As I wrote yesterday, the 35 year old Pawleys Plantation golf course, designed by Jack Nicklaus, was significantly restored and renovated this summer – in part to return its green complexes to their original design but also to reduce dramatically the size of fairway bunkers. Since my first round at Pawleys Plantation in 1989, I have probably played the course nearly 100 times.

On my maiden round on the revamped layout in mid-December, I found a layout that will be kinder and gentler for my game. Starting on hole #1, which I have always thought was a great “warm-up” hole anyway, especially if you stayed left of center on your drive and approach shot, it is now even gentler since Nicklaus’ architect on the scene, Troy Vincent, had the 250-yard-long bunker down the right side removed. Only the modest greenside portion of that bunker remains, guarding the right rear half. Ditto the par 4 12th hole, which brings you out toward the marsh and the iconic par 3 13th.

The 12th hole, an otherwise short and easy par 4 dogleg right, had featured one of those tee-to-green bunkers covering the right side of the hole; a ball in the fairway portion of the bunker made it virtually impossible to hold a shot to anywhere but the left front of the green. That huge bunker has now been replaced by three modest-sized fairway bunkers and one at greenside that still covers the right half of the green. Today, if you push your ball to the right, there’s a decent chance you’ll wind up in grass with a playable lie. If you should land in one of those new bunkers, you will be faced with the traditional problem of a longish approach to a tough green whose middle is guarded by a greenside bunker.
Pawleys 13th from teeThe iconic 13th hole at Pawleys -- marsh in front and behind -- was extended to the right, providing a modest bailout area. Still, wind and a green lacking in depth make it the "shortest par 5 in Myrtle Beach."

As for the signature par 3 13th hole, which plays over marsh to a peninsula green from a thin strip of tee boxes along a bulkhead, I used to take some masochistic pride in the fact the green was smaller than the famous 17th at TPC Sawgrass. No longer. Nicklaus and Vincent have extended the green a little to the left and a lot to the right, providing something of a bailout area. But scant depth to the green has been added and the prevailing winds – the Atlantic Ocean is less than a half-mile beyond the green – still play tricks on your choice of clubs; if the breeze is at your back, and with the green as firm as it is, a that strikes the middle to middle-back of the green is likely to bound into the marsh behind. Members like to claim, tongue in cheek, that #13 is the “shortest par 5 in Myrtle Beach.” Despite the changes, it is likely to remain that way.

Founders International, the owners of Pawleys Plantation and 20 other golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area, had not tweaked the design of the course in the years leading up to the renovation – with one exception, the par 3 7th hole. As originally designed by Nicklaus in 1988, the green was shaped like an hourglass, running front to back. A pin position at front was relatively easy to get at with short irons off the tees; the pin was there when my son Tim got his first hole in one. But pins set in the narrow neck or slightly wider back portions of the hourglass were extremely difficult to get close to, and second shots from the bunkers or grass left and right of those locations typically led to double bogey or worse.Most likely with an eye toward speed of play, Founders widened the 7th green a few years ago and, after this summer’s renovation, the green is now even larger. Over time, the tee shot has gone from scary to intimidating to meh.  That really is my only criticism of the course redo – except for the short tee box on the par 4 5th hole, where a tall tree forces us old guys to choose between a shot to the rough on the left of the tree or the bunkers to the right.
Pawleys7thfromteeToday's 7th green at Pawleys Plantation is about half the width of its original size, circa 1989, when a middle pin was nearly impossible to get close to -- from the tee boxes or the bunkers on either side of the green.

It will take a while for the newly planted greens – TifEagle grass which withstands heat and salt well – to soften a bit. For now, pin seeking is verboten unless you are strong enough to spin a ball on linoleum. When pins are set at the front of most greens at Pawleys, the current play is to land short and take your chances on a friendly bounce onto the green or, at least, a chip or putt from inside 10 or 20 yards. When the pins are protected by greenside bunkers, equally conservative approach shots will avoid dreaded double bogies.

