Back in the Swing of Things

Callawassie Island Set to Host the Big East Women’s Golf Championship

It’s Back! It’s two thousand twenty FORE! And this spring, the Big East Women’s Golf Championship is returning to Callawassie Island.

Welcoming the women’s bracket of this collegiate classic program, longtime residents and newcomers alike will have an opportunity to reminisce or rediscover the tenets that make this one of the island’s most well-paired golfing buddies.

Rejoining the community just in time to test drive the glorious greens and fairways of Callawassie Island’s newly renovated Tom Fazio designed courses, college players steeped in a lifestyle of skill development and the pursuit of passion for the sport are the perfect focus group to give it the old college try, kicking the tires and chunking it out of reconditioned bunkers.

In just a few short years of pairing the culture and feel of Callawassie Island with the magic of the Big East, a relationship of greatness and like-kinds has forged. Starting with the Men’s championship a couple years before they were joined by the Women’s, the spirit of college golf brings in its wings everything that is at the core of the Callawassie Island brand – warmth, balance, and connection.

The warmth of welcoming our Big East guests, all the enthusiasm of players, coaches, families, and others, forges an incredible connection with those who share the love of the game. All of this balances new and old, amateur and pro-in-progress, hope and victory, visitors and residents, discipline and character, and the inspiration of collegiate sports with the character behind the training required for excellence on and off the course.

These elements are well understood and continuously shepherded by Callawassie Island Club General Manager and PGA Ambassador Jeff Spencer who works to cultivate that balance at Callawassie Island – among residents and guests and through events and offerings, but perhaps more than anything, in the refined traditions and qualities central to, inseparable from, and refined by interacting with the world of golf and the nature of the sport itself.

These merits have been defined as “Nine Core Values” by the national youth-based golf program First Tee: honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy, and judgment. Spencer can be heard quoting these values by heart after years of affiliation and personal development. Having first-hand knowledge of that influence and impact, Spencer holds a unique perspective of what a college circuit championship like this reflects, having stated of the event, “By the time we see them here, the process of going up through junior golf programs, even before college, has put them face-to-face with honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, and respect. That’s what golf does, even to the youngest players.”

This intrinsic connection with the “greatest game” and what it does to community and character makes Spencer the perfect match to guide the development of life on the island, and makes the island and its role in the community the perfect home to the Big East and other great golf classics, champs, and tourneys playing through – the nature of the “invitational” playing matchmaker between dream teams and the golf-host-with-the-most, the “emerald isle of the lowcountry,” Callawassie Island.

Visit bigeast.com to find out more about the excitement descending on Callawassie Island as the women of the Big East Championship cross the causeway, teeing off from Saturday, April 20 to Monday, April 22.