Amari Avery, a collegiate golf star, continues to make waves in the golf world as she tees off in her fourth consecutive start in the 2024 Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
The Augusta National Women’s Amateur is one of the most prestigious events for female amateurs. It is an honor to be invited once, but four times is a dream.
With each appearance, Avery reaffirms her position as one of the most promising talents in the sport. In addition to her picturesque golf swing, she is mature, humble and knows what it takes to work hard at her sport and in her studies.
Bank of America has been a monumental supporter in Avery throughout her career and will be alongside her at this years tournament. Avery values this partnership and believes it has played an important role in her success on and off the course.
Golfweek had a chance to sync up with Avery, her friends, trainers and family to see what it takes to be one of the best amateur golfers on the planet. Check it out below.
What can an outdoorsy person get up to in Augusta, Georgia? Is golf all that comes to mind? If so, you’re missing out on some of the city’s most interesting adventures.
Located near the border between Georgia and South Carolina, Augusta enjoys access to the Savannah River and plenty of green spaces. In fact, the town’s abundance of lush, plant-filled parks and gardens earned it the nickname “The Garden City.” In between the river and the gardens, visitors exploring the region can find places to hike, bike, kayak, and more. For people who know the city as golf-central, this sprawling world of options may come as a surprise. So, whether you’ll be in town for the Masters or are curious enough to visit on a weekend getaway, get inspired with this list of the best outdoor activities in Augusta.
Do creatures from the Black Lagoon and swamp things pique your curiosity? Have you ever wondered what lurks in the murky depths? If so, the Phinizy Swamp Nature Park in Augusta, Georgia, is for you. Here’s what you should know about the gorgeous and mysterious environments you can explore there.
Guests are invited to visit Phinizy Swamp Nature Park year-round, admission-free. And it’s worth the trip. After arriving at the park’s unassuming gravel parking lot, visitors can follow a short and serene tree-lined walking path down to the Floodplain Boardwalk. Here, atmospheric swamp landscapes will immediately draw you in. The boardwalk stretches out across the floodplain of Butler Creek, where egrets, beavers, and other critters hide in the trees and brush.
Since 1996, the Phinizy Center has worked to protect these wild landscapes and build healthy, sustainable watersheds. Before the nonprofit’s establishment, the area was an illegal dumping site, where trash and other pollutants compromised downstream water quality. It took teams of students, researchers, and other volunteers to clean up the land and rehabilitate it back to natural wonder status. Today, educators, caretakers, and other park team members use the thriving Phinizy Swamp Nature Park to educate the community and advocate for conservation.
While a stroll along the park’s beautiful Beaver Dam Trail can teach you a lot about the region, science-minded and outdoors-loving guests can deepen their understanding of the area through Phinizy’s Eco Explorers program. Just be prepared to wade through swamp water and face some bugs. The program takes visitors on a guided park tour, from the boardwalk down to Sunrise Pond.
At the pond, park volunteers and researchers like Rachael Gonzalez and Jacob Lott will guide explorers through the process of catching aquatic macroinvertebrates with a dip net. From there, you’ll take your catches up to a nearby covered pavilion and look at them under microscopes. As you try to identify which critters you’ve caught, your guides will provide insight into how these minuscule insects help researchers track water quality and environmental health.
Guests may very well come away from the program with a new love for Georgia’s wetlands. And if they do, there are some pretty cool ways to get involved at Phinizy. Volunteers, Phinizy members, and citizen scientists can all help make a difference.
Interested in learning more about the research projects going on at Phinizy? You can explore that, too! The park’s research page provides excellent resources and information on initiatives like the effort to monitor and restore the Shoals spider lily.
Arcis Golf expands on its portfolio of nearly 70 clubs around the country.
Champions Retreat in Evans, Georgia – the host club for the first two rounds of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur each year – is being sold to Dallas-based Arcis Golf.
Terms of the deal, slated to close Friday, have not been released. News of the impending sale was emailed to Champions Retreat members, as first reported in the Augusta Press. The impending sale was confirmed independently by Golfweek, although an official statement has not been released to news organizations.
The private Champions Retreat near Augusta consists of three nine-hole courses designed by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. The ANWA is played each April on Palmer’s The Island nine and Nicklaus’ The Bluffs nine before moving to Augusta National Golf Club for the final round the Saturday before the Masters begins. The club also features oversized and luxurious cabins with a top-notch food and beverage program. The club has opened its gates to guests during Masters weeks in recent years.
Champions Retreat was founded in 2005. Its reputation began to take off in 2014 when it was purchased by Bill Forrest, founder of the Connecticut-based private equity firm Tower Three Partners.
