Golf carts have been part of the furniture at Reynolds Lake Oconee since the community broke ground in 1988. Seven championship courses, each designed by a different big name in golf architecture, all built around the assumption that you'd ride between shots. That assumption breaks this fall.
Fenmoor Golf Club, Reynolds' eighth course, is set to open in the coming months, and it comes with a detail that has nothing to do with yardage or slope rating: it's designed to be walked. According to GolfPass, the routing is meant to be walkable, a first at the community. After thirty-eight years and seven courses built for cart paths, that's not a footnote. It's a signal about who Reynolds is building for now, and it lines up with a concert calendar this fall that's quietly skewing younger too.
The Course That Breaks the Habit
Architect Steve Smyers is laying out Fenmoor on a 140-acre tract in the northeast corner of the 12,000-acre community, right where the headwaters of Lake Oconee meet Richland Creek. The site is a mix of rolling hills, wooded banks, marsh and meadow, with the creek splitting and threading through the terrain rather than sitting quietly at the edge of it. Nine of the course's greens sit along the shoreline, and the lake stays visible through most of the round according to Forbes.
Construction has been underway for more than a year. Reynolds shared a behind-the-scenes look at the course this past February, and completion is still tracking toward this fall. The clubhouse is being handled by BLUR Workshop, the architecture and interior design firm brought in to build a restaurant, bar, locker rooms and gathering terraces that echo the setting rather than compete with it.
Fenmoor will be Reynolds' third members-only course, joining The Creek Club and Richland, which opened in 2024. Once it's playable, Reynolds will offer 144 holes of golf across its eight courses, a total matched by only two other golf destinations in the country: Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina and the Boyne Golf properties in Michigan, per Forbes.
Seven Courses, Seven Architects
Every course at Reynolds carries a different signature, which is part of why golf here has never felt like one long repeated round:
- Great Waters — Jack Nicklaus
- The Oconee — Rees Jones
- The National — Tom Fazio
- The Preserve — Bob Cupp
- The Landing — Bob Cupp
- The Creek Club — Jim Engh
- Richland — Tom Fazio, opened 2024
Fenmoor adds Steve Smyers to that list, and it's the only one of the eight where walking was part of the design brief from the start rather than something you could technically do if you felt like it.
A Younger Course for a Younger Membership
The timing isn't a coincidence. In the years leading up to Richland's 2024 opening, annual rounds played across Reynolds' courses had already climbed 44 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to Forbes. Reynolds' own reporting has described the community's residential base as continuing to grow while also getting younger, a shift that shows up in more than tee sheet demand.
Building a walkable course into a portfolio of seven cart-dependent layouts is a specific answer to a specific kind of member: someone who wants exercise built into the round, not just scenery from a cart seat. It's the same instinct behind the growth of walking groups at private clubs nationally over the past several years, just applied here with a Steve Smyers routing and a Lake Oconee backdrop instead of a generic fairway.
The Fall Calendar Beyond the Fairway
Golf isn't the only place this shift shows up. Reynolds' concert programming has been drifting toward a slightly different era of nostalgia too. Past headliners at the community's signature fall festival have included Gin Blossoms and Sister Hazel in 2021, 38 Special in 2024, and Blues Traveler with Spin Doctors in 2025, an edition that sold out both its general admission and VIP tiers. This year's booking swaps Southern rock road warriors for a band built on the chart-topping California pop-rock sound of the 1990s.
Rhythm & Brews returns to Sandy Creek Barn on October 23, 2026, headlined by Sugar Ray with Vertical Horizon opening, presented in collaboration with Reynolds Lake Oconee and the Oconee Performing Arts Society, according to OPAS. The venue itself is part of the draw: an 800-acre property built around a restored 6,750-square-foot wood-beam barn, a 44-acre stocked lake and a two-story boathouse, with a gabled roof and a stone fireplace anchoring the covered terrace.
Rhythm & Brews sits inside a longer OPAS fall season that runs from an early-season Afternoon in Paris performance through the holidays:
| Event | Date | On the Bill |
|---|---|---|
| Afternoon in Paris / The Concert Truck | Season opener | Chamber and community performances |
| Rhythm & Brews Festival | October 23, 2026 | Sugar Ray, with Vertical Horizon opening |
| Broadway Sings for OPAS | November 8, 2026 | Shayna Steele, Mamie Parris and Nathaniel Hackmann with conductor Evan Roider |
| Fa-La-La | December 12, 2026 | Guest conductor Bruce Devlin with the OPAS Philharmonic |
Broadway Sings marks its sixth anniversary this year, bringing music from Wicked, Les Misérables and West Side Story to the Philharmonic's stage. Fa-La-La closes the season in December the way it has for years, with students from The Arts Barn and guest vocalists joining the orchestra for the community's holiday concert.
What the Season Actually Looks Like
Put the pieces next to each other and a pattern holds. Reynolds spent nearly four decades building golf courses around the cart, then built its eighth one around the walk. It spent years booking Southern rock legacy acts for its fall festival, then booked a band built on 90s California pop-rock. Neither change is dramatic on its own. Together, they read as a community adjusting its amenities to match a membership that looks less like the retirement-community stereotype and more like people in their forties and fifties who want to walk nine holes before dinner and hear a band they grew up with that night.
For anyone already living inside the gates, that means an actual choice at Fenmoor this fall: bag on your shoulder or bag on the cart, for the first time in Reynolds' history. It means an October evening at Sandy Creek Barn with a beer in hand and a band on stage that hasn't played the community before. And it means a full OPAS season running from a Paris-themed matinee in early fall through a holiday concert in December, with Broadway in between.
None of it requires a real estate transaction to enjoy. It's just what the calendar looks like this year for the people who already call this place home.
If you're weighing whether a life built around a walkable golf course and a barn full of live music sounds like yours, Boatright Realty Group knows this community from the inside, not just from a listing sheet. Contact us and let's find your Lake Oconee home.
