Cuscowilla's Golf Classic Grew a Second Night, and the New One Has Nothing to Do With Golf
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
"This event is about much more than great music and great golf," Dr. David Bradley told the Eatonton Messenger in July, when tickets and sponsorships for the newly named Songs & Drives for Lives went on sale. He could have been describing any of the charity tournaments that fill a Lake Oconee calendar between April and October. Golf classics for good causes are common enough here that most residents could name three without much thought. What makes this one worth a second look is what happened to it this year. The tournament that has quietly run at Cuscowilla for several years just grew a second night, and the new night has no golf in it at all.
The announced schedule listed a Singer-Songwriter Night for September 13 inside the Cuscowilla clubhouse, featuring Corey Crowder, a Lake Oconee resident and an award-winning songwriter and producer, alongside fellow songwriters Ray Fulcher and Ben Williams. The golf tournament was scheduled for September 14, continuing the format run under The Oconee Cellar's name at 126 Cuscowilla Drive for the past several years. Together, the two days were announced under a new name, Songs & Drives for Lives, with a beneficiary that has been part of this community's story since 2022, the Spencer Bradley Foundation for Mental Health.
Before it needed a second night, this was simply the Oconee Cellar Charity Golf Classic, a tournament organized by the owners of The Oconee Cellar. In its first year it raised just over $38,000. In the year that followed, it topped $70,000, nearly doubling.
That kind of growth is unusual for a single-format fundraiser. Golf classics tend to plateau once the regulars have played the course a few times. This one didn't, and the reason shows up in who has been running it. The event was never handed to an outside events company or a professional fundraising shop. It has stayed in the hands of neighbors, which is also why, once appetite for it outgrew a single afternoon, the fix wasn't simply a bigger tournament. It was an entirely separate night, built around music instead of golf.
Matt and Daniela Garofalo own The Oconee Cellar and built the original tournament from scratch. "We have been friends with David and Patti for over 25 years," Matt Garofalo said of the Bradleys, as reported in the Eatonton Messenger.
This year's expanded event added Luxury Lake Oconee Real Estate Group as headlining sponsor, alongside the Bradleys' own Lake Oconee Dentistry practice. The sponsor list includes businesses that have operated within a few miles of Cuscowilla for a decade or more.
The foundation focuses on teaching people to recognize and respond to a mental-health crisis before it becomes irreversible.
Money raised at Cuscowilla has already funded that kind of training for teachers and students at Lake Oconee Academy, Greene County Schools, Gatewood School, Kennesaw State University, the University of Georgia, and schools in Buford County. The foundation has set a goal of training 100,000 people over five years. It has also established a scholarship at Kennesaw State for students pursuing mental health related degrees, with the first recipient, a psychology student named Anna Shoup, receiving it in 2024.
Even the small details at last year's tournament carried the theme through. Winners were given pieces of pottery made using kintsugi, the Japanese technique of repairing broken ceramics with gold rather than disguising the crack, crafted by an artisan whose work has been presented to Japan's Prime Minister.
The announced event details were:
The foundation framed the event as open to ticket holders and sponsors rather than members only, a distinction for visitors who might otherwise assume a private club meant a private guest list.
The event expanded to two days, with a separate night devoted to music.
If you're weighing what it actually means to live inside a community where local businesses can come together to build a $70,000 fundraiser, that's a conversation Leslie Clark has often, usually over a much smaller question: what a specific street, dock, or fairway lot at Cuscowilla is really like to own once you're the one hosting Sunday afternoons there. Schedule your free consultation to talk through it.
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