The destination
Myrtle Beach is the most accessible major golf destination in America, and the numbers tell the story. Roughly 759,000 visiting golfers arrive each year and play more than three million rounds across approximately 90 courses stretched along a 60-mile coastal arc called the Grand Strand, from Little River at the North Carolina border to Georgetown. The annual golf economic impact reaches $1.6 billion. No other destination in America operates at this scale.
That scale shapes every aspect of the experience. You can play quality golf for under $50 a round or spend $350 for a tournament-caliber layout, sleep in a $60 hotel room or a $450 resort suite, and find the full spectrum filled in between. There is no other destination where the gap between the cheapest round and the most expensive is this wide and both are genuinely worth playing.
The courses
At the top sit layouts that would anchor any destination in the country. Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, Mike Strantz's 1994 design routed through a former rice plantation in Pawleys Island, consistently ranks among the finest public-access courses in the Southeast. TPC Myrtle Beach (Tom Fazio, 1999) delivers Tour Players Club conditioning. The Dunes Golf and Beach Club (Robert Trent Jones Sr., 1949) carries genuine historical weight; its par-5 thirteenth, "Waterloo," remains one of the most photographed and discussed holes on the East Coast.
True Blue Golf Club, also in Pawleys Island and also a Strantz design, is bold and occasionally eccentric, with massive bunkers and greens that reward imagination over formula. Tidewater Golf Club is perched on a bluff where the Intracoastal Waterway meets Cherry Grove inlet. Grande Dunes Resort Course gives several holes Intracoastal frontage. Pawleys Plantation, a Jack Nicklaus design from 1988, rounds out the southern cluster.
Barefoot Resort consolidates four distinct courses on a single North Myrtle Beach property: the Dye, Fazio, Love, and Norman courses, each by its namesake. King's North at Myrtle Beach National, an Arnold Palmer design renovated in 2025, sits alongside Pine Lakes (the area's original layout from 1927) and the Legends Resort courses by Tom Doak and P.B. Dye.
The value tier is where the Strand's volume becomes its greatest practical asset. Courses like Beachwood (Gene Hamm, 1968), Crow Creek, Arcadian Shores, and Myrtlewood PineHills offer solid, well-maintained golf in the $40 to $100 range. The competition keeps conditions higher and prices lower than the market would otherwise support.
The Grand Strand geography
The Grand Strand is a continuous stretch of coastal communities, each with its own cluster. North Myrtle Beach and Little River anchor the north end (Barefoot Resort, Tidewater). The central strip around Myrtle Beach proper holds the densest hotel and restaurant concentration. Murrells Inlet and Pawleys Island, 20 to 30 minutes south, carry a quieter character and contain some of the Strand's most celebrated designs. Group your rounds geographically. A golfer staying in North Myrtle Beach and playing Caledonia in Pawleys Island faces a 45-minute drive each way.
When to go
Peak runs mid-March through May and again September through October, when temperatures sit in the mid-70s to low 80s. Summer (June through August) brings heat and humidity that makes afternoon rounds genuinely taxing, with July highs averaging 87, and rates drop accordingly. November through February is the value window: green fees fall 30 to 50 percent below peak. January highs average 54, but dry, sunny winter days are more common than the temperature alone suggests.
Getting there
Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR) connects to more than 50 nonstop destinations and sits five minutes from the main hotel strip. That proximity is unusual for a resort airport. For drivers, the Strand sits within four hours of Charlotte (3 hours 55 minutes), Raleigh, and Columbia, and just one and a half hours from Wilmington. A rental car is necessary. Golf package operators have spent decades building relationships with properties across the Strand, and bundled course-and-lodging deals remain the most common booking method.
Beyond the course
Brookgreen Gardens, a sculpture garden and wildlife preserve south of Murrells Inlet, is the most substantive cultural offering in the area. Charleston is roughly 90 minutes south for a day trip. Water activities fill the calendar: dolphin cruises, deep-sea fishing charters out of Little River and Murrells Inlet, and kayaking through the salt marshes. The MarshWalk in Murrells Inlet is the best dining stretch on the Strand. Broadway at the Beach anchors the family-oriented side. Four to five nights is a comfortable first trip.
