LEFT: Rancho Manana Golf Club is a par-70
course with impressive elevation changes
BELOW: The Phoenician, set in the beautiful
Sonoran Desert, features stunning views and
many amenitites on its premises.
Difficulty on Pawleys par-3 13th will
be determined by wind conditions.
Unlike the famed Robert Trent Jones
Golf Trail in Alabama, the Waccamaw Golf
Trail doesn’t span the entire state of South
Carolina. Instead, the 12 courses range
less than half of Georgetown County and
the southern tip of Horry County. It is less
than a 30-minute drive from the northern-
most track (Blackmoor Golf Club) to the
southernmost (Pawleys Plantation Golf &
Country Club).
In between, 10 more courses each do
their part to help the conglomerate rise
out of the shadows of the Myrtle Beach
golf market.
“It’s not that we felt secluded from Myr-
tle Beach, but we felt like we had something
a little different to offer,” Seganti said. “We
had a much smaller hometown feel.”
Pawleys Island, Murrells Inlet, Litchfield
and Georgetown are relatively lighter por-
tions of the metropolitan area that is one of
the fastest growing in the United States, sure.
But the 12 courses that form the Waccamaw
Golf Trail together pack one heck of a punch.
THE BEST OF THE WACCAMAW
GOLF TRAIL
Opinions are going to vary on which tracks
are tops out of the Trail’s decorated courses.
However, the following five are going to find
themselves in just about everyone’s list in
one form or another:
HERITAGE CLUB (opened in 1986):
Three times in the 2000s, Heritage was
named among the top 100 public courses in
the country by Golf Digest. Considering that
happened after two decades of operation,
and it was clear the Lowcountry feel of this
course—centuries-old live oaks, marshes,
wide fairways and rolling terrain—was still
every bit of the draw it was before the Wac-
camaw Golf Trail was even formed.
CALEDONIA GOLF & FISH CLUB
(1994): Famed designer Mike Strantz’s first
solo project was such a success that Cale-
donia is now a consensus top-100 national
product year after year after year. Strantz
beautifully blended the wetlands that once
made up a prominent rice plantation into
his artistry. Caledonia isn’t overly difficult,
but the distractions from the layout and
scenery are in of themselves a draw.
Strantz was brought back by the owner-
ship group at Caledonia just a few years
later to repeat his magic act. The sister
course, True Blue, did not disappoint. Using
much of the same style that included hand-
drawn sketches and no details ignored,
Strantz’s second local project helped earn
him “Architect of the Year” honors from
Golfweek later that year.
PAWLEYS PLANTATION GOLF &
COUNTRY CLUB (1988): In the fall of
The par-5 eighth hole at Caledonia.
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V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 2 0
2018, Jack Nicklaus returned to his design
here for the first time since it opened. He
was critical of his own product, to a degree,
but only in how some of his opinions of his
vsga.org
TRUE BLUE GOLF CLUB (1998):