Play Through Five Decades Of Great Courses With Myrtle Beach Golf Trips

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by Golf Trips Staff

King's North Gambler

Myrtle Beach is known as “America’s Seaside Golf Capital.” Over decades we’ve grown both  the number and variety of our golf courses, and many of our designs are by the most outstanding architects of their time. But how can a visiting golfer navigate the vast selection of courses built over five decades? Contact Myrtle Beach Golf Trips and we’ll be happy to help.

As a one-stop shopping center for packages and single-round rates, we can get you on any of more than 90 courses along the Grand Strand. We’ve fine-tuned packages and rates that deliver exceptional value while enabling you to sample the very best of the courses built from the 1960s through the 2000s. Our popular “Most Rewarding Package,” for example, lets golfers choose four rounds from 22 award-winning courses, plus receive a $100 rewards card to be used for food, merchandise and more.

Golf in Myrtle Beach all started with Ocean Forest Country Club way back in 1927, followed by Dunes Golf & Beach Club opening in 1948.  But it wasn’t until the 1960s that the area became a true golf vacation destination. Around that time, Ocean Forest was renamed Pine Lakes Country Club, and Myrtle Beach’s golf offerings grew to a total of nine. Three of that decade’s best remain standouts today. Surf Golf & Beach Club in North Myrtle Beach was designed by George Cobb, who worked with Bobby Jones on the Par 3 Course at Augusta National. Litchfield Country Club in Pawleys Island gives you a chance to play among moss-draped oaks and large azaleas against the backdrop of an antebellum-style clubhouse. Myrtlewood Golf Club is home to two distinctly different courses: the Palmetto plays along the Intracoastal Waterway while the Arthur Hills design, PineHills, weaves through towering pine trees.

During the 1970s, more courses were built, bringing the area’s total to 18. Two of the best courses to come on the scene are at Myrtle Beach National. The King’s North Course is named for the king of golf during the 60s and 70s, Arnold Palmer. Designer Palmer’s influence is everywhere, most notably at the risk/reward “Gambler” par 5, where golfers are challenged to attack that hole by choosing one of two fairways that could lead to conventional par or a very impressive birdie. There’s also SouthCreek at Myrtle Beach National, a shot-maker’s course that is especially popular with women and senior men.Pawleys Plantation Golf Club

Myrtle Beach exploded with golf in the 1980s and 1990s. At the end of the 80s, the area had 50 courses, many of them recognized as among the nation’s best. Heritage Plantation was built on two historic rice plantations along the Waccamaw River and offers wide fairways and beautiful river marsh views. Jack Nicklaus’ Pawleys Plantation Golf & Country Club is a memorable Lowcountry design that plays along and over the salt marsh, and golfers are challenged by Atlantic Ocean breezes that come onshore at Pawleys Island beyond the marsh.

The 1990s saw 19 more courses added to the Strand, including three that quickly gained national recognition. Nicknamed “the Pebble Beach of the East,” Tidewater Golf Club caught the attention of both Golfweek and Golf Digest and was named America’s best new course by both publications in 1990. Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, crafted by architect and artist Mike Strantz, closes with one of the most memorable holes on the Strand. Requiring a long second shot over water, the hole fishes with a green at the base of an  iconic Southern-style clubhouse where groups gather on a wide porch to cheer on those finishing their rounds. TPC Myrtle Beach’s grand design hosted the PGA Champions Tour event, and later became the only Grand Strand course to ever earn a full five-star rating from Golf Digest.

While the building of golf courses slowed in the 2000s, Myrtle Beach golf still attracted national attention and awards. Barefoot Golf & Resort’s Dye Club is home to the annual Hootie & The Blowfish Monday After The Masters Celebrity Pro-Am and has even been the site of Golf Channel’s “The Big Break” show. Golf Magazine named Grande Dunes Resort Club one of its top 10 new courses when it opened, and it was named the National Golf Course of the Year by the National Golf Course Owners Association of America. At Founders Club in Pawleys Island, the site of a 1960s favorite (Sea Gull Golf Course) was redesigned and transformed at a cost of more than $7 million (and the movement of a few hundred-thousand cubic yards of earth) to make it a Lowcountry “must play.”

Plan to play through the decades the next time you’re heading to Myrtle Beach. Let MyrtleBeachGolfTrips.com find you great rates to play courses by the golf architects who built “America’s Seaside Golf Capital.”

Related Courses:

Dunes Golf & Beach Club

4.5/5
(205 reviews)
early am
  am
  pm
late pm
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Pine Lakes Country Club

4.4/5
(289 reviews)
$103 early am
$123   am
$119   pm
$79 late pm
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Litchfield Country Club

4.2/5
(753 reviews)
$72 early am
$65   am
$68   pm
$46 late pm
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$74 early am
$74   am
$67   pm
$59 late pm
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$75 early am
$68   am
$72   pm
$51 late pm
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Tidewater Golf Club

4.4/5
(157 reviews)
$157 early am
$157   am
  pm
$157 late pm
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$111 early am
$118   am
$128   pm
$87 late pm
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$80 early am
$74   am
$72   pm
$53 late pm
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early am
  am
  pm
$139 late pm
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Caledonia Golf & Fish Club

4.5/5
(625 reviews)
early am
  am
$213   pm
$187 late pm
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TPC Myrtle Beach

4.6/5
(811 reviews)
$167 early am
$167   am
$173   pm
$114 late pm
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$192 early am
$188   am
$192   pm
$197 late pm
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Grande Dunes Resort Club

4.4/5
(551 reviews)
$163 early am
  am
  pm
$134 late pm
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Founders Club

4.1/5
(254 reviews)
$68 early am
$68   am
$60   pm
$45 late pm
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