River Oaks Golf Plantation (Myrtle Beach, SC on 12/31/12)

Because I was one of the first groups off at The Dunes I got done with that round about 1:30pm. I did not really plan for the possibility of a second round today, but I figured that I had about 3.5 hours of day light left if I went off somewhere else around 2pm. My goal was to find another course nearby and to keep it cheap. I saw a tee time for 2:04pm at River Oaks Golf Plantation on Golfnow and was able to book it. The cost was $25 on Golfnow but the proshop gave me a little discount and only charged me $20 when I got there.

The course has 3 sets of nines and I ended up playing the Bear and Fox nines from the black tees (73.0/133/6778). The Bear nine is pretty boring as the first four holes go away from the clubhouse around some condos while the last five holes come back to the clubhouse around the other side of the same condos. The Bear nine is pretty flat so what the designer did to add some interest was put water on 7 or 8 of the holes. So while the layout was boring I found it pretty tough to play. The tree lined fairways were narrow with many hazards lurking in spots where I could not see them. In addition, the woods were off to one side of the hole while out of bounds was off to the other near the condos. All the holes were straight except for #9 which is long par 5 that moved right around a lake. Hole #8, a 223 yard par 3 with water right, was the best hole on the Bear as it just required a good shot.

The Fox nine had more doglegs and was what I thought the better nine of the two. The Fox had more dog legs, some mounding, and was not all parallel holes. My favorite hole here was #3 which was a long par 3 that featured a waste area nearby with domestic vegetation. It was also had a close up view of the intracoastal waterway. The 4th was a dog leg left where I could not see the green from the tee and the 5th is a short par 4 that all about placement off the tee. Overall the nines featured a good mix of short and long holes.

The conditioning of the course was decent for $20. The fairways and greens had a few sanded patches, but I was surprised that they were as decent as they were considering the price. Some of the tees were long and little muddy so I suppose that with the recent rain the mowers had not been on some of the boxes. The bunkers were in pretty bad shape and in fact I lost a ball in a water filled greenside bunker. This is a lower tier course, no doubt, but it did not matter to me as it was $20 for another 18 holes on a day that I expected only to play once.

Bear #1: