No matter how many big-name golf architects build layouts on the Grand Strand, the best modern course to play on a Myrtle Beach golf vacation is largely the work of a rank amateur.
When the owner of Tidewater Golf Club dreamed of creating a golf course, he had Rees Jones draw up the routing but then turned the project over to his friend, Ken Tomlinson, a South Carolina tax attorney.
Somehow, Tomlinson took Jones’ plan and transformed the low-country land into a layout that ranks among the best Myrtle Beach golf courses, and one of the best in the country.
It begins gently with a straightforward par-5 and a simple dogleg par-4. While these inland, tree-lined holes elicit a pleasing serenity, the game begins in earnest when one confronts the tidal marsh, the wind and the precipitously perched, three-tiered green on the par-3 third hole, followed by the difficult, 414-yard par-4 fourth, a beautiful, marsh-hugging dogleg, reminiscent of the 18th at Pebble Beach.
The layout continues to follow natural contours of the land, gaining momentum with each consecutive hole. Tidewater’s signature is the par-3 12th hole, whose green, buttressed by a bulkhead, juts into the marsh.
Unlike some Myrtle Beach golf courses that are “factories,” Tidewater gives you the feeling of playing on someone’s personal course. And, in keeping with its designed-by-an-amateur roots, it is easily enjoyed by amateurs, too.
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