Operators of several golf courses in the Myrtle Beach market have recently completed or are in the process of completing notable renovations without having to close their entire facility.
Courses include Myrtlewood’s PineHills Course, Tidewater Golf Club, Prestwick Country Club, Brunswick Plantation and Legends Golf Resort.
Myrtlewood’s PineHills Course
At Myrtlewood Golf Club’s PineHills Course, all of the bunkers have been rebuilt and redesigned, changing the appearance of the course for players and improving bunker conditions.
Course architect Dan Schlegel, who worked on Myrtlewood’s Palmetto Course during a bunker renovation project in 2019, oversaw bunker renovations on the PineHills Course.
Schlegel was a partner in the firm Ault, Clark & Associates, which included Tom Clark, who was instrumental in designing the Palmetto Course while working for the Ault firm. Schlegel also worked on the Palmetto’s tee boxes in the mid-1990s and redesigned the 17th hole in 1998.
“We had such a good experience with him at Palmetto that we brought him back when we renovated the bunkers at PineHills,” said Steve Mays, president of Founders Group International, which owns and operates 21 Grand Strand courses, including the two at Myrtlewood.
PineHills is a 6,640-yard course that dates back to 1966, when it opened as the Pines Course. The name changed after architect Arthur Hills undertook a major renovation and partial redesign that altered many holes.
The bunker project ran from January to spring, with several holes being drilled simultaneously.
Each bunker was rebuilt with a capillary concrete system that aids drainage and conditioning. “I’m excited about the playability because that’s the one thing this course has really been lacking,” Mays said. “These bunkers have not been in very good shape from a drainage perspective over the last few years.”
Schlegel redesigned almost all of the bunkers on the course to make them more visible from the tee or on approach shots to the green, and repositioned many of them.
“I think it will change the look of the golf course. You will be able to see into the bunkers, which was not possible before,” Mays said.
The 16th hole, a 350-yard par 4 with a slight dogleg to the right, was partially redesigned. A second fairway was added on the inside of a bunker that stood on the inside corner of the bend. The bunker was rebuilt and repositioned and the fairway was lowered to provide a view of a water hazard in front of the green from the tee.
“It’s going to be a much more intimidating tee shot in terms of appearance because you’ve got a bunker that’s now in the middle of a fairway and you’re going to be able to see the water that you can now hit your tee shots into to the right, but in reality it’s going to be a much more playable hole with a wider fairway,” Mays said.
The PineHills Course hosted numerous future PGA Tour members in the 1990s and early 2000s as the site of the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) Ping Myrtle Beach Junior Classic.
PineHills’ greens are only six years old, with the Sunday Ultradwarf Bermuda being installed in 2018.
FGI has closed several golf courses for renovations in recent years, including the two Myrtlewood golf courses, Grande Dunes Resort Course, River Hills Golf & Country Club, Long Bay Club and Pawleys Plantation, where the most extensive work was done as part of the recent renovation projects.
The company has acquired the Myrtle Beach National King’s North Course will undergo a major renovation this summer Project.
Tidewater Golf Club
When KemperSports took over operations of Tidewater Golf Club last August, the company wanted to gather feedback from employees and guests and asked employees which areas of the club they thought needed improvement.
Staff realized that the bunkers needed to be renovated to reduce the difficulty of the course and improve the pace of play.
“Our goal was to give the course a new look. The bunkers have not been significantly improved in over 30 years,” said Chris Cooper, GM and head professional at Tidewater, who has played the course for 27 years. “But we have put more thought into the pace of play. We believe the golf course will be much more playable for guests.”
The comprehensive renovation of the bunker will begin in mid-November – probably in the week of November 11th – and is expected to be completed in mid-February.
One hole will be completed at a time and the course will remain open for the entire duration of the project.
“We thought this would be as disruptive to golfers as possible,” Cooper said. “The package season ends in mid-November and golf slows down until the end of February, so we thought starting and completing the project at that time would have less impact on golfers.”
