Secession Golf Club

Few private clubs in the American South carry a name as deliberately provocative as this one. Secession Golf Club, set in the South Carolina Lowcountry outside Beaufort, leans into the region's complicated Civil War heritage with a knowing wink — the club's branding and identity embrace the local history rather than sidestep it, giving the place a personality that goes well beyond the typical members' retreat.

Beaufort itself is one of the oldest and most storied towns in the Southeast, a port city defined by antebellum architecture, tidal marshes, and the vast ACE Basin estuary system spreading out to the south. The Lowcountry landscape is unlike any other golf setting in America — live oaks draped in Spanish moss, salt marsh views, and a subtropical humidity that makes even a mild January round feel atmospheric.

As a private club in this environment, Secession offers its members a sense of place that's genuinely hard to manufacture. The land does a great deal of the work, and the golf would be memorable simply by virtue of existing here.