South Carolina, nay gowf?

[Ed Oden]

Slag:

I'm not sure SC did "stray".  They have some truly outstanding courses.  Its just that they tend to be on the private club side.  Yeamans, CC of Charleston, Sage Valley, Palmetto, Long Cove, Haig Point, the Kiawah River and Cassique courses, Chanticleer, to name a few.  It is the resorts that tend to be more vanilla.

Ed

[Mike Hendren]

Slag,

You talk good smack for a fellow named Norbert.

I hope to play Palmetto one day and will be surprised if it's not "better" than the Bandon Dunes course.

Mike

[Norbert P]

(I'll) be surprised if Palmetto's not "better" than the Bandon Dunes course.

Son, d'ya like chewin' yer food?

Blasphemer !

[David Federman]

There is a lot of fun golf in SC-  we used to do annual trips from Philly to Myrtle - 8 rounds in four days. Up and down the coast - True Blue; Oyster Bay; Long Bay; Glen Dornoch; Caledonia; Tidewater; Heritage; golf to you drop and the sun is down!

Always wanted to go to Bandon, but it is a nightmare to get there from the East. When we went to Ireland this part fall it was an easy 6 hour flight to Shannon and 90  minutes to Lahinch! Why go out west when it is faster and easier to go the other way!

Don't get me wrong, I'd still love to go to Bandon and surely will sometime.

[jeffwarne]

As a longtime fan and member of Palmetto(particularly the culture), the course stands out mainly because of the dearth of classic courses in the south.
There are multiple such classic courses in the northeast.

I can't imagine though that it holds a candle to the courses in Bandon.

Copmparing Bandon to SC is pointless.
For an east coaster- one has three great golf courses ,is unreachable with awful weather for at least 2 seasons----- the other is highly accessible, has plenty of good golf courses, and mostly good weather for 3 1/2 seasons-and cart girls.

[Daryl "Turboe" Boe]

Why did they stray so far away from golf's origins? $$$ speculation? Is it too late for SC to see a shift into the old ideals of the game? Are there walking only courses?

Let me think.

The original to the best of my knowledge was Secession GC.  Since then we have Chechessee Creek also near HHI which is walking only with caddies, and I think May River (at Palmetto Bluff) might also be walking only.   And I believe Sage Valley near Augusta as well.  All of them great courses, but ones again that most people will probably never play either because of access or $$$.

There might be others, but right now in my post nap fog on a Saturday afternoon that is all that I can think of.

[Matthew Hunt]

Brent,
 Even with the exchange rate and recent discovery in the UK and Ireland of good old American capitalism(i.e. gouging), it's still pretty good value if you avoid the asshole traps and stick to B&B's.
It used to be shockingly cheap.

Like you, I do hope to get to Bandon, but there are SO many courses in the UK I've yet to play that I want to play.
So we'll have to settle for the UK and Ireland (and South Carolina) for now....and that crappy stuff here in my area

Staying in B+B's are the trick to travelling in GB+I.

[A.G._Crockett]

Isn't Bandon the only resort in the world with two top 100 golf courses, or something along those lines?  I'm not sure where exactly you would find something comparable to that, whether Myrtle or anyplace else.  Bandon is pretty much unique; everything else suffers by comparison.

A better comparison for Myrtle would be anyplace else with a Humid Subtropical climate (Bandon is Marine West Coast climate, just like Scotland, I believe).  If you look at the east coast of the U.S. for either total volume, quality volume, or price, you have a tough time matching Myrtle, IMO.

[Jason McNamara]

A better comparison for Myrtle would be anyplace else with a Humid Subtropical climate (Bandon is Marine West Coast climate, just like Scotland, I believe).

Just for the record, Scotland's in a slightly different class because its rain is fairly steady throughout the year, while Bandon has a dry summer.

Can't think of any other Caf area with as much golf as the SC coast.  Maybe Orlando to Tampa to Naples?  (Miami and FLL are plain old Af, I think.)

[Sean_A]

I can see the huge appeal of Bandon if one hasn't played much links.  It doesn't have any strong pull for me, but I would like to see it some ay.  The appealing things about Bandon to me are its public and the courses are meant to be good.  However, the public (and especially resort) side of it has its negative conotation as well.  I much prefer a private club atmosphere.  Call me a snob, but I don't recall any public place holding up against a private club with a good culture and for me this is an important part of a day out - especially if it is gonna cost serious dosh.  

The problem with SC is that its only worth a trip if you can access the privates.  Its a no win proposition!  A trip centered around Charleston would imo be one of the best trips in the US if one can get on the privates.  Charleston is such a cool city and can easily make a golf trip perfect.  Lets face it, whether or not a course is top 100 or not ain't terribly important once you are talking about the class courses of the country.  

Ciao

[Adam Russell]

I believe the reason SC doesn't get "golf mecca" attention is two-fold  1)People's perception of SC 2)The disjointed variety of the locations of the public golf courses to private. With regards to the first, most visitors perceive SC as coastal; in actuality it has at least three distinct regions, from mountainous Greenville to piedmont around Sage Valley, and coastal conditions in HHI/Charl./MB. There is no standout golf course in the interior of SC that I can think of, and this is a wide, unused area separates the good courses to the point where people don't connect them with the whole state. As far as #2, Charleston is private by nature, MB is a golf second town, HHI is a Northerner's version of Charleston, and golf courses like Sage Valley in the Aiken/N. Augusta area have nothing to do with Chanticleer type courses in Greenville. The result is a state with a wrong perception that doesn't quite know where it stands on public/private golf, combined with a tremendous amount of unused golfing area. Not exactly an architectural mecca, and I don't think it will be until the area around Columbia begins to tie the state together. Just for context, my mother's family is from Greenville/Anderson and we still have a lake house there- didn't want to make it seem like I was throwing down on SC