Arcis Golf, founded in 2013, owns or operates nearly 70 private, resort and daily-fee clubs around the United States. Its properties include TPC River’s Bend in Ohio, Cowboys Golf Club in Dallas, Grayhawk Golf Club in Arizona and Tijeras Creek Golf Club in California. Atairos, an independent private company focused on supporting growth-oriented businesses, acquired a substantial ownership position in Arcis in 2020. Fortress Investment Group LLC also maintains a significant ownership stake in Arcis.
An Augusta golf cart company is using solar power at the historic Ryder Cup for the first time to charge its carts.
An Augusta golf cart company is using solar power at the historic Ryder Cup for the first time to charge its carts.
Since 1997, Club Car has been providing carts for the biennial tournament between U.S. and European golf teams. In this year’s tourney, being held just outside Rome through Oct. 1, much of the fleet is being charged by a bank of solar panels.
It’s the first time the Ryder Cup has used solar-powered charging points, which ties into the tournament’s sustainability policy and a commitment by the European Tour Group to be carbon-neutral by 2040, said Ryder Cup operations director Paul Dunstan.
“It’s a very complex site – much like a small town – with a large number of grandstands, hospitality facilities and event infrastructure. The best way to navigate the site quickly and efficiently is to use the vehicles Club Car provides,” he said.
Club Car is an official cart supplier for the PGA, the DP World Tour and the St. Andrews Links Trust. The company shipped 550 carts overseas to use in the Ryder Cup.
The fleet consists of six red and six blue team cars, driven by captains Luke Donald and Zach Johnson and their vice-captains, “plus hundreds more golf, turf and utility cars to assist with almost every area of the Ryder Cup from media and broadcasting to security and medical transportation,” Club Car said in a release.
All eyes are on Augusta National, but how does the Georgia stalwart stack up against Alister MacKenzie’s other layouts?
The golf world’s attention is focused on Augusta National Golf Club this weekend, bringing plenty of attention to famed golf course architect Alister MacKenzie. But the annual home of the Masters, as great as it is, isn’t even MacKenzie’s top-rated layout.
Golfweek’s Best ranks courses every year based on the input of more than 800 raters worldwide, and Augusta National in 2022 ranked No. 3 among all classic courses in the United States built before 1960. Golfweek’s raters judge each course on a scale of 1 to 10, with only the top handful of courses in the world surpassing an average rating of 9.
Augusta National – which has been heavily modified over the decades – comes in at 9.51 out of 10, so clearly MacKenzie and the architects who followed with renovations at Augusta National did great work on the old tree farm. Funny thing, though, it’s not even the best course in the U.S. designed by the Scottish surgeon.
Alister MacKenzie
That honor belongs to a club out west. Click through to see MacKenzie’s top courses in the world, as rated by Golfweek’s Best.
It’s worth noting, MacKenzie laid his hands and intellect on many courses. The ones below include tracks that were MacKenzie originals or received substantial MacKenzie input, often with help from other designers. Several clubs he worked on, such as California Golf Club, were not included in the following calculations because much of his work has been redone in subsequent renovations or he didn’t have the majority of the design input.
Plans to revive the course could fall into jeopardy unless its former clubhouse becomes part of the development deal.
Plans to revive the former Jones Creek Golf Club course could fall into jeopardy unless its former clubhouse, under separate ownership, becomes part of the development deal.
The course in Evans’ Jones Creek subdivision closed in September 2018. In 2019 the course’s clubhouse and adjoining parking lot was purchased by homebuilder Mark Herbert’s company MBH Holdings, and the building continued to be rented to a catering business while the course itself, still seeking a new owner, fell into disuse and later foreclosure. The course failed to sell at public auction in October 2020.
Now Herbert is asking Columbia County to change the zoning designation of his property so it can be used only as “event, hospitality and meeting space; restaurant space; and catering space and kitchen.” Under the request, the building could not legally be permitted to operate as a golf clubhouse.
But golf event services company Bond Golf Global has told the Jones Creek HOA about its interest in helping rebuild the 48-year-old course into a “full-scale training facility” to open by September, partnering with veteran golf pro Darren May of golf development company Black Cat Athlete. The plan is to “have Jones Creek in full functionality by the end of 2024” with a reopened golf course, Bond Golf founder Andrew Brooks wrote in a letter to the HOA.
That course, Brooks said, will need a clubhouse.
The clubhouse “is the nucleus of the golf course, providing a natural center and meeting place for golfers and the community, with its parking and storage areas designed for the golf course,” he noted. “It would be very important for the clubhouse to be part of the development plans. If the clubhouse separates and gets rezoning away from the facility, it makes the sale of the golf course and existing plans for the academy very difficult to navigate, thus reducing the potential of a future for Jones Creek golf course.”
Harry Revell, attorney for current course owner Julian Saul, agreed. Many legitimate buyers and “a lot of bottom-feeders” have expressed interest in buying the property over the years but all negotiations had stalled. Bond Global had emerged as a new bright spot, and Saul has been supportive of the company’s work so far in trying to refurbish the Jones Creek golf facilities.
“We were very optimistic we would have a deal but the clubhouse killed it, because without exception everybody who expressed interest in buying the property must have the clubhouse,” Revell said Sunday. “It just will not go without the clubhouse.”
The clubhouse at Jones Creek Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., will not be part of the auction. (Augusta Chronicle file photo)
What are the complications?
Dozens of members of the Jones Creek Homeowners Association filled chambers Sunday afternoon at the Evans Government Complex to learn more about Herbert’s rezoning request and its possible impact on the golf course’s future.
County Manager Scott Johnson, whom the HOA invited to its meeting, told residents it was “almost incumbent” on Herbert as the new property owner to seek rezoning of the property so he can use it how he likes.
Other ownership factors complicate the property. While the golf course has one owner, Saul, and the clubhouse has another owner, Herbert, Jones Creeks’ swimming pool and tennis courts are owned by the HOA. The only access to those amenities is through vaguely defined easements through the private clubhouse property.
“To the best of my knowledge that easement is not defined. That’s a problem, and I’m telling you all this upfront because I feel like that’s a problem for you guys,” Johnson said. “If you really wanted to get down to brass tacks, if MBH Holding said, ‘You cannot trespass on my property to get to the pool or the tennis courts’ and he put up gates, I don’t know there’s a whole lot you could do. You have an easement but it’s not a defined easement. What we really need is a defined easement.”
Tripp Nanney, president of the Jones Creek HOA, said 79% of respondents disapproved of the clubhouse’s proposed rezoning, according to a poll he sent recently to residents. He said he will present those results to members of the Columbia County Planning Commission, who will vote to approve or deny Herbert’s rezoning request Feb. 2, and members of the full Board of Commissioners, who are expected to render final approval or denial on the request Feb. 21.
“I’d like to think our collective voice would make a big difference on that,” Nanney said. “We’ll see.”
Revels said that in his professional dealings with the county, “I’m convinced that commissioners, all of them, want to see a golf course back at Jones Creek.” However, adding his opinion outside of his professional capacity, “if another person buys this property, is successful in getting it rezoned and puts something in there that’s commercially viable, whatever that might be, you will never have a golf course here – ever.”
The course, which hosts the annual Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament, was completed in June 2005.
AUGUSTA, Georgia — A judge last month ruled to allow an almost $8 million charitable deduction claimed by Champions Retreat, following the Evans golf course’s win in a 2020 federal tax case. Evans is a suburb of Augusta.
The case has been in litigation since 2013, when the Internal Revenue Service rejected a $10.4 million conservation-easement deduction. U.S. Tax Court Judge Cary Douglas Pugh recently decided to allow more than $7.8 million of the $10.4 million deduction claimed by Champions Retreat Golf Founders LLC on its 2010 tax return.
Champions Retreat acquired more than 463 acres of land in April 2002 to develop a neighborhood, Founders Village, and a 27-hole golf course.
The Evans course, which hosts the annual Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament, was completed in June 2005 and boasts three 9-hole courses, a pro shop, a restaurant, a locker room and a driving range. The three courses were designed by golf legends Gary Player, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
Carolina Melgrati, of Italy, tosses her club after missing a putt during day two of the second round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur at Champions Retreat on Friday, April 1, 2022. (Photo by Katie Goodale/USA TODAY NETWORK)
The easement, subsequent sale
Then-owners of the Champions Retreat Golf Club granted a 349-acre easement to the North American Land Trust on Dec. 16, 2010, after the recession.
Conservation easements enable property owners to take charitable tax deductions on properties gifted to land trusts.
The easement area included 25 holes of the golf course, most of the two remaining holes and the driving range. Owners claimed a $10.4 million charitable deduction for the 2010 taxable year for the grant of the easement to the land trust, basing the deduction off its appraiser’s evaluation.
In October 2014, the golf club and some of its cabins were sold to Tower Three Partners and its affiliate, San Diego-based Heritage Golf Group for $6.64 million.
Hsin-Yu Li, of Chinese Taipei, putts during the second round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur at Champions Retreat on Thursday, March 31, 2022. Rain delayed tee times until 3 p.m. (Photo by Katie Goodale/USA TODAY NETWORK)
Deduction denied in 2018
In September 2018, Champions Retreat argued the easement satisfied conservation purposes by protecting the natural habitat of wildlife and the ecosystem and preserved open space, according to court documents. It noted specifically the southern fox squirrel and the denseflower knotweed, all of which Champions Retreat stated were rare, endangered or threatened.
However, Judge Pugh found there were not enough of the endangered knotweed plants in the area and the squirrels are still hunted legally in the state.
