Making a lovely turn

The 16th hole of Pawleys Plantation Golf & Country Club begins inside a tree-lined corridor. It ends with an unimpeded view of an opening to the sea.

From tee shots through a chute of oaks and pines to approaches, pitches and putts along saltwater marshes, the hole demonstrates the appeal of South Carolina Lowcountry golf. The challenging-to-play, tantalizing-to-observe hole also personifies the transformation of the 36-year-old course.

Designed by Jack Nicklaus following the hullabaloo of his 1986 Masters triumph, Pawleys Plantation underwent a significant renovation in 2023. The effort resembled most Myrtle Beach-area projects, as crews hustled to minimize disruption to lucrative spring and fall golf dates.

Nicklaus Design associate Troy Vincent guided the effort, collaborating with Henderson & Company, the Founders Group International construction staff, and the Pawleys Plantation team to meet a rigid deadline. Work involved restoring greens to original sizes and installing TifEagle Bermudagrass on the surfaces, reducing, reshaping and modernizing bunkers, incorporating native areas into the design, and thinning and pruning trees. The course closed May 22 and reopened Oct. 2. “It was the longest quick renovation we’ve ever done,” says Founders Group International Steve Mays, whose company owns 21 Myrtle Beach-area courses.

The 16th hole presents idyllic golf theater for comprehending the scope of the project. The par 4 plays 440 yards from the back tees and doglegs left through an enlarged passageway. A marsh lurches into the right side of the fairway at the 130-yard mark. Modest bunkers, one on the left and one on the right, guard the green. A singular oak with eight sturdy extension branches rises behind the green.

Unobstructed views of saltwater marshes and Pawleys Island emerge from the green. Yes, Pawleys Island is an actual place. The desirable Lowcountry ZIP Code occupies attractive coastal land between the marsh and the Atlantic Ocean.

A strip of low-cut turf connects the 16th and 13th greens. The 13th and 17th holes, a pair of memorable par 3s playing over marshes featuring tees atop a narrow bulkhead, border the 16th green. Smaller bunkers and fewer trees make sightlines more dramatic and the hole less cumbersome to play and maintain.

“During the renovation, I came around with a golf cart, made that turn left and saw this new view that we didn’t have,” Mays says. “The marsh opens up and you can see Pawleys Island in the background. It reminded me of why we were doing the renovation and why this place is so special.”

The process of refining Pawleys Plantation stems from a 2018 Nicklaus visit to celebrate the 30th anniversary. Nicklaus arrived on Pawleys Island in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. “The intent was not to have them come back and renovate the golf course,” Mays says. “The intent was let’s have them come back to celebrate 30 years. We had just gone through a major hurricane, and it was a good way to bring attention to Pawleys and Myrtle Beach, and say, ‘Hey, we’re open and everything is fine.’”

Pawleys Plantation represented Nicklaus’s first Myrtle Beach-area and fourth South Carolina design effort. Nicklaus designed the course during an era when concepts such as tough and difficult dictated numerous decisions, including the placement of giant bunkers hugging fairways and greens. The original layout possessed bentgrass greens; TifEagle replaced the bentgrass around the turn of the century.

As he toured the course in 2018, Nicklaus offered ideas for modernizing his work to fit evolving golf maintenance and playing standards. “That was the big seed that was planted,” Mays says. “We thought, ‘Hey, we can make this property better.’”

Nicklaus Design started formulating renovation plans in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic then delayed the process. According to Mays, Founders Group International saw enough positive signs in the golf tourism and Myrtle Beach markets by 2022 to solidify renovation plans for Pawleys Plantation.

Before its formal work with Nicklaus Design, Pawleys Plantation used the winter of 2021-22 to replace the original hydraulic irrigation system with a new Rain Bird IC two-wire system. Longtime irrigation technician Timmy Guiles pulled the final plug on the old system and the first switch on the new system. “As soon as we flipped that switch, we were probably saving around a million gallons a night,” says Chris Allen, the superintendent involved in the renovation. Allen’s team spent the remainder of 2022 in maintenance mode, which was interrupted by Hurricane Ian cleanup efforts.

Founders Group International officially unveiled the schedule for the Nicklaus Design-guided renovation in February 2023. Vincent, who lives in Augusta, Georgia, made weekly visits to Pawleys Plantation throughout a project marking the first major renovation in the course’s history.

“Most of the greens had shrunk substantially, with some of them shrinking by as much as 10 feet,” Vincent says. “The bunker lines had changed, and the tree growth was incredible, which really started impacting Chris’s ability to grow heathy, viable turf. The course was ready for a renovation.”

Hulking live, laurel, pin and water oaks bunched closely together hampered agronomics and playability. The result of calculated tree removal and management are immediately apparent, with golfers receiving a wider corridor on the par-5 first hole. Tree work revealed hidden features such as a 135-year-old laurel oak with a 12-foot trunk along the right side of the hole. “I honestly didn’t even know that tree was in there,” Allen says.

Visible connections between the first and ninth holes developed as the tree management plan progressed. Sandy native areas now cover plots between oaks and pines. “It went from woodsy and having no shot to the ninth green if you went left — and we’re only talking 30 yards from the center of the fairway — to having four or five signature live oaks with space to develop with these native white sand areas under it,” Allen says. “It looks super sharp.”

The optics of progress motivated crews through the sultry South Carolina summer. None of what they encountered was unexpected, because of honest conversations between Vincent and the onsite teams. The conversations eliminated surprises as the early fall deadline approached.

“He wanted to make sure I was ready for the short timeframe,” says Allen, who left Pawleys Plantation in late 2023 for a territory manager position with Plant Food Company. “A month before we closed, I brought our crew into a meeting and said, ‘We’re going to have a construction team here, a contracting team here, FGI’s construction team here. But all of us, at some point, are going to step it up to a level we haven’t done yet.’ Our crew was phenomenal. It wasn’t even three weeks in, and we started to really see, ‘Wow, we’re up against it.’”

The renovation reclaimed nearly 40,000 square feet of putting surface and crews started realizing the project had reached the back nine when they sprigged the first green on July 21. Watching TifEagle emerge proved fascinating, especially for Allen, a sprigging process rookie.

“You’re freaking out a little bit because you’re not expecting it to look as bad as it does on Day 3,” he says. “And then, sure enough by the second week and third week, they started to look phenomenal. It was an emotional roller coaster.”

The course reopened to members on Oct. 2. The course reopened to the public on Oct. 3. Everybody associated with the renovation expresses confidence Pawleys Plantation will return to a prominent spot in the Myrtle Beach market. Their confidence expands when making the left turn on the 16th and admiring what Nicklaus envisioned in the late 1980s.

“When I think of Pawleys, I think of 13 and 16,” Vincent says. “Those are iconic holes, and you always see photos of those holes. We cleaned those up, reestablished them, and we’re really excited about people seeing them. Pawleys had great success with a number of recognitions and awards, and then it tailed off. Our goal is to put Pawleys back on the map again and get it the recognition we think it deserves.”

Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s editor-in-chief.