Golfweek magazine has unveiled its list of the “Best Courses You Can Play,” a ranking of America’s top 100 public layouts in 2019, and a pair of familiar names to Myrtle Beach golfers made the list.
One of the game’s premier media outlets, Golfweek ranked the Dunes Golf & Beach Club (pictured above) 48th and Caledonia Golf & Fish Club was No. 60 on the prestigious list. Both layouts are ranked among America’s top 100 public courses by Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, and in a survey of more than 50 Myrtle Beach area PGA professionals, they were ranked as the area’s two best courses.
The Dunes Club, a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design, was the course to attract the national spotlight to Myrtle Beach. Dunes Club has hosted six Senior PGA Tour Championships, the U.S. Women’s Open, and the finals of the PGA Tour’s Q-School, among other high profile events.
The design’s most acclaimed stretch is holes 11 through 13, otherwise known as “Alligator Alley.” The 11th and 12 holes play along a saltwater swash, while the 13th, a 90-degree dogleg right that plays around Lake Singleton, is Myrtle Beach’s most famed hole.
Caledonia was heralded architect Mike Strantz’s first solo design, and the lowcountry beauty has been atop must-play lists ever since. Playing through soaring live oak trees draped in Spanish moss, Caledonia is equal parts art and architecture.
The course is highlighted by the par 4 18th hole, which requires a carry over water to a green that resides in the shadow of an antebellum style clubhouse, capping an unforgettable round of golf.
Members of Golfweek’s course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course.
Those overall ratings are averaged together to produce a final rating for each layout. Then each course is ranked against other courses in its state, or nationally, to produce the final rankings.
Pebble Beach topped the Golfweek list, followed by Pacific Dunes, Pinehurst No. 2, Old Macdonald and Whistling Straits rounded out the top five.
