The onions came first. The 3,500-acre estate outside Cobbtown, in rural Tattnall County, was once used to grow them, and Ohoopee Match Club occupies only a tiny portion of it. Today the property belongs to an entrepreneur along with angel investor Michael Walrath. It is a low-key place where owners, members, and their families play golf without throngs of visitors. The clubhouse, lodge, and cabins take their style from the agricultural buildings of the surrounding region, so the whole project settles into the landscape. The clubhouse came from the same architectural firm behind the one at Chechessee Creek, and it is functional, cosy, simple, and welcoming. It is the kind of place that seems to lower its voice when you arrive. Gil Hanse set out 22 holes across a sloping, forest-lined lakeside, with broad fairways and soiled sand ringing the oaks. By the standards of many great courses, the ground is subdued. That restraint is the quiet drama of Ohoopee: modest land asked to produce variety. Hanse answered with inventive greens and hazards. The putting surfaces are massive, like several bowls merged together and divided by high ridges, and they seem to share a family resemblance with his work at Streamsong Black. The fairways are mostly enormous, yet the safe, playable line into those greens often means flirting with real danger, with tough bunkers and patches of randomly excessive grass, though there is no manicured rough. Generosity off the tee, and then the bill comes due. What makes the ground sing is underneath it. Ohoopee sits on Kershaw sand, which percolates at 20 inches per hour and is classed as excessively drained. A monster storm can roll through, and soon after the course plays as if it never rained. In winter the TifTuf Bermuda goes dormant, and dormant turf over that sand makes for a surface as firm and fast as any in America. The ball races, the contours come alive, and the intricate features of the design come to the forefront. The great majority of those features are natural, but the short par-4 4th was a low area where the Hanse team had to create. The crew known as The Cavemen made it look as if it had simply been found. The routing is a study in ebb and flow, weaving 18 holes through five distinct looks, and the shifts between them feel smooth and seamless. Apart from the walk from the 1st green to the 2nd tee, the walks between holes are mostly short. They had better be. Ohoopee is walking-only, no carts, and it keeps a winter calendar, open from fall through spring and closed in the summer heat. The Championship layout measures 7,319 yards at par 72. The Whiskey Route offers another way around. It drops holes 2 through 5 in favor of the four extra holes, turns the par fives at 6 and 11 into par fours, reverses the long par-3 13th and the short par-4 14th, and plays the remaining ten holes from forward tees, for 5,610 yards at par 69. Which brings you to the heart of the place. In the United Kingdom, the question after a round is who won the match. In America it is what you shot. Ohoopee pushes back against the American habit. Stroke play is shunned, and everyone who comes plays match play. Half-par holes offer chance after chance to score, and the layout encourages you to take risks, to build momentum or pile pressure on your opponent. Paul Rudovsky, a well-travelled centurion, found it not only well designed but very strategic, and it reminded him of both the Old Course at St Andrews and Kingston Heath in the Melbourne Sandbelt. The stories at the bar are better for it. And when the match is settled, there is one last pleasure. Walrath says that beyond building the course and nerding out over its design, his favorite project was the locker room shower heads. Stand under one and you will feel as though you are drowning, in the best possible way.