Myrtle Beach Golf News & Updates

When players think of good course management, they often think of decisions made on the tee box and in the fairway, but the choices you make around the green are just as vital. In this episode of the Myrtle Beach Golf Buzz, host Blair O’Neal partners with PGA professional Matt Veltman at Legends Resort to demonstrate a chipping tip with will save you strokes. Chipping from a tight lie is a nervy shot for the best of players, but watch as O’Neal demonstrates a tip that minimizes risk and increases your chances of getting up-and-down successfully.

PGA Tour pros flock to Myrtle Beach each year for the Hootie & the Blowfish Monday After the Masters Celebrity Pro-Am, but for most of them, it’s not their first trip to the Grand Strand.

We caught up with some of the world’s best golfers at this year’s Monday After the Masters, and they shared their Myrtle Beach golf stories.

Billy Horschel: I came numerous times as a kid for vacation. My brother lived in Charleston so we would drive up here for a few days. My

The General James Hackler Course at Coastal Carolina underwent more change in 2011 than any other Myrtle Beach golf course, and players are the unquestioned beneficiary.

It was time for the 43-year-old layout, which officially changes its name from Quail Creek on November 11, to get a makeover and the changes were more than cosmetic. If you haven’t been to the course since it’s October 1 reopening , be prepared for a new experience.

With that in mind, here are five things

Standing in the middle of the third fairway, the beauty and challenge of Shaftesbury Glen are crystallized in the demands of the approach shot. The green is elevated and a deep, finger bunker lurks.

What looked like a fairly easy hole on the tee box gets tougher with each step towards the green. The third hole is Shaftesbury Glen condensed into a 414-yard par 4. 

The Clyde Johnston design is open off the tee, giving players ample latitude, but the greens are typically elevated and protected by those expansive bunkers. Getting up-and-down from the sand makes for a challenging round, so a sharp iron game will be your key to success.

The 2009 Myrtle Beach golf course of the year, Shaftesbury Glen will look familiar to the game's architecture aficionados. One of the facility’s owners, Paul Himmelsbach, caddied at Winged Foot, an A.W. Tillinghast design, and he wanted the famed layout to be the inspiration for Shaftesbury.
 

RELATED: Shaftsbury Glen Photo Tour

Johnston delivered on Himmelsbach’s wish, crafting a design with reminders of the elevated greens and bunkers that define Winged Foot and the Bethpage Black Course, another Tillinghast design.

Shaftesbury, which opened its fairways on the Myrtle Beach golf scene in 2001, is a second shot course.

“You aren’t going to get in much trouble off the tee,” Ryan McCarty, Shaftesbury’s director of operations, said. “There aren’t many forced carries either, but you will need placement off the tee.”

A well placed drive will… 

Jamie Supanich won Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday’s Celebrity for a Day contest, which included a trip to Myrtle Beach and a round of golf with PGA Tour star Dustin Johnson at the 2013 Hootie & the Blowfish Monday After the Masters Celebrity Pro-Am.

Here is what Supanich and his wife, Janell, had to say about winning the once-in-a-lifetime trip.

Supanich: Probably about a month ago, I was on Twitter and I found a link to play with Dustin Johnson, so I thought what the heck, and

Carolina National, the Grand Strand’s only Fred Couples designed golf course, will have greens as smooth as its architect’s swing for years to come.

The 27-hole facility will begin a greens renovation project on June 5, installing Champion bermudagrass. The project will be completed nine holes at a time, allowing Carolina National to have 18 holes open throughout the process.

The Egret nine will be the first to get new greens, followed by the Heron. Work will begin on the


The 14th annual Veterans Golf Classic, one of the most popular events on the Myrtle Beach golf calendar, attracted 450 veterans from 33 states (including Alaska!) and again delivered on its promise of a good time.

Played on 12 Myrtle Beach golf courses, two-man teams competed in one of four flights based on handicap. But for many players, a pair of different team competitions highlighted the event.

Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion compete each year

Strolling into the courtyard, a gas grill, giant cooler and granite-topped bar are as inviting as the stunning views of Murrells Inlet available on the roof of the Inlet Sports Lodge.

The newest accommodations property on the Myrtle Beach golf scene, Inlet Sports Lodge has carved out a unique place in the market. It was built with the idea that it would feel like a retreat for friends and family, as opposed to the towering hotels that dot the coastline.

Arcadian Shores is a traditional golf course design. A variety of doglegs, well guarded bunkers and tree-lined fairways make it one of Myrtle Beach’s most enjoyable and well designed tracks.

We asked head pro Jason Mitchell to give us the three best holes at the Rees Jones design.

No. 2, 201-yard, par 3 – Arcadian’s most challenging par 3 is also its most scenic. The tee shot (178 yards from the blue tees and 148 from the whites) requires a carry over water that runs

Thistle Golf Club is an oasis for players who value pace of play and clear fairways.

With 12-minute tee times and 27 holes, Thistle guarantees the opportunity to play a brisk (but never rushed) round of golf.

