Owners, Cholly and Delaine Clark found that to be very true in 1989 when they awoke the day after Hurricane Hugo. Infamous to all South Carolinians, Hurricane Hugo ripped through the state’s Lowcountry leaving little untouched in its path, including the Clark’s new golf course development, Santee National Golf Club at Chapel Creek Plantation. Charles “Cholly” Clark once said, “I got up and went up to the golf course to check out how we fared. There were folks so turned around and lost amongst the hundreds of fallen trees and debris that cars were coming across the bridge at no. 18 tee box. They thought they were on the secondary road off the freeway. I couldn’t believe my eyes!”
This may have been the moment that a golf destination in Santee sparked in his mind, or it may have been having 180 hotel rooms at the Holiday Inn (now Quality Inn and Suites) to fill and a golf course that had just been struck by a hurricane weeks before opening day, but whenever the thought occurred it quickly grew into a plan. With a wife and three girls at home counting on him, Mr. Clark set out with a passion to tell the country about his home town and invite them for a visit – little would he know that 20 years later his home town would have become South Carolina’s inland golf destination.