The road to the 2019 NCAA Golf Championship will run through TPC Myrtle Beach. One of America’s premier public courses, TPC will host the NCAA Myrtle Beach Regional May 13-15. Thirteen of America’s best Division I men’s teams will tee it up at TPC with the top five advancing to the NCAA Championship after 54 holes of competition. The Tom Fazio-Lanny Wadkins design is no stranger to big tournaments. The course has hosted the PGA Senior Tour Championship and served as the home of the General Hackler Championship, one of the nation’s premier collegiate tournaments, for 11 years. TPC Myrtle Beach has also been the home of Dustin Johnson World Junior Golf Championship since its inception in 2016.

Johnson, the No. 1 ranked player in the world, long considered TPC Myrtle Beach his home course and the reasons are many. The par 72 layout can stretch to 7,000 yards to challenge elite players, but, just as importantly, it has four sets of tees between 5,118 and 6,600 yards, providing players of all skill levels a fair test. Readers of Golf Advisor, the travel portal for Golf Channel, ranked TPC Myrtle Beach as America’s 49th best public course in 2018. The layout is superb throughout but whether you are a future PGA Tour pro or a 20-handicap, the course’s finishing holes standout.

The 17th, which features a peninsula green surrounded on three sides by water, is reminiscent of No. 17 at TPC Sawgrass, and it presents one of the day’s most daunting tee shots. The hole plays 158 yards from the white tees and there is little room for error, making it a challenge that has swung more than a few matches over the years. TPC’s finishing hole, the par 5 18th, is even more dramatic. Long hitters have a risk-reward decision to make – go for the green in two and risk losing a ball in the lake that runs up the left side of the hole or play it safe?

For those of us who lack the ability to cover nearly 500 yards in two shots, the water on the left remains a factor, as does the stream that runs along the right side before dissecting the fairway approximately 250 yards from the white tees. TPC’s fantastic finish puts an exclamation point on an unforgettable round. To further highlight the quality of the course, Golf Digest has ranked TPC Myrtle Beach among “America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses” and reviewers at MyrtleBeachGolfTrips.com, the area’s premier site for booking and planning a golf trip, consistently rave about the facility. Just as TPC Myrtle Beach tests traveling golfers, this spring it will challenge America’s best college teams.