Great vibes on the Grand Strand

Directly east of Myrtle Beach International Airport sits Whispering Pines Golf Course, an 18-hole regulation course Apple’s company, Atlantic Golf Management, started operating for the City of Myrtle Beach and Horry County in 2014. Directly south of the runway exists The Aero Club Short Course, a cozy 16-acre, 18-hole layout once called Midway Par 3. The city-owned short course shuttered for three years before being revived in 2020 by Apple, partner Chip Smith and a group of industry friends.

The Aero Club has matured into one of the hippest Myrtle Beach places observed from sky or experienced on land. Energized by music pumping through speakers and illuminated by LED lights during parts of at least three seasons, The Aero Club represents a different project for Apple, Smith and Atlantic Golf Management, which has resuscitated multiple courses in its nine-year history.

“It has been a fun project, seeing this thing closed and done away with for three years and then going over there redoing it, rebranding it and giving it a new life,” says Apple, Atlantic Golf Management’s vice president and director of agronomy.

Fun brings people to Myrtle Beach. And fun separates The Aero Club from competitors small and big. The Aero Club’s longest hole is 95 yards, approaches to most greens are unimpeded and only four bunkers dot the course. Bring one ball. Leave with the same ball. The course can be played with as few as two clubs.

“Sometimes golf, as much as Andy and I both play it and love it, needs a different feel or boost to it,” Smith says. “Andy and I will go over there sometimes and just enjoy ourselves. We’ll play a few holes and have fun. It’s not like you’re getting angry over hitting a ball out of bounds or something like that. If you three putt, you three putt. Who cares? The golf isn’t getting in the way of having fun.”

Apple and Smith have abundant company when leaving their Whispering Pines offices and trotting across South Kings Highway to The Aero Club. Unlike Myrtle Beach’s regulation golf courses, where spring and fall attract package play, The Aero Club experiences an influx of tourist activity once families visit Myrtle Beach throughout the summer.

It takes more than three strong months to support a business that must be maintained year-round. More than 400,000 people (and quickly counting) live in the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area, and connecting with the local population is turning The Aero Club into a business success. The course has become a laidback hangout for local golfers ranging from older players to area pros competing in a “Wedge Play Wednesdays” league.

“We knew we had to get the local community involved to make it sustainable year-round,” Smith says. “It would be hard to live off just June, July and August. The previous operator closed during the winter, where we have stayed opened and found it to be very worthwhile now that we have that core business of locals.”

Weather dictates when the lights are used, with a typical night golf season beginning around April 1 and lasting through October. Even without nighttime warmth, The Aero Club started fast in 2023. Revenue and rounds in January 2023 doubled what the course produced in January 2022, according to Smith.

The Aero Club demonstrates the possibilities for operators seeking to meld clever marketing and quality conditions produced via practical maintenance in a compact golf footprint.

Smith possesses a marketing background, having started a successful advertising agency, Strategic Marketing, Inc., in 1983. The Aero Club’s aeronautical theme stems from the course’s high-flying neighbor and honors the former Myrtle Beach Air Force base. Parking spaces near the clubhouse are reserved for members of military branches.

Located less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean on Myrtle Beach’s busiest highway, the site is a designated “runway protection zone,” meaning homes, condos, shopping centers and other structures can’t be built on the property. The team Apple assembled to revive the site included shaper Brett Calvert and Carolinas turf legends Danny and Randy Allen. Danny Allen, the 2022 Distinguished Service Award winner, worked as The Aero Club’s superintendent before retiring at the end of last year.

The team moved minimal dirt beyond bringing around 60 dump trucks of soil to the site to create tee boxes. The former course used mats as tees. The Aero Club has 24,000 square feet of tees, with play alternating between turf and mats to disperse wear.

Apple and his team walked the site with soil probes to find the old greens. They rebuilt the 70,000 square feet of putting surfaces with improved surface drainage as close to the old greens as possible. Three years of vacancy following years of skimpy maintenance exacerbated issues, including nematodes lurking in sandy soil, fast-growing weeds and irrigation water from an onsite well possessing salt content Apple describes as “off the chart.” Those issues are being corrected by aerifying twice per year, adding soil amendments and scheduling effective spray applications.

Greens were grassed with Sunday Bermudagrass. Construction and grow-in started in early June 2020. The rebranded course opened in late September 2020.

“We had to be careful with the design,” Smith says. “We could come up with a lot of ideas to make it more difficult and challenging with more bunkering and things like that, but I think that would hurt us. We get people who come down on vacation who might not play golf. And even our senior citizens who utilize it a lot, if we made it too difficult, I’m not sure they would be there on a regular basis.”

A maintenance facility rests on the site, and the relationship with Whispering Pines allows Atlantic Golf Management to share larger equipment and sometimes labor. Two part-time workers maintain the course. Greens are mowed five or six days a week during the growing season; Bermudagrass rough is mowed weekly. Bunker raking and cup changing occurs three times per week.

“It’s pretty simple as far as maintenance goes,” Apple says. “It hasn’t been a problem to maintain it the way we need to maintain it.”

When Apple flies, he observes the turf and scene from above. The view of The Aero Club improves with each flight.

“It’s going to keep getting better and better,” he says. “We have had a few years to learn the lay of the land. We know what our issues are and we’re going to be working on more of them this year. The overall turf conditions will just improve over there as time goes along.”