Before I start, let me concede for the record that Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is the "Golf Capital of the World." That's what Mickey McCamish, president of Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, a local marketing group, would like me (and you) to call it. As evidence he offers the town's 115 golf courses and $833 million in golf-related income each year, plus another $75 million in golf-related taxes. "
That's almost a billion dollars a year," I said when McCamish trotted out those figures over the phone.
"Yep," said McCamish in a thick Southern drawl. "We love our golf here in Myrtle Beach."
Not that it's a big secret. Heck, when I got down there and stopped at a Hooters on the Strip and fell into a conversation with a bartender named Andrea, she said, "Did you know that Myrtle Beach is the Golf Capital of the World? I'll bet because of golf, this city makes a billion dollars a year!" And Andrea doesn't even play golf.
Clearly, McCamish is either doing his job spectacularly well or has been enjoying too many 5-Wing Flappertizers.
But anyone who has been to the town knows that another good nickname for it would be "Instant Gratification, South Carolina." Because along with the golf comes a world-class array of fluorescent activity: mini-golf parks and floodlit driving ranges, discount cigarette shops and chain hotels, gentlemen's clubs and sports bars. Indeed, its theme-park atmosphere of fast food and cheap thrills defines Myrtle Beach as much as the golf—even though the golf, after a building boom in the nineties, now offers quality as much as quantity.
But just off the Strip, behind the back fences of the tourist traps, is a remnant of a different age, an age when golf and refinement always went hand in hand. The first golf course built in Myrtle Beach, in fact, was designed by a famous Scottish architect at the behest of a Southern textile tycoon for the pleasure of visiting Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. It is the course that gave birth not only to the mayhem of today's Myrtle Beach but to Sports Illustrated, the magazine that redefined athletic endeavor for generations of Americans. That the course has survived at all is surprising; that it has retained so much of its Old World charm while modern Myrtle Beach has blossomed all around it is something of a miracle.
From Singapore to Spyglass, few courses I've played have the stately and immediate gravitas of Pine Lakes International Country Club. As I pulled off Myrtle Beach's largest north-south traffic artery, Highway 17, and rolled up the club's ribbonlike entrance drive, the world seemed to change within a hundred yards.
Behind me lay the smash-and-grab modern Sun Belt. Ahead lay another—some might say mythical—place: a landscape right out of the Old South, dotted with perfectly pruned dogwoods and magnolias. On the horizon, a graceful white-columned mansion sprawled across a knoll, fronted by a huge veranda.
Since I'd done a little homework, I knew this was the Pine Lakes clubhouse, all sixty-two rooms of it. Designed in 1927 by Henry Bacon McCoy—who'd just completed the Lincoln Memorial—the building has its own monumental feel. Surrounding it are a demanding eighteen holes with their own pedigree, derived from the original twenty-seven holes on the site designed by Robert White, first president of the PGA and a native of St. Andrews (yes, the Scottish one). It's in deference to White and his Auld Sod birthplace that all Pine Lakes starters, caddiemasters and attendants wear the MacGregor tartan as their uniform.
When I parked my vehicle in the club's lot, I was met by an assistant dressed in plus fours and white gloves and driving an outsize cart.
"Aren't you hot in those clothes?" I asked.
He gave me a big smile. "You get used to 'em," he said. "Come on, climb in."
As we drove toward the pro shop, I sat back in the cart and took in Pine Lakes. It was the first week of May, and the trees and plants were blooming beneath a gently warming sun. On the driving range to my right, a big turtle moseyed across the grass.
We were only three hundred yards from the steady Sun Belt traffic, yet I felt like I'd entered some faraway nature preserve. The place felt instantly good.
Myrtle Beach was just a woodland when twenty-two-year-old Franklin Burroughs showed up in northeast South Carolina in 1857. Determined to "make something" of himself but exceptionally low on funds, he had to get creative—and fast. So to pad his pockets, he bid on a public works project to build a gallows in the nearby town of Conway, North Carolina. Somewhat to his surprise, he was awarded the contract, which he fulfilled in short order. A few weeks later, he won a second contract, this one to build a bridge, and before long, young Burroughs found himself a local success story. He kept building public structures and began acquiring timberlands and businesses. He prospered, married and had children. Eventually, Burroughs (and a partner named B.G. Collins) owned 80,000 acres of South Carolina beachfront forest as well as most of the region's pine-pitch industry, a string of mercantile and naval stores, several farming and milling businesses, a steamship line and a railroad.
