Longtime traveling golfers may recall, with a mixture of emotions, the former Sea Gull Golf Club in Pawleys Island, SC.  For many years it held the distinction as the golf course farthest south of more than 100 public and semi-private golf courses on the Grand Strand of Myrtle Beach.  (Before the letters start flowing in about Wedgefield Plantation Golf Club holding that distinction, note that Wedgefield is in Georgetown, a few miles beyond the southern terminus of the Grand Strand).  Sea Gull was a good place to play on a seven-day golfing vacation when you needed a little ego boost after the challenges of nearby Pawleys Plantation and, in later years, a little break financially from the twice-as-expensive True Blue and Caledonia.  Sea Gull was flat, open and typically in pretty good shape

        But as the number of golf courses north of Sea Gull grew to more than 120, the club could not compete with the others. The decrepit motel adjacent to the course didn’t help things.  Survival was at stake

if the club’s owners did not do something to inveigle the package golfers to travel more than a half hour, past dozens of other courses, to play Sea Gull.  The club hired Thomas Walker, a Florida-based golf architect who previously worked with Gary Player’s golf design group, to remake the layout in 2007, and they renamed it Founders Club after running a name contest that attracted 3,000 entries. Walker’s re-design features large waste bunkers and more in-play water; from the adjacent U.S. Highway 17, drivers pass along the 18^th hole, which from the perspective of the road seems almost impossibly narrow, featuring a couple of hundred yards of sand sweeping down to a long, narrow pond.  The green itself is steeply banked with a circle of bunkers surrounding it like numbers on a clock.  The hole is one huge billboard for the course that shouts, “Play Me.”

        Founders Club has something else to shout about today:  The Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association just named it the 2011 Golf Course of the Year.  The annual designation goes to the club that excels in four categories -- exceptional quality of golf course conditions; exceptional quality of ownership and management; outstanding contribution to the community; and significant contribution to grow the game.  Past winners include TPC of Myrtle Beach, Blackmoor, Wachesaw Plantation East and, last year, Sandpiper Bay.  Oddly, Founders Club’s nearby rivals Pawleys Plantation, Caledonia, True Blue and Heritage –- considered by most Myrtle Beach golf veterans, including yours truly, to be superior layouts –- have never earned the course of the year distinction (perhaps they fall short in the “community contribution” category).  In any event, I have played Founders Club a number of times, and it can hold its own with the others.

        Note: Although Founders Club is not inside a planned golf community, it does thread its way through a neighborhood of eclectic and mostly reasonably priced homes in one of the most desirable areas of the Grand Strand.  Single-family homes in Hagley Estates are mostly listed for less than $300,000 and would make outstanding second or primary homes. And with the Myrtle Beach Golf Passport, with an annual fee of just $39, a full- or part-time resident can play Founders Club and 80 other area golf courses at a nice discounted rate.  If you would like more information about the golf course, the neighborhood or any other areas of Myrtle Beach, please contact me.

        My wife and I are off to Pawleys Island this week for a four-week stay at our second home and a few rounds of hot golf (literally).  Admittedly, this is a bit of a contrarian play, given that temperatures in the Low Country have been consistently close to 100 degrees the last couple of weeks.  But a scan of the forecast in Connecticut shows a week ahead that will be warmer on some days than on the southern coast. Mark Twain once had something to say about the peculiarities of New England weather (“…wait and minute, and it will change.”)  So off we go.

        During our summer vacation, I plan to play a lot of golf, including the well-regarded layouts at Haig Point on Daufuskie Island and

Callawassie Island, near Beaufort, both during the first weekend in August as part of an outing arranged by the South Carolina Golf Rating Panel, of which I am a member.  The group’s members are invited to play, on their own, a number of the state’s semi-private and private golf courses; but a few times a year, our executive director Mike Whitaker arranges for members to get together for some collegial golf.  Although I played both the Rees Jones Haig Point and Callawassie Tom Fazio-designed courses a few years ago, both have since undergone extensive renovations at costs of over $5 million and $4 million respectively.  (I remember when entire golf course’s cost that much to build from scratch, land included, and it wasn’t that long ago.)  Each layout is 27 holes; actually the Haig Point layout boasts 29 holes, including alternative tees on two of its marshland holes.

Part of the Haig Point layout runs along the Calibogue Sound, with views of Hilton Head Island across the water.

 

        Haig Point is an idyllic place, about as remote as you can get on the east coast since it is reached only by a ferry from Hilton Head Island.  (Community residents have access to one 24 hours a day, but the cost to maintain and run it is reflected in the property owners’ comparatively lofty dues.)  Haig Point’s residential neighbor, the Daufuskie Island Resort, which features two excellent golf courses, fell on hard times a few years ago, and the resort and its Jack Nicklaus Melrose Golf Club were sold earlier this year at a bargain basement price of $13 million.  The nearby Bloody Point Golf Club, designed by Tom Weiskopf, was sold separately for less than $2 million and is currently closed.  An eventual reinvigoration of the resort should help drive up interest in Haig Point, where prices have reached a low ebb during the housing recession.

        You can read my original review of Callawassie by clicking here.  I have referred to Haig Point, which is across the water from Savannah, numerous times in this space; enter the term “Haig Point” into the search box on this page for a link to all of those.  I also produced an edition of the original Home On The Course newsletter (I once printed and mailed it to subscribers) after my Haig Point visit, and I would be happy to email a copy to anyone who is interested (that same issue of the publication also featured reviews of other Savannah golf communities, as well as the golf course at Bald Head Island Island, like Daufuskie reachable only by boat or helicopter).  Just contact me with your email address and I will send the publication; though a bit dated, the information is still relevant (except for prices, which have dropped).

Callawassie features some typical Tom Fazio bunkering throughout its 27 holes.

 

        Also, if you have been thinking about a move to a golf community in the Myrtle Beach or Charleston areas, let me know and I will be happy to do some on site research while I am in the south.  Realtors in the Low Country have been reporting more visits by baby boomers in recent months, and it just might be that prices have reached their lowest point and are poised for a tick upward -– assuming our legislators in Washington don’t do significant damage to the nation’s credit worthiness and interest rates.

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