Golfweek Recognizes 7 Myrtle Beach golf courses

As spring dawns, various top 100 course rankings hit newsstands and Golfweek, like its peers, has recognized several Myrtle Beach golf courses as being among the best.

In its annual Golfweek’s Best issue, the weekly magazine honored seven Myrtle Beach area courses in its Best in State rankings, led by Caledonia Golf & Fish Club which was, again, ranked among America’s Top 100 modern courses.

A fixture in the rankings, Caledonia was No. 100 on this year’s list (1960-present), which includes public and private layouts. The Mike Strantz design is currently ranked among the nation’s top 100 layouts by the game’s three leading panels (Golf Digest and Golf Magazine being the other two). Golfweek also ranked it the third best course in South Carolina, one of America’s most golf-rich states.

Joining Caledonia on the Best in State list were the fifth-ranked Dunes Club, No. 6 Tidewater, No. 7 True Blue, No. 8 TPC of Myrtle Beach and the Love Course at Barefoot Resort was ranked 9th.

On the North Carolina side of the state line, Leopards Chase at Ocean Ridge Plantation was the sixth ranked course in the Tar Heel state.

A Robert Trent Jones design and one of the area’s most revered courses, the Dunes Club was the 105th ranked classic course, joining layouts such as Augusta National and Pine Valley on the list.

To produce Golfweek’s Best Courses lists, an expert team of 675 course raters annually identifies the best layouts from two distinctly different eras: pre- and post-1960, representing “modern” and “classic” golf design. The raters surveyed more than 2,200 courses based on Golfweek’s strict standards of evaluation including ease and intimacy of routing, integrity of design, quality of feature shaping, natural setting and overall land planning among other categories. Raters submitted more than 51,000 votes to create the 2011 Best Courses lists.

The recognition from Golfweek continues an impressive run Myrtle Beach golf courses have enjoyed in national rankings. In its biennial rankings, Golf Digest ranked seven Myrtle Beach golf courses among “America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses.” Golf Magazine ranked four area courses among its Top 100 You Can Play.