One evening at the height of his career, Burroughs took his eldest daughter, Effie, down to the strip of white sand fronting the Atlantic Ocean. As they stood there watching the sunset, he placed his hand on her shoulder and said: "I may not live to see it, and you might not, but someday this whole strand will be a resort."Burroughs died in 1897, but his son (also named Franklin) kept the dream alive. In 1912, he spun off part of the business into an effort to develop a resort community.
That new company was called Myrtle Beach Farms.
"Let's pick up the story in 1926," Mac Main said. A longtime golf pro around the American southeast—and for several years the pro at Pine Lakes—Main is a sturdy man who was sporting a brush haircut and MacGregor tartan necktie in the club's honor during my visit. "That was the year John T. Woodside came to Myrtle Beach and bought some property from Myrtle Beach Farms."
Woodside, a South Carolina textile magnate, was the guy who introduced golf to the fledgling resort. His plan was to build a destination called Ocean Forest in the style of the Homestead or the Greenbrier. It would include everything from hunting and fishing to equestrian sports and golf. Woodside hired McCoy as his architect and—employing a massive yardstick—began measuring off chunks of real estate. The Ocean Forest Hotel would sit on a four-mile stretch of Myrtle Beach shoreline; the golf course and clubhouse would be a mile or two inland.
For this venture, Woodside bought 64,488 acres, agreeing to pay $950,000. His aim, according to a contemporary local newspaper account, was to assure that the "Myrtle Beach of the future will not be merely a two- or three-months winter resort but an ideal all-year-round playground, the Atlantic City of the South."
In 1927, Woodside unveiled the twenty-seven-hole Ocean Forest Club golf course and stately clubhouse. He'd also started on the big hotel: a ten-story, 220-room monster along that strip of soft sand beach already being called the Grand Strand. The hotel would have ballrooms, stables, swimming pools, shopping arcades and a broad patio overlooking the ocean for moonlight dancing. There, each night, Woodside fully expected his more risqué guests to "brown bag" their hooch (Prohibition was still in effect), and the hotel was ready to sell them soda and buckets of ice for a dollar. The plan seemed perfect. Those nightly dances would be just scandalous enough for great publicity.
Everything stayed on schedule until October of 1929 when, as builders were finishing up the massive hotel, Black Monday crashed into Wall Street. Though the hotel opened as planned in January of 1930, the crash had ruined Woodside. Before defaulting, he spun off the big hotel and golf course and managed to hang on to them. By 1933, however, Myrtle Beach Farms had reassumed most of the rest of Woodside's holdings.
But the seed had been planted: Woodside's golf club had gained national renown. "Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen played the course," Main told me. "Everybody of that era played here." And eventually, the original landholder would do what Woodside could not. Myrtle Beach Farms took Woodside's grand, year-round tourist destination idea and succeeded with it mightily. Working street by street, golf course by golf course, Burroughs & Chapin—the modern descendant of Franklin Burroughs's original company—teamed with local businesses to carve a tourist city from a pine forest. By the 1950s, Myrtle Beach was a destination for vacationers from up and down the East Coast, complete with a permanent carnival, nightly swing dancing on a concrete pavilion overlooking the beach, and dozens of golf courses and hotels. In another decade, Myrtle Beach would ascend to Golf Capital of the World.
And what of Woodside's hotel and golf property? In 1974—after a succession of owners—the Ocean Forest Hotel was demolished. The fates were kinder to his celebrated golf course. In 1944, Woodside sold it to hotelier Fred Miles, who changed its name to Pine Lakes International. Eventually, the course shrank from its original twenty-seven holes to just nine, before a new back side was added. In 2002, Burroughs & Chapin purchased Pine Lakes to be the crown jewel in its real estate portfolio, and the circle was closed.
As I waited for my 12:50 tee time, the tartan-clad starter—a man with the appropriately Scottish name of Robert Bruce—briefed me on my upcoming round.
