Prestwick Reopens for Play After Front Nine Renovations

Prestwick Country Club has reopened for play following a 45-day closure to complete notable renovations work on the design’s front nine. Hear from Prestwick General Manager Jay Smith, who sat down with PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com to discuss the completed work on holes 4 and 5, as well as some other upgrade projects they’ll undertake in the coming months.

 

 
Jay Smith:

Yes, it’s been a busy winter. Once this is all done, we will get ready for spring golf season, which we’re already doing right now. The golf course has stayed in great shape. Obviously, when you don’t have many people on it for 45 days, it helps with the divots, it helps with the tee boxes, it helps with ball marks on the greens and stuff. But the golf course is in great shape, and we’ve gotten a lot of happy golfers out there lately.

We started back on December 14th, when we met earlier. We decided to shut the front nine down. There wasn’t any way to get golfers around. Guys rebuilding the seawalls that hold up greens, obviously. Not that golfers are bad golfers, but if they’re like me, they don’t know where that golf ball’s going. So we didn’t want anybody to get hit, obviously. But what they did is, they took the existing walls and they built brand new walls up against them.

Quite a bit of footage to say the least. I don’t know exactly, but turned out great. Looks wonderful. We’re doing a little touch-up work right around the edges, putting some fill dirt in. For those that have played here lately, we had developed some swales, basically some sinkholes. All that’s been taken care of now. Like on 4, the greens are known to be a little speedy. So now, the green is like this and then it goes to the bulkhead.

There’s a chance, if you get real aggressive in the pins in the front, you might putt it in the pond. First thing is, we’re rebuilding a dam on 17 tee box, right to the right of 17 white tee. What this does is, it holds water on 16, the par 3, to make it look nice. The one that was there was the original one, and it had been springing some leaks, to say the least. Getting that taken care of, just so it’ll make the holes look better aesthetically.

Overall, number 3, we struggled with the white tee box since day… I’ve been here 25 years, and we’ve struggled with that tee box for whatever reason. It gets some shade, and there’s some issues with some trees, and it’s in some resident’s yards. Obviously, we can’t do anything about that, and we understand that. So we had 40 loads of fill dirt brought in while we were closed. Our superintendent, Paul Kaufman, he rented a bulldozer, and he smoothed it out really good. It looks really nice. We’re going to probably at least double the size of that tee box, maybe triple it.

If you hadn’t made your spring tee time, come on down to the Grand Strand, all the golf courses down here. We’d love to have you. We’d love to have you out here at Prestwick. You can go to our website, prestwickcountryclub.com, book a tee time. You can call the Pro Shop (843) 293-4100, or reach out to your favorite packager that can book you the night stay, and the golf, and get us on your itinerary. We’d love to have you!