Pine Lakes Country Club (Myrtle Beach, SC on 12/30/12)

Pine Lakes Country Club’s claim to fame is that it is the oldest course in Myrtle Beach. The course, while redone in recent years, was originally built in 1927. What is also unique about Pine Lakes is that it is one of the only courses around that has paspalum grass. Really this means nothing to me as I am not familiar with the different types of grasses but paspalum is supposed to be more resistant against the salt from the nearby Atlantic. It played and putted the same as bermuda to me. Because the course is an older layout it has older features including many doglegs, tees close to the greens, and shorter holes. The course is a par 70 and we played the tee #3 (70.6/128/6305) which is one set up from the tips. The tips are only about 6700 yards, but because the course only has two par 5s it does play a bit longer than a par 72 at 6700 yards so keep that in mind when selecting the tees to play from. While talking about the tees, the course does something that I liked. Instead of color coding all the tees, the course numbers the tees. So all we had to do was look for the tee marker with the number “3” on it when we got to the boxes. I found that simpler than looking for a color as sometimes the colors do not stand out. The course has an open feel to it with many holes separated from each other by pine trees. In between the fairways, the growth under the pine trees has been cleaned out so there were only a few holes where losing a ball was a major concern. Most fairways were wide, but did have some slopes so on a couple holes I had to be careful not to run it down a slope and into the rough. Therefore many fairways resulted in uneven lies adding a challenge even to a mid or short iron approach. The course starts off with a shorter par 4 probably requiring a layup off the tee for most golfers, but then gets tougher. The 3rd is a long par 4 is not only a challenging hole, but also a pretty one. The green is guarded by water right and the hole is framed by dense trees behind the green. The 4th and 5th holes are doglegs left that I thought did not fit in the with rest of the course. These holes were towards the perimeter and had a more target golf feel than the rest of the course. The 9th is the only other odd hole and it is another dog leg left around some water. I was very uncomfortable playing it for some reason. I thought the back 9 was the better nine as it really had some fine holes. The 11th is a shorter par 3 over water framed by more trees in the background while the 13th and 14th were both longer par 4s which were a challenge. The 13th needed a good line off the tee while the 14th required an accurate tee shot. Finally, the 16th is mid length par 3 with a severely sloped green that required a good iron shot. Overall there were 5 or 6 holes that I thought were quality holes. Most greens had 3 or 4 ridges in them and an approach or chip always seemed to be hitting on an uneven part of the green. The greens were a bit more work to putt than I like and I found it tough to make anything over 5 feet because it was always a cup or two of break. So while the course is short by today’s standards, it proved a worthy opponent and stole a couple strokes from me throughout the round. The condition was good, not great like you probably would find at some of the top tier courses, but the greens rolled pretty true and did not have too many ball marks in them. However, I found the greens slower than they looked. The fairways were pretty dry considering all the recent rain and actually provided a little roll. My one criticism about the fairways and greens is that they seemed to be a little thin. I am not sure if that is the paspalum grass or what, but I never really got a clean lie in the fairway for some reason and most of the time the ball sat down a touch. I never really like par 70s as I like more scoring holes but the course is probably worth a play if someone is looking for a good value. I paid ~$40 for mid day tee time and it was worth that price considering some of the challenging holes.

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