The Round Grande Dunes Builds Toward

A Myrtle Beach golf trip comes down to one honest question about the group you're traveling with. There's the path where everyone agrees before they leave home — one course, one standard, a round at Grande Dunes Resort Club built around Roger Rulewich's layout along the Intracoastal Waterway. The par-3 14th drops roughly 65 feet to a green jutting over the waterway, and the course plays 7,618 yards from the tips across renovated greens that changed significantly when architects went back to the original design intent in 2022. You book it in advance, you arrive ready, and the day earns what you paid for it. Then there's the other path — the one where somebody in the group plays differently than someone else, where the stakes of any single round feel lower because another course waits tomorrow morning. That path runs through a different address entirely.

Grande Dunes Resort Club has built a clear record since opening in 2001. It was named National Golf Course of the Year by the National Golf Course Owners Association in 2009, ranked 4th in a survey of more than 50 Myrtle Beach-area PGA professionals, and placed 47th in Golf Digest's 2025-26 ranking of the best courses in South Carolina. The 2022 renovation — greens, bunkers, and clubhouse, led by architect John Harvey working from Rulewich's original blueprints — was what solidified the current version. Greens were restored to their original size and expanded by more than 33%, adding more pin placement variety and distributing foot traffic across more surface area.

What that produces on the course is a layout that plays differently at different skill levels without softening for either. Wide Bermuda grass fairways give higher-handicap players room to work, while the greens — averaging 10,000 square feet with eight rotating pin placements — mean the same hole reads differently round to round. Five holes run along the Intracoastal Waterway. The par-3 14th drops roughly 65 feet to a green set directly over the water. The par-5 17th has water down the entire left side and a moat fronting the green. You enter the back nine knowing what the course is asking.

Groups that choose Grande Dunes are typically answering the same internal question: what does it feel like to play the course that earned the reputation? One round, full attention, no split focus across a multi-day rotation. You're not managing options. You're committing.

But the pattern players who've done this trip multiple times follow is booking Grande Dunes earlier in the week rather than later. By Thursday or Friday, groups are tired and scoring expectations have softened. The course rewards fresh attention — the kind you have on day one or two, before the legs have logged multiple rounds.

Barefoot Resort & Golf, in North Myrtle Beach, runs a different arithmetic. Four championship courses — designed by Greg Norman, Davis Love III, Tom Fazio, and Pete Dye — share one campus along the Intracoastal Waterway, and the logic of the place is rotational rather than singular. You don't come to play Barefoot. You come to decide which Barefoot, and then which one after that.

The Norman Course keeps roughly 60 acres of mowable grass, which means fairways and greens are framed tightly by sand and natural vegetation — it reads closer to a desert Southwest layout than anything you'd expect from coastal South Carolina. The Love Course, ranked among Golf Digest's and Golf Magazine's Top 100 Public courses, runs past the remnants of a 17th-century plantation between holes 3 and 7 — genuine ruins worked into the design, not decorative staging. The Fazio plays through marsh views with bunker work that Fazio layouts are known for. The Dye is the one groups argue about — ranked 30th in South Carolina by Golf Digest in 2025-26, the highest of the four Barefoot courses, and Pete Dye's visual intimidation here is complete. The par-4 18th plays along water with Dye's trademark mounding framing the approach, and it's among the more discussed closing holes in state golf.

Each course is available for public tee times. The Dye operates as semi-private with public availability; current booking access for all four courses is confirmed at barefootgolf.com.

What Barefoot resolves is the group composition problem. When a trip includes players at genuinely different skill levels, or when half the group wants a risk-reward test and the other half wants to move around a beautiful piece of land without grinding, four courses give everyone a morning worth showing up for. The trip takes on its own momentum — not one standard applied to everyone, but a rotation each player shapes differently.

Both courses sit along the Intracoastal Waterway. Both carry verifiable national recognition. Both are publicly accessible and bookable without membership. What they ask of the group planning the trip is different.

Grande Dunes asks for agreement. It works best when everyone wants the same thing — one course, played with full focus, at a level the course was designed to reward. The advance booking, the prep, the day structured around a single layout: all of that is part of it. You're not splitting attention across options. You're committing.

Barefoot asks for flexibility. It works best when the group has more range — in skill, in energy, in what they came for. The rotation absorbs different kinds of golfers without forcing anyone onto the wrong course. A player who wants to grind a Pete Dye layout can do that. A player who wants to move around a beautiful piece of land without the pressure of a marquee round can find that on a different morning.

The golf is the same axis. What separates them is how the group travels.

Where — Grande Dunes Resort Club: 8700 Golf Village Lane, Myrtle Beach, SC 29572. Positioned on a high bluff along the Intracoastal Waterway in central Myrtle Beach.

Tee times — Grande Dunes: Book directly at grandedunesgolf.com or through major booking platforms. Dynamic pricing applies — rates confirmed at time of booking. Verify current availability before planning.

Where — Barefoot Resort & Golf: North Myrtle Beach, SC. All four courses (Norman, Love, Fazio, Dye) are on the same campus. Current tee time availability and booking at barefootgolf.com.

Access note — Barefoot: The Dye Course operates as semi-private with public tee times available. The Norman, Love, and Fazio courses are fully public. Confirm current access for all four at barefootgolf.com before booking.

After the round — Grande Dunes: Terrazza 19 is on-site at the clubhouse, overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, and is open to the public for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The venue also books private events and weddings, which can affect table availability on peak days. Confirm current hours and availability at grandedunesgolf.com/terrazza19 before planning a post-round dinner around it.

Spring timing: Spring is historically peak season on the Grand Strand — courses fill and tee time windows narrow. Both courses typically require advance booking during spring. Verify current availability before building a trip around specific dates.

Lodging note: Spring peak fills nearby accommodations earlier than a standard Grand Strand weekend. Guests arriving early, building a full golf day on-site, and treating the return as wind-down move through both courses without the logistics compression that comes from trying to time every departure from a short-radius hotel block.

One round where the course earns your full attention. Or four courses where the rotation earns the trip its shape. Both are serious golf. Both carry a record that holds up when you look at it. Both are publicly accessible to anyone who books a tee time.

The Myrtle Beach golf trip has been this question for decades. What's changed is that either answer is available on the same stretch of Intracoastal Waterway, in the same week. The course that fits is the one that fits the group. The group knows which it is before the bags are packed.