TEE TIME

Courses in History

The birthplace of American golf continues to improve with age.

BY KAREN MISURACA

Wild Dunes Resort’s Harbor
Course, seventh holeSince its founding in 1670, Charleston has been famous for its historic “firsts,” ranging from opening the first museum in America to being the site of the first shots fired in the Civil War. Golf is no exception: In 1786, Harleston Green— America’s first golf course—and the South Carolina Golf Club, the country’s first such club, were both established in Charleston. Today, nearly two dozen championship golf courses designed by stars of the game are scattered around greater Charleston, making the area one of the country’s top golfing destinations.

In 1980, Tom Fazio kicked off the modern age of golf in the Charleston area by laying out the Links Course at Wild Dunes Resort (www.wilddunes.com). This course is on flattish Low Country terrain on the Isle of Palms, amid massive natural sand dunes, saltwater marshes, fragrant magnolias, palms and twisted oaks. On rolling fairways, golfers battle relentless winds off the ocean. Fazio’s second creation at Wild Dunes, the Harbor Course, plays inland, finishing with three holes on the Intracoastal Waterway and the marsh.

Kiawah

Kiawah’s Ocean Course,
third holeWinding out of Charleston through overhanging oak trees, Bohicket Road leads to the vacation and golf mecca of Kiawah Island Resort (www.kiawahresort.com). Bursting onto the international scene when it hosted the hotly contested 1991 Ryder Cup matches—“The War by the Shore”—followed by two World Cup of Golf competitions, the 7,356-yard Ocean Course at Kiawah is notorious for Pete Dye’s long, forced carries and strong winds on 10 seaside holes.

Bordering Haulover Creek and the Kiawah River, fairways are menaced by tidal creeks, lagoons and high dunes that run along 2 miles of oceanfront. A charmer with a wood-shingled exterior and wraparound verandas, the new $24 million clubhouse will be the headquarters of the 2012 PGA Championship.

Famous course architects and players have made their mark at Kiawah, including Gary Player at Cougar Point, where herons stalk silently in the shallow ponds, seeking their catches of the day. Fairway moguls and swales make flat lies rare on Fazio’s Osprey Point, situated around large natural lakes, marshes and a maritime forest. Gators float in the ponds and sun themselves near the first hole of Clyde Johnston’s Oak Point, an affordable course just inland of the island.

Jack Nicklaus designed Turtle Point in the early ’80s, then updated it in 2000 with faster, flatter greens and larger bunkers, winding the narrow track alongside lagoons beneath live oaks, tall pines and palmettos, finishing with a flourish on three waterfront holes. Adjacent to the course is The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, a Mobil Five-Star and AAA Five-Diamond property right on the Atlantic shore. Families rent villas and homes on Kiawah, enjoying an award-winning tennis complex, a wide range of nature activities and 10 miles of private beach lapped by calm, warm surf.

Seabrook

Ocean Winds
Course, 10th holeA half-hour’s drive south of downtown Charleston in a secluded enclave of Seabrook Island Resort (www.discoverseabrook.com), the Crooked Oaks Course is a narrow, links-style track running through Low Country woods, well-watered by mirror-like waterways, and carpeted with bentgrass greens, which are unusual in the region.

Willard Byrd, a legendary architect in the Southeast, designed the duney, breezy Ocean Winds Course. Byrd brought into play a vast tidal marsh and a place where spectators may also glimpse the occasional alligator, egret or endangered wood stork. Vacationers in the villas and townhomes on the shoreline of the Bohicket River and on the oceanfront and lakefront are accorded access to tee times at Seabrook, as well as the beach and racquet clubs, equestrian center, and a marina for yachts and charter boats that ply the marine creeks and ocean for fish, crab and shrimp.

DID YOU KNOW?
2000
The year of Ocean Course’s big-screen debut in The Legend of Bagger Vance.

Mount Pleasant

The Links at Stono Ferry,
13th holeIn the suburb of Mount Pleasant, across the Cooper River from the city, four public-access courses are standouts. More than a mile of wooden bridges crisscross reedy wetlands at Charleston National Country Club (www.charlestonnationalgolf.com), where balls bounce off century-old oaks and get lost in the palmettos, thanks to Rees Jones’ layout of long, tough carries. Shortly before the course was set to open as a private venue, thousands of trees were blown down by Hurricane Hugo, whereupon the course was transformed into a reasonably priced public track with wider fairways, all the better for visiting players.

Annika Sorenstam hosted the 2008 Ginn Tribute LPGA tournament at RiverTowne Country Club (www.rivertownecountry.club.com). A 7,200-yard Arnold Palmer course anchored by a white-columned mansion, RiverTowne traces the shores of Wando River and Horlbeck Creek on wide, windswept fairways.

On the site of Revolutionary War and Civil War battles, The Links at Stono Ferry (www.stonoferrygolf.com), a Ron Garl design, starts in groves of oaks and pines, finishing with three holes along the Intracoastal Waterway and an island hole on the 18th.

Golfers love to stay in the harborside cottages at the Belvidere Club and Resort (www.belvidereclub.com), since the property offers tee time arrangements for RiverTowne and Patriots Point Links (www.patriotspointlinks.com). Brushed by unpredictable winds, three holes on Patriots Point jut into Charleston Harbor, and the rest, nearly treeless, are bordered by Shem Creek and other streams and ponds.