Golf Channel’s Brad Klein Includes Dunes Club Among 10 Courses that Shaped American Golf Course Architecture

We have long touted the Dunes Club and its stature as one of the best layouts in America, but it’s always nice to see that point of view validated by one of the most respected names in golf course architecture – Golf Channel’s Brad Klein.

Klein, who began his career as a PGA Tour caddie, has written more than 1,500 stories on course architecture, resort travel and golf course development, among other topics, and is a voice of authority within the game. So, when he used the July 4 holiday as an occasion to write about, “Revolutionary designs: golf courses that shaped America’s golf architecture history,” people took note.

The article spotlighted 10 courses that were examples of “design innovations that have defined the American golf landscape.” Included alongside National Golf Links, Pinehurst No. 2, Augusta National, Bethpage Black and Harbour Town, was the Dunes Club.

Klein wrote of the Dunes Club, “Before he made himself into a marketing cliché, Robert Trent Jones Sr. was actually a very talented designer. That’s nowhere more evident than with his routing and shaping of The Dunes Beach & Golf Club, a paradigm of modern power golf done back when Myrtle Beach was unknown as a golf destination. It’s not just the boldness of these doglegs or the determination to make golfers hit aerial shots into raised, well protected greens. One hole expresses this vision as well as any that Jones built: the massive, right-hand dogleg par-5 13th hole called “Waterloo,” with heroic crossings required all of the way.”

High praise from one of the game’s scholars.

The Dunes Club’s resume includes hosting the U.S. Women’s Open, the Senior PGA Tour Championship, the finals of the PGA Tour’s Q-School, and long-time residence on Golf Digest and Golf Magazine’s list of America’s top 100 public courses.

If you are an architecture buff or just want to play one of the premier golf courses in America, the Dunes Club needs to be part of your next Myrtle Beach golf trip.