{"id":3246,"date":"2011-04-08T09:41:43","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T16:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertfagan.com\/?p=3246"},"modified":"2012-02-03T11:41:22","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T18:41:22","slug":"it-all-began-in-myrtle-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/golf\/courses-and-travel\/3246\/it-all-began-in-myrtle-beach","title":{"rendered":"It All Began in Myrtle Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The venerable Pine Lakes Country Club started golf in the Myrtle Beach area in 1927.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve enjoyed quite a love affair with the game of golf, but it really blossomed in March of 1965 when I got to take my first golf vacation.\u00a0 This vacation was to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.\u00a0 I was just fourteen at the time and my parents along with a spry 78-year old friend of the family, George Thorpe, and I embarked to this South Carolina coastal town that had but three golf courses at the time.<\/p>\n

My parents took advantage of one of those early package deals where you could play golf and stay fairly<\/p>\n

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One of America's best par-fives, the 13th at The Dunes.<\/p><\/div>\n

inexpensively as well as play all the area golf courses \u2013 the famous Dunes Golf & Beach Club, the venerable old Pine Lakes International, and the Surf.\u00a0 In the few years that I had been playing, I\u2019d seen many advertisements for the \u201cWaterloo\u201d of a hole the 595-yard 13th<\/sup> at the Dunes that only touring professional Mike Souchak had ever powerfully reached in two shots.\u00a0 The Pine Lakes layout was the course that started the area playing golf and the Surf was an exciting new course north of town.\u00a0 I found all the courses thrilling and playing them just encouraged me to want to play more golf.<\/p>\n

Yes, we played all the three courses and my parents and George Thorpe taught me how to play Gin Rummy.\u00a0 Except that I didn\u2019t drink, of course, it was the usual fare of great golf, playing cards, enjoying a good meal and the camaraderie of friends that still endures in Myrtle Beach today during those late winter days and early spring days.\u00a0 The difference is that the area has grown and the choices for golf have grown exponentially to feature more than one hundred golf offerings.<\/p>\n

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The Caledonia Golf & Fish Club<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, I have returned to Myrtle Beach and those three original courses still exist.\u00a0 In fact, the Dunes is one of the more revered Robert Trent Jones, Sr. courses in existence.\u00a0 Now the Grand Strand as it is called extends north across the North Carolina border and further south.\u00a0 There are many more hotels to choose from as there are golf courses.\u00a0 In fact, there are too many to highlight except to mention that the Caledonia Golf and Fish Club designed by the late Mike Strantz is one of my all-time favorites with some of the best framed greensites in America.<\/p>\n

The nice thing is that most all of these many courses are accessible to the public and the values are really worth pursuing.\u00a0 If The Masters golf tournament is an annual rite of spring, the precursor to that are the stag trips to Myrtle Beach that begin in late February.\u00a0 While the weather can be \u201ciffy,\u201d men from all over the Middle Atlantic and Northeastern states converge on Interstate 95 heading south to this Mecca of golf to play golf in Myrtle Beach.\u00a0 For several days, they will all play 36 holes a day, eat, perhaps drink and play cards all in what is as much a ritual as college kids celebrating at some other beaches during spring break.<\/p>\n

Just as I did in 1965, golfers will speak\u00a0 of their upcoming trip to Myrtle Beach during the snow-covered winter with great anticipation.\u00a0 With spring, the area blossoms into a full-blown great golf destination and evolves into the very popular family summer resort.\u00a0 Autumn may be one of the best times of the year to visit, and many fall in love with the area so that it has become an attractive retirement option.\u00a0 You can pick any time of year to discover Myrtle Beach, get pick one of the many great\u00a0Myrtle Beach golf courses<\/a>, \u00a0and to expand your golfing love affair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The venerable Pine Lakes Country Club started golf in the Myrtle Beach area in 1927. I\u2019ve enjoyed quite a love… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":3247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2689,556,6426,1957,1046291,6428,1514,4275,1046270],"class_list":["post-3246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-courses-and-travel","tag-caledonia","tag-myrtle-beach","tag-tee-times","tag-dunes","tag-pine-lakes","tag-surf","tag-mike-strantz","tag-robert-trent-jones-sr","tag-golf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2011\/04\/Dunes13.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3246"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3258,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions\/3258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}