Caledonia's par 3 third hole gives a taste of designer Mike Strantz's dramatic use of sand. The green is the deepest on the course, three levels and about 110 feet front to back.
The Golf Channel's web site is not very user friendly, according to complaints I have read at the site and elsewhere. So I hesitate to recommend anything on the site or provide a link, but I will make an exception for those who have not played Caledonia or Pawleys Plantation, two of the better golf courses on the southern end of Myrtle Beach's Grand Strand.
The five-minute video is poorly edited, but it does provide a few seconds of video from everybody's favorite Myrtle area course, Caledonia, including a stop at the club's fish chowder shack on the way to the first hole. On winter days, when the temperature is in the 50s, you can grab a cup of chowder there, a harkening back to the days when the property was home to a fish camp. Pray that you don't have to listen to someone literally sing the praises of the chowder dispenser (see the video).
I can't argue with host Charlie Rymer's recommendation of Frank's Restaurant, a Pawleys Island landmark for 25 years, although the video also features a clip of Louis's of Pawleys Island, a restaurant that went out of business months ago. And as I sit in Connecticut, where the temperature is barely above 20 degrees today, it warms my heart to see even just a few seconds of the Jack Nicklaus-designed Pawleys Plantation, my home golf club in the south. Rymer and his friends played off the old rice plantation's dyke to the par 3 17th hole, one of many tough ones on the course.
Although Pawleys Plantation is almost fully built out, a nice selection of homes are available for sale. Prices range from around $200,000 for 2 BR, 2 BA units that many people rent to visiting golfers, to patio homes starting in the $300s, to single family homes beginning around $400,000. I know Pawleys Plantation and the entire area south of Myrtle Beach very well, and would be happy to offer ideas to anyone wishing to know more about real estate, golf and the restaurants in the area.
On cool days -- say in the 50s -- the shack on the way to the first tee at Caledonia dispenses a bracing cup of chowder. Caledonia is a former fishing camp.
