Every year, legions of American golfers fly to the British Isles to enjoy the game the UK way—on members’ courses that open their gates to outside play. Then they wing home to the United States, where such democratic welcomes at top private clubs are vanishingly rare.
From its birth nearly two years ago, Broomsedge Golf Club has counted among the exceptions. Now it’s going further.
Late last week the club announced that Baker Thompson has come on as majority owner and CEO. Thompson is no stranger to this corner of the golf world: he served as a founding member and club captain of the Lido, the highly-regarded Wisconsin club that sets aside a tranche of tee times for guests of Sand Valley just across the road. Thompson arrives with an ambitious build-out already in motion: four-bedroom cottages for members and guests and a food-and-beverage venue overlooking the course, with a second golf course to follow. Along the lines of such marquee courses as Ballybunion, North Berwick and Royal Dornoch, members and their guests will get priority but outsider will be able to book rooms and golf as well. “It felt like a great fit to be able to take Broomsedge to the next level and continue to embrace the UK/Lido model,” Thompson told Golf.com.
Situated in Rembert, S.C., on the same sandy belt that underlies Pinehurst two hours to the north, Broomsedge was built differently from the start. The driving force behind it was Mike Koprowski, an Air Force veteran who spent years as a policy analyst in Washington before pivoting to golf course design. Among his inspirations was Sand Hills, the pioneering minimalist layout in Nebraska that has long allowed non-members who have never played the course to request a tee time by writing a letter. Koprowski benefited from that policy firsthand, having gotten on the course that way with his father. After finding the Rembert site and financing its purchase with a military loan, he collaborated with architect Kyle Franz on a lay-of-the-land layout that runs across an unruly, pine-framed parcel. When Broomsedge opened in the fall of 2024, it adopted the Sand Hills stance: private, but not entirely sealed shut. Non-members could request a tee time, once.
Thompson first encountered Broomsedge on a trip south with Sand Valley co-developer Michael Keiser, and came away struck by the movement of the land and the piney terrain that framed it. Keiser is not an investor in Broomsedge but he has been a booster from the beginning and has now signed on as an advisor, a role he sees as paying forward the counsel he’s received from others, among them Sand Hills developer Dick Youngscap, Cabot co-founder Ben Cowan-Dewar, and his father, Bandon Dunes developer Mike Keiser. “Americans have always benefited overseas from the welcoming nature of clubs in the British Isles,” Keiser said. “There’s no reason that won’t work here.”
Until now, Broomsedge has operated with barebones infrastructure, including a pro shop run out of a trailer. The build-out and the club’s embrace of the British model comes at a pivotal time for Broomsedge and an interesting time in the industry. As it is in so many places, golf is booming across the Carolinas, with new courses sprouting across the sandhills and beyond. Most of the development is private. While appetite for top-tier golf is real, the access, for most players, is not. Broomsedge stands out in the balance it aims strike.