My golf course sold

        Myrtle Beach National, the largest owner and manager of golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area, has closed on its anticipated purchase of Pawleys Plantation Golf Club in Pawleys Island.  Your correspondent has been a member of the semi-private club for over 10 years and also owns property in the surrounding community.

        Myrtle Beach National (MBN) owns or manages 13 other golf courses on the Grand Strand, including Waterway Hills and The Long Bay Club, like Pawleys Plantation a Jack Nicklaus design.  Burroughs & Chapin, the second largest operator of golf courses on the Strand, manages 10.

        The golf course at Pawleys Plantation opened in 1988 and is annually ranked as one of the top 10 of more than 110 in the

golf-rich Myrtle Beach area.  The sale to MBN has been in the works for the better part of a year, and in May club members approved by-laws revisions that the prospective owners requested -- mostly to eliminate a provision that would have turned the club private after the membership rolls had reached a level of more than 500.  (That was not likely to happen in this reporter’s lifetime since membership was barely over 200.)  All of MBN’s golf courses are accessible to the public.

         Pawleys Plantation could very well be the jewel in the crown for Myrtle Beach National.  The course’s first nine holes play along the western half of the property, and feature generous bunkers, some water and a Nicklaus signature, a large tree placed at dead center on the par 4 9^th fairway.  The course becomes more visually alluring, if not more challenging, on the inward bound holes, as it moves toward the marsh that separates Pawleys Plantation from Pawleys Island and the Atlantic Ocean about a half-mile away (as the crow flies).  The signature hole, the short but hair-pulling 13^th, plays from the thin strip of a dike (on the former rice plantation) to a peninsula green that is small, firm and scary looking.  When the wind blows, the 125-yard #13 at Pawleys Plantation is the shortest par 5 on the Grand Strand.

The short par 3 13th at Pawleys Plantation makes your knees knock, no matter how many times you play it.  Pawleys Island and the Atlantic Ocean lie about a half mile beyond the marsh that surrounds the green.