Inspired by the original Thistle Golf Club, circa 1815 in Leith, Scotland, the North Strand facility honors its Scottish roots. Architect Tim Cate delivered an outstanding design, using mounds to frame generous fairways and deep bunkers to protect large undulating greens.

The layout provides a links style feel, particularly the par 3 fifth hole on the Stewart 9, which looks as if it was relocated from across the pond, without overreaching.

“Maybe I’m a little prejudiced because of where I am,” Weldon said. “But I’ve had the privilege of taking a number of groups to Scotland, so I know those courses. We have a couple spots out here where I feel like I’m in Scotland.”

Mostly devoid of the elevated greens so common in contemporary parkland architecture, Thistle, home of the Cameron, MacKay and Stewart nines, rewards creativity. Greens are accessible via the bump-and-run and when the wind off the nearby Atlantic Ocean swirls, sometimes it’s the preferable play.

There is ample water on the course, though most of it comes into play only on the most wayward of shots.

A familiar face will be returning to the 30th annual Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Championship.

Golf Channel star Charlie Rymer will be appearing for two nights at the World’s Largest 19th Hole. Rymer is the second Golf Channel personality to commit to the event, joining Brandel Chamblee.

A former host of the Big Break and Road Trip: Myrtle Beach, Rymer is one of Golf Channel’s most prominent personalities, serving as a co-host of the network’s popular Morning Drive

You may as well go ahead and write in an extra stroke when you see your ball land in the ominous fairway bunkers, right? WRONG!

In this video golf lesson, Ted Frick, owner of Classic Swing Golf School, shows you just how to get out of that pesky pit of dispair.

More Video Golf Tips, Please!

When golfers hear the name TPC, it conjures up images of the PGA Tour and island greens. When players think of Myrtle Beach, great golf courses, good times and the ultimate buddy golf trip come to mind.

Given the strength of the respective brands, the marriage between one of golf’s most respected group of courses and the game’s most popular destination, Myrtle Beach was a natural one. The TPC-Myrtle Beach opened in 1999, hosted the Senior PGA Tour Championship, and hasn’t looked back.

The golf course, designed by Tom Fazio and Lanny Wadkins, immediately took its place among the best Myrtle Beach golf courses, delivering a stout challenge and conditions, from the bag drop to the 19th hole, that provide traveling golfers with a glimpse of what life is like for Tour pros.
 

TPC’s locker room is the area’s nicest, the practice facility (which is open at all times to any Nationwide, Champions Tour or PGA Tour professional) is expansive, and the greens are fast.  The TPC-Myrtle Beach even has caddy paths cut in, despite requiring a cart for resort play.

It all plays a part in delivering the TPC experience.

“(Golfers) want that feeling they… aren’t used to having,” course owner Chip Smith said. “For the most part we keep our greens a little firmer, a little faster than most people … but (golfers) know they are experiencing a little more of what they see on TV.”

TPC-Myrtle Beach can rightfully say it gives players a little more of what they see on television because it has been there. Tom Watson won the Senior PGA Tour Championship when it was played at TPC-Myrtle Beach in 2000. The course also hosts one of the nation’s best collegiate tournaments, the General Hackler Invitational, every spring.

If that weren’t evidence enough, PGA Tour star Dustin Johnson calls the course home. He practices, plays and occasionally hangs out at TPC watching events he isn’t playing in.

“It’s a great golf course,” Johnson said. “It’s always…

The 12th hole at Pawleys Plantation is the easiest on the course, according to the scorecard. A short dogleg right – just 382 yards from the tips – with a fairway bunker that meanders from tee to green, it’s one of many outstanding holes at the Jack Nicklaus design.

What makes No. 12 memorable comes as golfers near the green. After 11 holes carved through a pine forest, the marsh that separates Pawleys Island from the mainland erupts into view around the 12th green.

The marsh, which provides some of the Grand Strand’s most stunning scenery, is visible on six of Pawleys Plantation’s last seven holes, elevating a very good course to the level of truly memorable.

Golfers have to traverse a dike to reach the 13th and 17th tee boxes, and the tidal marsh is a factor on 14, 16 and 18 as well.

“The dike going to 13 and 17, if you don’t remember that something is wrong,” Dale Ketola, an assistant pro at Pawleys Plantation said. “It’s so beautiful you can’t help but remember it.”

Pawleys Plantation is home to the type of natural beauty all the money in Dubai can’t buy, but the course offers much more than visuals. Nicklaus has earned a reputation as one of golf’s best architects by creating courses that are challenging yet fair.

Nicklaus has been involved in the design of 269 courses, and Pawleys Plantation is considered by many to be among his best. Playing 7,026 yards from the appropriately named Golden Bear tees, the course can offer as stiff a challenge as any in Myrtle Beach. But Pawleys has five sets of tees, all named after birds that call the property home, that allow players of varying skill levels to enjoy the layout.

True to his design philosophy, Nicklaus created a course at Pawleys that rewards intelligence and precision far more than raw power. The fairways are open but the pine forest and marsh demand accuracy.

Pawleys Plantations’ greens generally slope from…