Pawleys is still a tough slog for those of us who don’t hit the ball more than 190 yards off the tees, but the slight softening of the layout makes breaking 80 occasionally a more realistic opportunity from what are euphemistically referred to as the “executive” tees. Younger, stronger and better players will pick their poison but should beware: Fickle winds, hard surfaces and smaller but still menacing bunkers still stand guard against aggressive shot making.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

In my early 50s, my wife and I purchased a vacation condo in Pawleys Plantation in Pawleys Island, SC, about a half hour south of Myrtle Beach. It was a couple of years before I took early retirement from my corporate job. It was a bit of an impulse buy and all about two qualities Pawleys Plantation shared – a terrific golf course for my son Tim and me, and an Atlantic Ocean beach just a five-minute ride away for my wife Connie and Jennie, our daughter. We spent many a happy school vacation there away from our home in Connecticut. When the kids entered the adult phases of their own lives, the full-family visits to Pawleys were cut sharply. But still, on those too-rare occasions when we have all been able to gather there – these days with grandkids as well – there is something for everyone.

Tim was 11 years old when we purchased the condo in 2000. He had first swung a golf club when he was six, and it is fair to say that he developed his game at Pawleys Plantation. With him playing from the short tees at age 12, he and I beat 11 other teams to win our division in the annual Myrtle Beach Father & Son event. Tim later played all four years for his Connecticut high school golf team and all four years at Washington & Lee University. Today, Tim has a scratch handicap and spends his weekdays as a writer for Golfpass, a division of NBC Universal’s Golf Channel, and his Saturdays at a Vero Beach muni where he regularly picks up a few skins and some ample pro shop credit. To say the Jack Nicklaus designed Pawleys Plantation Golf Club has played a large part in his life – his favorite pastime and his career -- would be patent understatement, given that the course is where he learned to play, where he had his first hole in one and where he had his first encounter with non-parentally-guided independence. (The bag-drop attendants started letting him take a golf cart out by himself when he was 12.) He has always loved that golf course and revered Nicklaus’ design.
Pawleys1stfromfairwayOn the original first hole at Pawleys Plantation, a bunker extended from the bottom right corner of this photo all the way to the green.

I, on the other hand, have only occasionally felt completely comfortable with my ability to master the course. First, you must be a good sand player – from both fairway and greenside bunkers – to have any chance of scoring well at Pawleys. That is not me. Nicklaus designed some par fours with 200-yard long bunkers, a few that extend from just beyond the forward tees to greenside. Push or pull your drive into one of those, attempt to play a bold shot and the next two could very well come from the same bunker. Second, as my body aged, the sheer length of the course began to wear me out. (My first round at Pawleys, in 1989, shortly before Tim was born, was eye-opening and entertaining, but I was hitting my tee shots up to 240 yards in those days.)
Pawleys3rd from teeIn the redesign, three bunkers were removed on the par 3 third hole; one in the cluster at the front of the green, one well short of the green and adjacent to the water, and one just behind the right side of the green.

Those who visit these pages know that, today, I encourage my fellow golfers, especially septuagenarians, to play from tee boxes that will accommodate their driving distances on par 4s. If, for example, your normal drive is 180 yards, play the tees for which no par 4 is longer than, say, 340 yards. A 160-yard approach – a 7-wood for me – is long enough. Once I reconciled that my days of 200 yard drives were over and I moved up a couple of tee boxes, I began again to find Pawleys a fair challenge – just in time for some dramatic changes to the course.

Golf times change, and so do golf designers’ points of view. At Pawleys’ 30th anniversary celebration a five years ago, Tim and I listened as Nicklaus himself advocated for significant changes to his original design, not least of them the shrinking and, in some cases, elimination of those tee-to-green bunkers. His reasoning, essentially, was pace of play on a course that is still open to the public and attracts many visiting golfers, as well as the cost of maintaining the bunkers. (Note, our condo sits beside the 15th tee box and I watch, chuckling to myself, at visiting golfers with swings no better than mine playing from the back tees – distance over 7,000 yards, rating 75.0 and slope 150.) Also, over decades of mowing, greens tend to shrink and pull back from their adjacent bunkers. That was definitely the case at Pawleys, and Nicklaus advocated that the greens be restored to their former sizes and, in some cases, embellished a bit.
Pawleys2ndapproachoverwaterOne of the most visually arresting changes at Pawleys Plantation was on the long par 4 second hole, where a swampy area filled with unattractive reeds was cleaned out to create a beautiful pond. A bunker adjacent to the pond and 60 yards short of the green was removed.

When the work on the course was done a couple of months ago, I was more interested in Tim’s reaction to the changes than I was to my own. Tim got first crack at it in November, a few weeks after it reopened. I won’t try to translate his thoughts here; you can read them for yourself at Golfpass
Next:  Dad takes his first swings at the "new" Pawleys Plantation course.