About a third of the course’s bunkers – almost all fairway bunkers – will be removed and the remaining bunkers will be reduced in size by an average of 30 percent. Some fairway bunkers will also be combined.
“A lot of the bunkers here were originally just placed in areas that weren’t really intended for play. It was more about aesthetics,” Cooper said.
The bunkers will receive better drainage, new sand and improved shaping.
The greenside bunkers being removed include one to the left of the par-4 green on the fourth and one to the right of the par-5 green on the 13th. Both large bunkers shield the greens from the underlying marshland adjacent to the holes. Cooper said those embankments will be covered with grass, the slopes will be flattened and roughs will be created to prevent balls from entering the marshland.
“This makes it much more playable for the guest,” said Cooper. “These holes are difficult enough.”
The redesign will improve water drainage from the bunkers and improve the edges between the bunkers and greens for maintenance and playability.
With nine holes along the Intracoastal Waterway or Cherry Grove Inlet, Tidewater was named the best new public golf course in the country by both Golf Digest and Golf Magazine when it opened in 1990. Since then, it has received many more accolades from organizations and publications, including being named the ninth best public access golf course in SC by Golfweek Magazine and the 2022 SC Golf Course of the Year by the state’s Golf Course Owners Association.
Brunswick Plantation
The 27-hole course, owned and operated by the Heritage Group, underwent improvements to the clubhouse and course last winter.
In January, the flooring in the clubhouse lobby and the bar and restaurant area of the Champions Grill was replaced and the Champions Grill was remodeled.
The Hickory Shaft restaurant, which was in another area of the property, closed a few years ago. “We basically took the best parts of that bar and restaurant and put them in the Champions Grill in the clubhouse and made that much better,” said Brett Thomaswick, Brunswick Plantation’s director of golf. “So we’d rather have one really good, busy place than two. It was hard to predict which one would be busy and for how long.”
A bunker renovation project was completed in February and March. Approximately 10 to 15% of the bunkers on the course were removed and replaced with grass.
The remaining bunkers had their drainage improved, received new sand and many were redesigned. “We actually redesigned a lot of the bunkers to make them a little more appealing and at the same time less punishing,” Thomaswick said. “Some bunkers were playable and therefore just no longer of any use, so we just removed them.”
For 27 holes, nine holes were closed for bunker work, so that 18 holes always remained open.
In addition, repairs were carried out on the cart tracks and a new fleet of vehicles is to be delivered later this year.
Prestwick Country Club
The first nine holes of Prestwick were closed in mid-December to rebuild the sea walls along the water hazards at holes 4 and 5.
While the front section was closed for several months, Prestwick sent players to the back nine holes twice at the reduced price of $35 for 18 holes.
It is the second winter of improvements for the club. In 2022, the retaining walls on holes 9, 16 and 18 were rebuilt, a narrow bunker was added to the inside of the divider on the left side of the par-3 16th green and the clubhouse received new flooring and patio furniture.
Legends Resort
Legends Golf Group repaired the cart paths on four of its five courses. The Heritage Club and the three courses at Legends Resort – Heathland, Moorland and Parkland – also received extensive repairs to the asphalt paths.
In addition to the King’s North Course, Sea Trail Resort offers The Byrd Course is also closed this summer for renovations..
For 19 consecutive years through 2021, the market has been able to offer traveling golfers at least one new golf course per year, with 86 courses opening between 1983 and 2001.
Since only a few public golf courses have opened in the past 23 years – the Founders Club on Pawleys Island and the Leopard’s Chase Golf Club – at least a few new courses are replaced each year by extensive renovations to provide golfers with a new experience on vacation.
“It’s a good thing that everyone is going out and renovating golf courses. The destination needs it,” Mays said. “There will be a time when there will be some golf courses that will be completely redesigned, so I’m happy to see that happen, too.”
