Pawleys Island: One-stop shopping for golfers and gourmands

For 10 years, I have traveled up and down the eastern third of the country, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains, investigating golf communities and their golf courses, searching for the highest quality communities in all price ranges. The goal is to identify those golf communities that will appeal to any couples for whom golf is a mandatory amenity for at least one of them and with enough attractions inside and outside each community to satisfy both. No golf community I have researched is perfect in every way; those that approach that level are often remotely located, too far from a city to take advantage on a routine basis of the cultural and culinary benefits on offer. Those located close to cities typically have their own blemishes, such as stultifying traffic snarls or real estate prices and club fees as much as triple those in the boondocks.

One couple's personal experience

I have come to the conclusion that any couple searching for a golf community in a Goldilocks climate that is not too hot in summer, not too cold in winter, and just right in spring and fall can expect to spend a lot of time and energy on visits and stays across a geographical area that stretches through the Carolinas and Georgia and into northern Florida. If that seems daunting, time-consuming and expensive, my advice is to look no farther than a 15 mile swath of coastline in Georgetown County, south of Myrtle Beach, where you are likely to find a golf community that matches virtually all of your requirements (except mountains).

Pawleys Island beach

For 16 years, my wife Connie and I have owned a condominium in Pawleys Island, SC, about a half hour south of Myrtle Beach. The roughly 90-mile narrow band of land known as the Grand Strand is packed as densely with golf courses and golf communities as any comparably sized area in America. With 100 golf courses, virtually all of them not more than 10 miles from one beautiful beach or another in North and South Carolina, couples like Connie and me -- one loves the fairways and one the sand -- can live in retirement bliss; and should both love spending time on golf course and beach, the area south of Myrtle Beach can approach paradise, especially when you compare its real estate prices to those of Charleston -- about 75 minutes to the south -- and Wilmington, which is about 40 minutes north of the Grand Strand’s uppermost reaches.

Bargain golf membership

DeBordieu Colony, Georgetown, SCThe area that encompasses the towns of Murrells Inlet, Litchfield Beach and Pawleys Island comprises the only golf communities in all of Myrtle Beach -- just three of them -- that are strictly private, more than a dozen other courses that are accessible to the public, and a bargain membership in arguably the two best golf courses of the 100 on the Grand Strand -- Caledonia Golf & Fish Club and True Blue Golf Club. With no initiation fee and monthly dues less than $180, the per round cost to a member who plays at these excellent layouts just two times per week works out to $45. Compare that to a rack rate at Caledonia that can reach $180 per round in peak season (spring and fall).

The private clubs in the Pawleys Island area are DeBordieu Colony, The Reserve at Litchfield and Wachesaw Plantation. Each is distinctive, with DeBordieu the only golf community on the Carolinas coasts with its own beach behind the gates (and a fine Pete Dye layout as well); Wachesaw, an early Tom Fazio design with an initiation fee of less than $5,000 and fine homes at some of the lowest dollar-per-square-foot prices in the area; and The Reserve, part of the McConnell Golf Group, with one reasonable initiation fee and monthly dues making all dozen McConnell courses in the Carolinas and Tennessee accessible for members (including the nearby Members Club at Grande Dunes in Myrtle Beach). The McConnell golf courses include three classics by Donald Ross and the other layouts by the more-modern golf architects, such as Dye, Fazio, Norman and Palmer.

Non-golf community options

Pawleys Plantation Golf ClubThe range of real estate available south of Myrtle Beach rivals the diversity of the area’s golf courses. And given the overwhelming number of golf courses, many available at deeply discounted green fees, those who don’t require any amenities other than a close-in public beach and golf will save a lot of money buying a home outside the gates of a local golf community. During our recent stay, my wife and I wandered into a brand new small neighborhood being developed by Lennar, the nationally respected builder. The Colony, as it is called, is just a driver and wedge shot from the fine Founders Club golf course and less than a mile from the front gates of Pawleys Plantation. (I might add that the popular Hog Heaven restaurant, known for its pulled pork, fried chicken and bargain buffet, is literally across Highway 17 from the neighborhood.) The model home in The Colony was beautifully appointed and smartly laid out; prices start at just $299,000 for a home that would likely be priced $50,000 higher inside the gates of a community with amenities. And the annual Homeowner Association fees in the non-amenitized Lennar community are a few thousand dollars lower than in any of the local golf communities.

