It was Louis Alphonse Berckmans, a member of the Beautification Committee, who named the holes in 1932, working with Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts. The committee had suggested ‘concentrating in the vicinity of each hole a massed profusion of a distinctive variety of trees or plants that bloom during the winter season’. Remember, the course was intended only to operate in the winter. Berckmans was 74 years old and no golfer but he became a member of the club and his younger brother, Prosper Jr, was the club’s first general manager. Their grandfather, the Belgian Baron Louis Mathieu Edouard Berckmans, bought the old indigo plantation in 1857 and turned it into the Fruitland Nurseries, which imported plants and trees from various countries. Their father, Prosper Julius Alphonse Berckmans, who helped to popularise the azalea, continued the nursery until his death in 1910 and a few years later it ceased operation. But many prominent features remain today, such as the azaleas and the long row of magnolias that guards the drive up to the clubhouse, known as Magnolia Lane.
