Myrtle Beach: Course History & Design Story

The Grand Strand's identity as a golf destination was not inevitable. The South Carolina coastline between Little River and Georgetown offered low-lying terrain, subtropical heat, and sandy soil that drained well but sustained grass only with careful management. What the region lacked in dramatic topography it compensated for in volume: flat, affordable land within driving distance of the population centers of the eastern seaboard. Golf grew here not because the landscape demanded it, but because the economics made sense.

The Early Decades

The Dunes Golf and Beach Club, designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. and opened in 1948, was the course that gave Myrtle Beach its first legitimate architectural credential. Jones routed the course through pine forests and along the Singleton Swash, a tidal inlet that defines the signature par-5 13th hole, known as "Waterloo. The Dunes Club demonstrated that serious golf architecture could exist in this landscape, a point that was not yet obvious to the national golf establishment.

" The hole requires a second shot across the inlet to reach a green guarded by water on three sides, a risk-reward calculation that remains among the most compelling on the Grand Strand more than seven decades later.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, courses arrived at a moderate pace. Litchfield Country Club (1966, Willard Byrd), Arcadian Shores (1974, Rees Jones), and several others expanded the supply, but the Grand Strand remained a regional destination. The infrastructure of golf vacation packaging, the network of hotels and condominiums and shuttle services that would later define the market, was only beginning to take shape. By 1970, roughly two dozen courses operated in the greater Myrtle Beach area. The number would more than triple within two decades.

The Construction Boom

The explosion came in the 1980s and 1990s, driven by real estate development, vacation packaging, and the recognition that golf tourism could anchor an entire regional economy. Developers built courses as amenities for residential communities and as standalone attractions, and they recruited nationally prominent architects to differentiate their products. The result was an arms race of design ambition that elevated the entire corridor.

Tom Fazio's work at Barefoot Resort produced four courses between 1999 and 2000, each exploring different stylistic territory on adjacent sites. The Fazio Course at Barefoot carried the designer's characteristic visual drama, with bold shaping and manufactured elevation changes on fundamentally flat ground. His earlier work at Wild Wing Plantation (1991) had already established his ability to create compelling golf from modest raw material. Fazio understood the Grand Strand market: these courses needed to photograph well, play accessibly from forward tees, and challenge skilled golfers from the back, all while moving groups efficiently through the system.

Pete Dye, whose design philosophy operated on a different frequency entirely, left his mark at TPC Myrtle Beach (1999). Dye's courses reward study and punish inattention; the railroad ties, pot bunkers, and optical illusions that characterize his work demand engagement from the player in ways that more forgiving designs do not. His influence extended beyond his own projects. Several Grand Strand architects adopted Dye-influenced elements, the small, contoured greens and dramatic bunkering, without necessarily adopting his strategic rigor.

His work at Witch Golf Links (1990) and Wizard Golf Course (1996) showed a willingness to work within themed concepts while maintaining playable architecture beneath the aesthetic choices. Maples understood that the Myrtle Beach golfer was often a group traveler on a multi-course trip, and his designs balanced challenge with pace of play.

Dan Maples, a North Carolina-based designer with deep family roots in Pinehurst, became the most prolific architect on the Grand Strand, designing or renovating more than two dozen courses in the region.

The Landmark Courses

Two courses elevated Myrtle Beach from a volume destination to one that serious students of architecture had reason to visit. Both sit on Pawleys Island, roughly thirty miles south of the Grand Strand's commercial center, and both were designed by the same man.

Mike Strantz designed Caledonia Golf and Fish Club (1994) and True Blue Golf Plantation (1998) on adjacent properties that had once been rice plantations. The two courses represent opposite approaches to the same landscape. Caledonia is intimate, routed through live oaks draped with Spanish moss, with greens that sit naturally in the lowcountry terrain. The conditioning is meticulous, the scale human, and the experience more closely aligned with the private club tradition than with anything else on the Grand Strand. True Blue, by contrast, is expansive and bold, with enormous waste bunkers, dramatically contoured greens, and a visual intensity that borders on surreal. The par-3 17th at True Blue, with its island-like green surrounded by sand, is one of the most photographed holes in the Southeast.

Strantz died in 2005 at the age of fifty, leaving a portfolio of only seven courses. Caledonia and True Blue represent roughly a third of his life's work, and they remain the strongest argument for visiting the Pawleys Island end of the corridor. The courses are managed together and share a clubhouse atmosphere that feels meaningfully different from the resort-scale operations farther north.

The Modern Landscape

The courses that survived tend to be the ones with either architectural distinction or operational efficiency, and ideally both. The Dunes Club, Caledonia, True Blue, and the better Barefoot Resort courses continue to draw players who choose Myrtle Beach for quality rather than solely for quantity. Meanwhile, the packaging infrastructure that built the destination, the stay-and-play bundles and multi-course deals, remains intact and effective. A group of four can play three rounds per day across four days and never repeat a course. No other destination on the East Coast offers comparable volume at comparable price points.