By Lee Pace for Global Golf Post

In three-plus decades I’ve played dozens of golf courses along the 60-some miles of the Myrtle Beach “Grand Strand,” from the venerable Dunes Club to the late, great Marsh Harbour, which sits today overrun with weeds after it closed in 2002. The Dunes Club, designed by Robert Trent Jones and opened in 1949, will always in my mind be the course to play at Myrtle Beach because of its history, ambiance and challenge, but here is a sampler of eight more favorites, starting from the southern end of the Strand at Pawleys Island and working northward into North Carolina.

PAWLEYS PLANTATION
Architect: Jack Nicklaus
Opened: 1988

The back nine is the real treat here, with two visits to the banks of the marsh looking onto the shore of Pawleys Island. The tees for the par-3 13th and 17th holes are perched on a dike built into the marsh, giving the seagulls fine view of your ball plucking into the muck. The salty tang in your nose, the sun on your cheek and the wind in your hair makes those double bogeys easier to digest.

TPC MYRTLE BEACH
Tom Fazio, 1999

This course has a softer look than most TPC courses rife with viewing mounds, Fazio terming the gentle surrounds that populate the site neighboring the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge as “feathering.” This is an interesting, playable design set in a quiet and soothing environment 3.5 miles from the beach. It hosted the Senior Tour Championship in 2000, with Tom Watson claiming the title, and has one of the area’s best practice facilities.

To read more about Pace’s additional favorites – Caledonia, Legends Heathland, The Love Course at Barefoot Resort, Tidewater, The Surf Club and Tiger’s Eye at Ocean Ridge Plantation – click here for the full article at GlobalGolfPost.com.