The 20 Best Golf Courses in South Carolina

The No. 1 course in South Carolina on every panel that matters - and a fixture in our national top 10. Dye raised the fairways above the dune line so the Atlantic is in view, and in play, on hole after hole: ten holes run directly along the ocean, the most of any course in the Northern Hemisphere. The 1991 Ryder Cup made it famous, two PGA Championships (2012 and 2021) confirmed it, and its 79.1 rating and maximum 155 slope from the tournament tees make it the grandest examination in resort golf - all of it bookable through the resort. Read our full course review.

The other half of South Carolina's famous forty-mile pair. Dye, with a young Jack Nicklaus consulting, built the anti-Ocean Course in 1969: a precision test through live-oak corridors to some of the smallest greens on the PGA Tour, finishing at the red-and-white lighthouse that is golf's great postcard. Home of the RBC Heritage every April since 1969, and the No. 2 playable course in the state on Golfweek's list and ours - it sits in our national top 10, so the order mirrors itself. Read our full course review.

Mike Strantz's first solo design, and still the Grand Strand's beloved masterpiece: a former rice plantation under centuries-old live oaks, routed with an artist's eye down to the chowder at the turn and the approach over water to the 18th green beneath the clubhouse porch. Golfweek's panel puts it fourth among the state's public-access courses; it stands third here once a request-only private club is set aside under our booking rule (see How we ranked). Pure Lowcountry celebration.

The course that started the Myrtle Beach boom: only the second course built on the Strand, opened in 1949 as Robert Trent Jones Sr.'s first big-budget design, and still the area's standard-bearer - now host of the PGA Tour's Myrtle Beach Classic. The par-5 13th, Waterloo, bending around Lake Singleton, is one of America's famous holes. It is a members' club that sells guest play through Myrtle Beach golf packages and partner hotels, which is exactly what our Semi-private tag means.

Strantz returned to Pawleys Island four years after Caledonia and built its bigger, bolder sibling across the road: enormous fairways framed by sprawling waste areas, some of the largest greens on the Strand, and drama at Pine Valley scale. Where Caledonia is the ballet, True Blue is the rock show - and playing the pair on one trip is the essential South Strand double. Golfweek ranks it sixth among the state's public-access courses; the head-to-head with its sister earns it fifth here.

Hilton Head's oldest golf ground, made new: Love Golf Design completely rebuilt George Cobb's 1962 Ocean Course - the island's first course - in 2016, retracing the routing while restoring dunes, coquina-shell paths and seaside grasses. The result is the breeziest, most open of Sea Pines' three courses, a links-flavored complement to Harbour Town that completes the island's essential trio.

Dye came back to Sea Pines in 2007 and rebuilt the old Sea Marsh course into a risk-reward delight: dramatic fairways, shifting elevations, and greens that ask you to pick a side and commit. It is the middle child of the Sea Pines trio and, for many visiting golfers, the sweet spot - full Dye character at a friendlier scale than Harbour Town, in the same oak-and-marsh Lowcountry.

Fazio's 1988 Kiawah course, routed around four large lakes, fingers of salt marsh and dense maritime forest - the island locals' favorite, and the connoisseur's second Kiawah round. All the beauty of the island with the volume turned down from the Ocean Course: water everywhere, but arranged to charm rather than to punish. On a two-round Kiawah day, this is the perfect afternoon.

The Strand's tour-standard round: Fazio, with Lanny Wadkins consulting, built a TPC Network course in 1999 that hosted the Senior PGA Tour's season-ending championship a year later and now stages the Dustin Johnson World Junior every spring. Water touches ten holes, and the closing stretch - an island-green par 3 at the 17th and a risk-reward par 5 to finish - gives a casual Tuesday the feel of a Sunday back nine.

The most scenic course on the Strand, from the unlikeliest author: Tomlinson, a former tax accountant, produced exactly one design - and it was named among America's best new courses when it opened in 1990. Nine holes play along the Intracoastal Waterway or Cherry Grove Inlet, the par-3 3rd and 12th are a famous pair, and the whole round harmonizes with its marsh-and-forest setting instead of shouting over it. One for one, forever.