Looking to play the best public-access courses at one of the most popular golf destinations in the U.S.? We’ve got you – and Myrtle Beach – covered. Using the Golfweek’s Best rankings of public-access courses in South Carolina, we are featuring the layouts within an hour’s drive of the Grand Strand.
For this exercise, we used Google Maps and punched in each course as of a Saturday morning to determine drive times, with Myrtle Beach International Airport as an achored starting point. Included with this list is a general map of where to find all these courses. Each one on the list below is represented with a number on the map – keep scrolling to see the numbers. The numbers represent the order in which the courses are ranked.
Included with each course is its position in South Carolina on the Golfweek’s Best public-access list. For any course that appears on our other popular rankings lists, those positions are included as well.
A little background: The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
The courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort, by staying at an affiliated hotel or purchasing a golf vacation package. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time – no membership required.