"Pine Lakes makes it a policy not to harass wildlife on the property," he advised. "Please honor that policy." He then added, "Be sure to have some water handy before you get to the tee on seven. That's where Big Dog is going to have a cup of our good Low Country clam chowder waiting for you. It's a tradition here. He uses the same recipe started by our original chef, Mr. Eddie Dingle, in the 1940s.But be warned: It's spicy. Some folks say all that hotness adds twenty or thirty yards to their next tee shot.
"Behind the starter's table I noticed a waist-high granite block. At first I thought it might be a grave. Rather, it held a bronze plaque depicting Sports Illustrated's first cover from 1954 and identifying Pine Lakes as the magazine's birthplace. Apparently it was here, at an off-site meeting of the Time-Life national sales staff, that the idea of a national sports weekly was first presented.
To kill a few minutes before teeing off, I wandered inside the cavernous clubhouse, where other totems of Pine Lakes' history were on display. On one wall of the pro shop, matted inside a tasteful wood frame, was an article from a 1989 issue of Time magazine. It noted that, because Ralph Lauren sportswear's breast-pocket crest looked so much like the Pine Lakes International crest—a mix of laurel branches and monogram-style PL initials topped by a crown and backed by crossed clubs—Pine Lakes had taken Polo Ralph Lauren to court and stopped the company from using the "remarkably similar" logo on its togs.
Farther inside the clubhouse, on a wall near the mahogany bar, were framed magazine stories about course designer Robert White, the club itself and the demolition of the Ocean Forest Hotel. On another wall was a grainy black-and-white photo of the Time-Life team: a few dozen smiling, crew-cut, nattily clothed men standing in front of a TWA DC-3, straight from the Sports Illustrated skull session. It all felt so Southern upper-crust and old-school that I half expected a mint julep to suddenly appear in my hand.
When I went back outside, the starter introduced me to my playing companions: a retiree named Rich and two high-tech businessmen, Mike and Tom, who'd come to the links that begat Myrtle Beach for a meeting. By the time we'd all shaken hands, the caddiemasters had saddled our bags into carts and we made our way toward the 557-yard first hole.
I won't go into my round itself, other than to state that I didn't harass any turtles, birds, fish, deer, woodchucks or squirrels, though I did see my fair share of them when searching for my ball in the woods and ponds that line every hole of the course. As golf days go, it ranks in the "very memorable" category: The afternoon was pretty, the guys in my foursome were cool and funny, and I hit just enough decent shots to forget about the bad ones.
Pine Lakes itself is a thing of beauty. A 135-acre course with bunkers that are sometimes invisible, wide aprons and frustratingly small greens, it rewards technicians more than long hitters. Seven of the ten par fours are under 400 yards and cry out to be played with a mashie and a spoon. But perhaps the grandest part of the whole experience was that, from anywhere, I could always see that huge old clubhouse through the groves of trees, with its promise of a cold drink welcoming golfers in.
After holing out on six, we walked around a hedge toward seven and there, as promised—on a flagstone terrace, with ladle in hand and standing over a black iron pot simmering in a wood fire—was Perry Bellamy, a.k.a. Big Dog.
"Woof! Get over here and get some of this chowder!" he literally barked. He was a large man dressed in a tall white chef's hat and tunic; he had black chef's pants on, too. Even without his tall hat, Big Dog was imposing. He was unavoidable. He was, in fact, a Very Big Dog.
I took a cup. The chowder was fantastic: tomato-y and spicy, with just enough shrimp and clams to give it depth. I finished the first cup and got a second. "Glad you like it," said Big Dog. "Woof! Woof!" But Robert Bruce was right. The soup is torrid. My partner, Rich, was already trying to drown his chowder and I, too, quickly grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler on our cart.
A minute later, we teed up on seven, where I hoped Big Dog's spices would indeed add yards to my drive.
I pulled my tee shot; the only time I went left all day.