Pugh added that since the easement area is in a private section of the complex, only accessible to members and their guests through a gate manned 24 hours a day, it is unavailable for the public to enjoy.
The court concluded Champions Retreat did not support an “identified conservation project,” and sided with the IRS, denying the deduction for the 2010 tax year.
Champions Retreat appealed the decision and when brought back to court on May 13, 2020, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the 2018 ruling against the club, stating Champions Retreat was entitled to a deduction. Later, in October 2022, the court determined the amount of the deduction.
Players get ready to tee off during the first round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur at Champions Retreat on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. (Photo by Katie Goodale/USA TODAY NETWORK)
Valuing the easement
Claud Clark III was recognized by the court as an appraiser for Champions Retreat and assessed the fair market value of the easement at almost $11 million. He stated the highest and best use of the 27-hole course was an 18-hole golf course and residential subdivision.
However, IRS appraiser David G. Pope said the highest and best use of the 27-hole course was to remain a golf course. Pope assessed the easement at $20,000.
The two appraisals varied so widely because of the difference in usage, with Clark factoring in the price of lots if used for residential housing and Pope limiting the usage to a golf course.
In litigation, it ends up being a dueling experts situation, said Gregg D. Polsky, a University of Georgia professor in taxation law.
“The claim of the taxpayer’s expert was that part of the course could have been developed into residential property and sold for large dollars, and after the easement it couldn’t,” Polsky said. ”The government expert came in and said no, actually the highest and best use is the golf course, so effectively the deduction is zero.”
The IRS has been cracking down on syndicated conservation easement deals, which usually entail investors buying cheap, vacant land and then hiring an appraiser to claim that it has large developmental value, according to Polsky.
The promoters tell investors they will buy the property, grant the easement and then claim charitable deductions that are larger than their initial investment.
“Syndicated conservation easement deals are very sketchy, and they’ve been attacked, mostly successfully, by the IRS,” Polsky said. ”In this case, there was separation between the time the property was acquired and developed and the time that the easement was granted. Those are more legitimate, but both types of contexts rely on sort of aggressive valuations; basically, trying to get your appraiser to sort of provide a super high ’highest and best use’ valuation.”
‘An advocate as much as an expert’
Clark is named in a bipartisan investigative report by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee centered around syndicated conservation easements. The report specifically cites Clark’s involvement in a transaction that took place in Alabama.
Clark was the appraiser in that transaction and “played a prominent role in the world of syndicated conservation easements,” according to the report, which is critical of Clark’s work.
In 2019, the Alabama Real Estate Appraisers Board challenged a Black Bear Enterprises appraisal conducted by Clark for not conforming to the proper standards of an appraisal. Rather than defend himself before the board, Clark surrendered his appraisal license in Alabama, according to the report.
In the Champions’ case, the court stated Clark was “serving as an advocate as much as an expert,” according to court documents.
The Augusta Chronicle tried to reach Clark for comment via phone numbers on court documents and his business’s phone number listed online, but all lines were disconnected. The Chronicle also reached out to Clark via Facebook but did not receive an immediate response.
Despite his criticism of Clark, Judge Pugh ultimately sided with the appraiser, finding the property could be used for residential housing.
“The tax court generally agreed with the [Champions Retreats’] expert and reduced the deduction by roughly 20%, bringing it to around $8 million,” Polsky said.
Pugh found the fair market value of the easement in 2010, taking the lots into account, to be $7,834,091.
Champions Retreat referred The Augusta Chronicle to the former Champions Retreat owners E.G. Meybohm and Robert Pollard. Meybohm’s representative, Mike Polatty, was not aware on Thursday that the case had concluded and did not wish to speak on the record.
Vivian D. Hoard, an Atlanta-based attorney with the Fox Rothschild law firm, which represented the former course owners, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A glorious weekend at the Masters has come and gone.
What can we do to pass the time while we wait another year for the return to Augusta National? We have eight glorious Masters-themed accessories to help you daydream about April 6, 2023.
During the past week we’ve helped you find some of the best Masters-themed apparel and gear which, in case you missed it, you can find here:
As you continue to boost your wardrobe, this list should help you round out your newly christened green and yellow closet.
We occasionally recommend interesting products, services, and gaming opportunities. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. Golfweek operates independently, though, and this doesn’t influence our coverage.
Grab a pimento cheese sandwich and prepare to sit on the couch for the next four days. It’s Masters week.
Clear Play: Golf betting needs a different approach than other sports, we’ll explain how to find value for bettors in the Masters.
All odds via Tipico Sportsbook.
Gannett may earn revenue from Tipico for audience referrals to betting services. Tipico has no influence over nor are any such revenues in any way dependent on or linked to the newsrooms or news coverage. See Tipico.com for Terms and Conditions. 21+ only. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (NJ), 1-800-522-4700 (CO).
