I was one of more than 120 members of the South Carolina Golf Rating Panel asked late last year to identify the best par 3s, 4s and 5s among the 100 golf courses open to play for all golfers along the Grand Strand of Myrtle Beach, an area that stretches roughly 90 miles from just below Wilmington, NC, to Georgetown, SC, and through the heart of Myrtle Beach.
It was a daunting task for a number of reasons: First, of course, it is tough to remember with any precision even the best of a total 1,800 golf holes. Frankly, I haven’t managed to quite play all of them since my first trip to Myrtle Beach in the late 1960s; in the years since, a couple dozen of the original courses on the Strand have closed. But still, when you have almost a couple thousand holes to choose among, at least 18 are going to be terrific.
Although my fellow SC Golf Rating Panel members anointed the 18th hole at Pawleys Plantation Country Club as one of the top 18 in all of Myrtle Beach, my choice would be the 16th at Pawleys (shown here), where even an excellent drive on the dogleg left par 4 leaves a daunting approach shot.
And they are, at least the ones I am familiar with, although one par 4 choice I know well is what I consider the third best choice on its golf course. That would be the finishing hole at Pawleys Plantation Country Club in Pawleys Island, a difficult and scenic Jack Nicklaus layout less than a mile, as the eagle flies, from the ocean. My fellow raters deemed the 18th one of the top courses on the Grand Strand; it is a fine finishing hole that demands a shaped drive on the slight dogleg left, with menacing marsh and bunkers at the crook of the dogleg and a forest to the right of the fairway for drives overcooked in that direction. A lake and bunkers along the left side protect the long, narrow, back-to-front green, and an overhanging tree about 30 yards in front on the right side makes it tempting to hit a faded approach toward the lake side. On any other golf course, #18 might be the best par 4, but strong contenders at Pawleys include #8, with a 160-yard long bunker that runs from mid-fairway to cover the entire right two-thirds of the green; and the 16th, a long hard-dogleg left with a huge live oak guarding the turn, marsh across the fairway beyond it, and a green surrounded by bunkers.
For a rundown of the other 17 best holes in Myrtle Beach, see the article at CrossRoadsToday.com.
As I write this, our deck is covered in about 16 inches of snow where it hasn’t drifted, thanks to high winds, to over 2 ½ feet. Just one week ago, some of the Hartford, CT, area golf courses announced they would be opening in a few days. The day before opening, it snowed about two inches, certainly enough to dash the plans of even the most serious and sturdy of golfers (the latter is not me anymore). Yesterday, the snow had melted almost to the point of playability. But today, blizzard conditions not only put a blanket of deep snow over the area, but it also put a damper on any possibility of the golf season in southern New England starting before April 1.
This is why so many of us long for a vacation home or permanent home in a warm weather area. (A friend told me on the phone that it was 85 today outside her home in Las Vegas.) It is also why I have seen an uptick in the number of questionnaires readers of my web site and newsletter have filled out in the last two weeks, about three times the typical rate this time of year. Snow is good for the guy who plows my driveway, for supermarkets and for me.
But that doesn’t mean I like it. We golfers have an internal clock, and when Daylight Savings Time kicks in, it is natural to think the golf season should as well. For all you fellow New Englanders -– and this applies to everyone north of the Mason-Dixon line -– here is tomorrow’s weather forecast in selected cities of the Southeast. According to weather.com, there is a 0% chance of rain in every one of these locations tomorrow. Perfect sweater weather golf.
Amelia Island, FL 59 degrees and sunny
Sarasota, FL 63 degrees and sunny
Pawleys Island, SC 47 degrees and windy;
Hilton Head Island, SC 52 degrees and sunny
Lake Oconee, GA 49 degrees and sunny
Aiken, SC 48 degrees and sunny
Greenville, SC 45 degrees and sunny
The scene on the back deck of our home, and it is still snowing (and blowing). It will be a while before we can use the grill.
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