Just after five that evening, my round at Pine Lakes finished, I sat in the clubhouse and sucked down an icy Coke. It had been a great day, but I wasn't done just yet. Knowing what I now did of Woodside, the Ocean Forest Club, Burroughs & Chapin and the Golf Capital of the World, I had to go back to the "other" Myrtle Beach. So I headed down to Dick's Last Resort, a beach-shack-style place—that is part of a national chain, of course—located on a small lagoon in North Myrtle Beach. Snuggled between an Olive Garden and the local House of Blues (coming: the dave matthews band) along Highway 17, the house band played mediocre Jimmy Buffett covers as waiters hustled platters of burgers and seafood around the floor. Perhaps afterward I'd go and watch the Skee-Ball players and the people on rides across the street at the amusement park. It didn't really seem to matter.
I'd come to Myrtle Beach to play a round of golf and soak up the city's strange and storied history. Now, my quest behind me, it was time to enjoy the place that had grown up where John T. Woodside's dream of a Jazz Age paradise had died. Following a cleanup visit to my hotel room, I enjoyed a satisfying dinner of seared ahi tuna—eaten as the NBA playoffs raged on big-screen TVs above the bar—and then headed out for an evening that would end I knew not where. After all, I was in Myrtle Beach.
Best of the Beach
Myrtle Beach has grown from its humble beginnings into a sixty-mile-long behemoth of a golf mecca, with so many courses and hotels it's hard to know where to begin. The perfect trip should include a mix of perennial classics and some of the area's best new courses, a selection of which we've highlighted below along with some great places to stay.
Where to Play
Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, Pawleys Island. 800-483-6800, fishclub.com.
Greens Fees: $90$190.
Caledonia is among the handful of masterpieces in the too-small portfolio of the late,
great Mike Strantz, who also designed True Blue here. Both are brilliant.
Grande Dunes Golf Club, Myrtle Beach. 866-214-4145, grandedunes.com.
Greens Fees: $95$177.
Grande Dunes, designed by Roger Rulewich, is a scenic journey through the maritime forests
bordering the Intracoastal Waterway. A new members' course by Nick Price also recently opened
its doors.
Pine Lakes International Country Club, Myrtle Beach. 843-449-6459, pinelakes.com. Greens Fees: $63$99.
Thistle Golf Club, Calabash. 800-571-6710, thistlegolf.com.
Greens Fees: $59$135.
Designed by rising local architect Tim Cate, this is a twenty-seven-hole facility with huge
bunkers and strategic mounding.
Tournament Players Club of Myrtle Beach, Murrells Inlet. 888-742-8721, tpc.com/daily/myrtlebeach.
Greens Fees: $95$155.
One of the more recent arrivals in the TPC network comes from architects Tom Fazio and Lanny
Wadkins. It plays through a pine forest and bucolic wetlands.
Tradition Golf Club, Pawleys Island. 877-599-0888, traditionclub.com. Greens
Fees: $56$110.
Ron Garl's design on a former rice plantation features generous landing areas and tightly
guarded greens.
Where to Stay
Premiere Resorts at Barefoot Resort and Golf Club, North Myrtle Beach. 877-237-3767,
barefootgolfresort.com. Rates:
$104$136 (two-bedroom villa); $210$222 (four-bedroom villa in the North Tower).
Four courses from Fazio, Pete Dye, Greg Norman and Davis Love III all came online in 2000
at this laid-back Grand Strand resort.
Legends Golf Resort, Myrtle Beach. 800-299-6187, legendsgolf.com.
Rates: $99$179 (two-bedroom villa).
The resort offers three on-site eighteens, including Tom Doak's excellent Heathlands course.
Hone your swing after sundown at the lighted thirty-acre practice facility, or unwind at the
Ailsa Pub, styled after a Scottish tavern.
Litchfield Beach & Golf Resort, Litchfield Beach. 888-766-4633, litchfieldbeach.com.
Rates: $3989 (one-bedroom suite); $154$284 (four-bedroom condo).
This complex offers easy beach access, superior tennis facilities and the popular Low Country
restaurant Webster's.
Pawleys Plantation Golf & Country Club, Pawleys Island. 800-367-9959,
pawleysplantation.com. Rates:
$145$200 (two-bedroom villa).
A decidedly quieter part of the Strand, this resort blends with nature. From the clubhouse
you can observe the seven-acre lake, a rookery for egrets and wood storks. Sharpen your game
at the Ritson-Sole Golf School, or simply relax poolside.
