Golfweek Ranks Dunes Club, Caledonia Among America’s Top 100 Resort Courses

Golfweek is the latest publication to honor two of the best Myrtle Beach golf courses. The magazine recently released its list of America’s Top 100 Resort Courses and the Dunes Club was ranked 25th, followed immediately by Caledonia at No. 26. 

Both courses are also ranked among the nation’s top 100 public courses by Golf Digest, Golf Magazine and Golf Channel travel guru Matt Ginella. While the two layouts couldn’t be more different, the reasons for their popularity are obvious. 

The Dunes Club, which was the second Myrtle Beach golf course to open, is a classic Robert Trent Jones Sr., design. The course features generous fairways, elevated, but well bunkered greens, and rolling terrain that is uncommon along the South Carolina coast. 

The Dunes Club, which has hosted the U.S. Women’s Open, six Senior PGA Tour Championships, and the PGA Tour Q-School finals, was the layout most responsible for the destination’s rise to national prominence. When Myrtle Beach was but a sleepy beach town, people flocked to the area to play the heralded layout and brought their friends with them. 

Alligator Alley, as holes 11-13 are known, is the course’s most famed stretch, highlighted by Waterloo, the par 5 13th that plays around Lake Singleton. The 13th has been ranked among America’s top 100 holes and is the area’s most iconic test. 

Caledonia, which plays on the grounds of an old rice plantation, combined a stunning piece of Lowcountry land and Mike Strantz’ architectural brilliance to create one of golf’s best and most memorable courses. From the drive in through a near half-mile long alley of oak trees to the finish on one of the best 18th holes golf has to offer, Caledonia delivers on the promise of its experience. 

The course was Strantz’ first solo design and it deservedly launched him into the stratosphere. The skill required to design a course of Caledonia’s quality on little more than 100 acres of land is remarkable, and Strantz made it look easy. 

Caledonia, which, like the Dunes Club, is impeccably conditioned, is memorable throughout. The round builds to a crescendo peaking at the 18th, where golfers must clear water coming from the nearby Waccamaw River to hit a green that rests in the shadow of an antebellum-style clubhouse. With a crowd typically assembled on the deck, it’s a perfect finish to a great round of golf. 

In addition to Dunes Club and Caledonia, Golfweek ranked the Dye and Fazio courses at Barefoot Resort, Grande Dunes, Moorland Course at Legends and King’s North at Myrtle Beach National among it’s Next 100 resort courses.