Pine Lakes Country Club, which opened in 1927 and is recognized as the oldest course in the golf-rich region, will be getting new greens and rebuilt bunkers. “If we had our druthers, we wouldn’t have picked the middle of April to close down, but we thought it was the right thing to do, based on the condition of the golf course and historical nature of Pine Lakes,” says Steve Mays, President of Founders Group International, which owns and operates the property.
Pine Lakes Country Club, which opened in 1927 and is known as Myrtle Beach’s oldest golf course, closed last week for renovations that include new greens and a rebuilding of the course’s bunkers, Myrtle Beach Online reported. The layout is expected to be closed until early July.
“No one likes to see the Granddaddy closed,” said Steve Mays, President of Founders Group International, which owns and operates the venerable course. “Pine Lakes is figuratively and literally the center of Myrtle Beach and everyone in the Myrtle Beach area and FGI takes great pride in that facility and what Pine Lakes is, so we’re looking forward to getting that back open sooner rather than later.”
Course architect Craig Schreiner, whose home is off one of Pine Lakes’ holes, has been hired by FGI to oversee the bunker renovations, Myrtle Beach Online reported.
Pine Lakes was designed by Robert White, the first president of the PGA of America, and its clubhouse was designed in Classical Revival style by Raymond Hood, who also designed New York City skyscrapers, Myrtle Beach Online reported. It is considered the birthplace of Sports Illustrated, and the course and clubhouse are on the National Register of Historic Places.
“If we had our druthers, we wouldn’t have picked the middle of April to close down, but we thought it was the right thing to do based on the condition of the golf course and historical nature of Pine Lakes,” Mays said. “We’re excited to make the investment in Pine Lakes because we know it’s going to make that golf course a much better golf course.”
Pine Lakes is the only course in the market with SeaDwarf Paspalum wall-to-wall, but the grass that is known to withstand heat, brackish water and minimal watering is being replaced on the greens by Sunday ultradwarf Bermudagrass, which FGI has installed over the past few years on both courses at Myrtlewood Golf Club and Tradition Club, Myrtle Beach Online reported. Mays said the Sunday greens have been a “great success” at those courses.
The mid-sized and gently rolling greens are also being enlarged back to their size in 2008-09 when the Paspalum was first installed, as the fairways have encroached upon them over the past decade, Myrtle Beach Online reported. That will open up more pin placement options.
Mays said the company, which owns and operates 21 Grand Strand courses, was considering replacing the Paspalum on greens in the near future, and the change was expedited when the grass had an adverse reaction to an herbicide that was administered early this year, Myrtle Beach Online reported.
“It’s a beautiful grass, but we never got it to the point where we felt we had the ideal putting conditions on the paspalum greens,” Mays said. “It got better every year and our team and superintendent Alan Jarvis got better at managing those greens, but we could still never get the consistency and green speeds we wanted, so we always in our minds wanted to make the change at an appropriate time.”
Closing in late April is not ideal because it is in the midst of the spring golf season, which is the most lucrative time of year for area golf courses, Myrtle Beach Online reported. But Mays said the company didn’t want golfers to experience poor conditions on the legendary course.
“For whatever reason there was an adverse reaction to it, so we didn’t have the playing conditions at all that we wanted out at Pine Lakes. So we made the decision rather than have package golfers play on that golf course when the greens were in really bad condition we decided we needed to make a change and go ahead and close down,” he said.
“At the same time we knew we had some other work that needed to be done at the golf course, namely with the bunkers, and we wanted to work with Craig to get those bunkers in great condition.”
Pine Lakes has just 25 bunkers, and they will be rebuilt to modern specifications, Myrtle Beach Online reported. Bunker drainage will be improved and a quality bunker sand from North Carolina that is featured at the Members Club at Grande Dunes is being installed.
“We think it’s the best sand we’ve come across in 30 years,” Schreiner said. “It’s very consistent, a lot easier to play out and more forgiving than the really fine white stuff that can get a little soft. This has a little more coarseness to it and the ball sits up very nice in it.”
Some deep bunkers will be made more shallow and more playable, and the top of bunker faces will hang over the sand and feature Zoysia grass, which Schreiner said will create stability as well as a “wispier grey eyebrow look on these, a little older look to them.”
He’ll be reintroducing some character into the bunker design. “They have really lost a lot of their contours and features and little ridges and noses, and that’s what I’m putting back in,” Schreiner told Myrtle Beach Online. Minimal work was done on the bunkers during Pine Lakes’ most recent renovation project in 2008-09.
“We just kind of left the natural sand alone in most of the bunkers and we wanted to have the old natural beach sand in them and it just hasn’t worked because it hasn’t drained well, it’s a little bogged and some of the bunker faces were getting too warned out and they’d wash a lot when they got heavy rain,” Schreiner said.
A new front tee box is being built on the ninth hole that will allow all tees to be moved up on a daily basis, Myrtle Beach Online reported. The 370-yard hole features a drive into a hill that pushes balls toward a water hazard on the right side of the fairway.
Some subtle work to conditions will give the course a more natural feel and look, and a few trees that have grown a lot over the past decade may be removed, Myrtle Beach Online reported. Pine Lakes will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2027.
“We want to make sure we are who we want to be when we hit that 100th anniversary,” Mays said. “When we open up in early July, we think we’re going to have one of the best courses at the beach.”
Schreiner also recently completed renovation work at the private DeBordieu Club in Georgetown, S.C. , Myrtle Beach Online reported. It included a new short-game area at the practice facility that will soon open.
Schreiner also created a master plan for the course designed to in part make the challenging Pete and P.B. Dye design less difficult, Myrtle Beach Online reported. He made renovations to the ninth hole—including bunker work—and redirected the fairway in order to make the hole less difficult.
After doing some work in Florida this summer, Schreiner intends to return to DeBordieu in October to work on more holes, Myrtle Beach Online reported. Much of the bunkering that is on the outskirts of holes will be eliminated.
“We’re going to apply the same approach we took on nine to the rest of the golf course,” he said. “What we’re doing is making it more playable and a lot more maintainable. The Dye course has such dramatic contouring, it’s tedious and very tricky to take care of, and it’s difficult to play. So we’re keeping very strategic bunkers and we’re going to remove several on the golf course that are more out of play.”
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