities for OCM, inspiring the concept of two complementary courses, one designed with British heathland accents and one with Melbourne Sandbelt influences.
Opened first, the heathland-inspired East course ventures through sparse forests of scrub pine with broad, inviting fairways that cascade across long inclines of land. A detour from holes 11 to 15 into a highland meadow provides outward views of the surrounding central Georgia ridges and valleys before the routing ducks back into the pines.
Many of the holes seem to inhale and exhale, playing expansive and then tight. Muscular bunkers with high, native-grass faces step abruptly into the fairways as if setting hard picks. Par 4s at holes seven, nine and 18 feign width but taper near the green, making players fit drives into shrinking sectors. Greens like the third and 11th, both par 5s, are surrounded by nothing but tight turf, nearly an acre of short-grass playground that encourages aggressive approach shots and imaginative chips. Thirteen greens are open at the front, accessible to running shots that carom off the tight, dry Zeon zoysia approaches and hole locations, especially on the diverse set of par 3s, can be tucked against spines, furrows and knobs.
Aside from the spin through the meadow, each hole plays in isolation and no par repeats itself until 12 and 13, back-to-back par 4s that are nevertheless quite different, one very short and the other very long. There’s nothing inherently special about alternating par every hole, but combined with this setting and this architecture it creates an immersive cadence, the sense that each new tee embarks on a strange voyage into the unknown.
The East was the only of the two Fall Line courses nominated for Best New Course this year by US Golf Digest as the West continues to grow in. We look forward to seeing how it fares in 2026. OCM won Best Transformation last year for its remodel of Medinah No.3, and The Fall Line is the firm’s first win for a new course.
As Cocking says, “It’s nice we can finally show some people what we’ve been up to the past four years.”
THE FALL LINE (EAST)
Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking & Ashley Mead (OCM)
Mauk, Georgia
6,610 yards/6,044 metres; par 70