All that said, many couples who have been members of a country club will opt for a lifestyle centered on a club inside their community. In that case, the widest range of options is available on this section of the coast of the Carolinas, from condominiums priced under $200,000, to golf cottages under $250,000, to patio homes starting around $300,000, to gently lived-in single-family homes that start in the $200s and range all the way into the millions. (The most expensive golf community home currently on the market is a 7 bedroom, 7 bath behemoth on the ocean at DeBordieu and priced at $3,499,000. For those inclined to build their oceanfront dream house, two oceanfront lots are currently available at DeBordieu for $725,000 each.)

Eat, drink and be merry

Many of my customers indicate that good local restaurants are a requirement in choosing the location of their golf home. Few will be disappointed in the restaurants in the Pawleys Island area, starting with Frank’s on Highway 17 in Pawleys Island, which has ranked as most popular in the area since it opened in 1988. Between its inside dining room, with views of the busy chefs in the kitchen, to Frank’s Outback, its year round casual outside dining area (space heaters in winter, cool blowers in summer), the restaurant’s menu serves up many classics and a few modern dishes with an unstinting quality that causes no recoil at the prices (generally high $20s to low $30s for the entrees). Alfresco’s in Georgetown, just four miles from DeBordieu and eight miles from Pawleys Plantation, can match Frank’s dish for dish and adds an extra touch of atmosphere in the brick-walled alleyway next door, where the restaurant has sited most of its tables, with a comfortable bar and a bandstand at one end where some music combo or other entertains diners indulging in Chef Eddy Chacon's elaborate platings.

Another half dozen “fine dining” establishments are within just five miles of our front gate at Pawleys Plantation, but also more casual places: a half dozen good Italian restaurants, another half dozen seafood restaurants, and other dining places that serve Spanish, Mexican, Thai and barbecue. (Chinese restaurants are only of the takeout variety, and they range from bad to inedible, but help may be on the way. Two Chinese companies have purchased more than 30 of the 100 golf courses on the Grand Strand and, with them, 100 homes that the owners plan to move their families into; if that doesn’t spur the opening of a few good Chinese restaurants, then all hope is lost for Asian food lovers.) For those who like a stroll on the boardwalk after a fine seafood dinner, Restaurant Row in Murrells Inlet is the most popular strip in the area, its two dozen restaurants packed at high season and parking spaces as rare as pearls in oysters. (See more restaurant options near the area's golf communities in the attached sidebar.)

Two cultural oases

Beside the Chinese restaurant problem, the only other major lack in the area is cultural; with a few exceptions, the Pawleys Island area is bereft of museums, institutes of higher learning and theaters. But even though the easily reachable Charleston offers all those things, it is a good hour’s drive from Pawleys Island. The 9,100-acre Brookgreen Gardens, however, fills much of the cultural gap in the area for those who appreciate the arts, especially world-class sculpture. Straddling the Litchfield Beach and Murrells Inlet boundary, Brookgreen, which was bequeathed to the public 85 years ago, includes more than 1,400 works of sculpture and more than 2,000 species of plant and animal life; almost hidden in the woods, its informal zoo is a great walk unspoiled. The former estate of sculptress Anna Hyatt and Archer Huntington, son of a wealthy railroad owner, Brookgreen Gardens and its companion property on the eastern side of Highway 17 extends from the ocean to the Waccamaw River. The Huntington’s beach home, Atalaya Castle, is the backdrop for many weddings in the area, but the real attractions at Brookgreen Gardens are the formal gardens and hundreds of sculptures, some up to two-stories tall. During our stay in Pawleys Island, Connie and I walked through Brookgreen's Butterfly House and also strolled past a dozen LEGO sculptures of plants and animals, some as large as 80,000 pieces.  The exhibit ends in a couple of weeks.

If you would like to learn more about the area south of Myrtle Beach, please contact me.

Larry Gavrich
Founder & Editor
Home On The Course, LLC