Pine Lakes Country Club, Myrtle Beach's First Course, Undergoing Greens, Bunker Restoration Project By Brian Weis

Pine Lakes Country Club, Myrtle Beach's First Course, Undergoing Greens, Bunker Restoration Project

Historic Layout Slated To Reopen In Early July

By Brian Weis

Myrtle Beach's "Granddaddy" is getting a facelift this summer.

Pine Lakes Country Club closed on April 26 for a greens and bunker restoration project that will have Myrtle Beach's first golf course in prime condition well ahead of the area's peak fall season.

Founders Group International, Pine Lakes' parent company, has partnered with Craig Schreiner, ASGCA, ASLA, who spearheaded the course's 2008-09 renovation, to lead the project. Pine Lakes is scheduled to reopen in early July.

At the heart of the effort will be the installation of new Sunday bermudagrass greens, which will be a significant upgrade over the paspalum grass it is replacing. Sunday bermuda has proven to be a particularly hearty grass in the Myrtle Beach environment and will provide a much faster, smoother year-round putting surface.

The greens will also be restored to their original size, expanding the total putting surface area at Pine Lakes from 103,000 square feet to 124,000 square feet, an increase of 20 percent. The additional size will create more pinnable areas on numerous greens, providing even more room for creativity on an already enjoyable design.

Schreiner is also restoring every bunker on the course with an eye on improving drainage, playability and returning Pine Lakes to the more natural look architect Robert White intended. Pine Lakes is installing a sophisticated new drainage system that will ensure the course's 26 bunkers don't hold water.

"Pine Lakes holds a special place in the Myrtle Beach market, and this project, highlighted by the new Sunday bermudagrass greens and the bunker restoration, will ensure the Granddaddy continues to deliver the type of experience golfers have enjoyed for more than 90 years," said Founders Group International President Steve Mays. "This is the first step as we begin looking forward to the 100-year anniversary of Pine Lakes' opening and the birth of Myrtle Beach as a golf destination."

"I call this a restoration because they asked me to do the bunkering as well [as the greens], and that's where we are restoring an important part of the architecture - updating it, modernizing it and adding new sand drainage, which was always lacking here," Schreiner said. "In terms of the bunkers, the sand will be a little less obvious and [the faces won't be as] highly flashed as grass faces will be more prevalent."

Pine Lakes was originally designed by White, a native of St. Andrews, Scotland and the first president of the PGA of America, and the course, along with its famed clubhouse, is part of the National Registry of Historic Places.

Built along natural dunes less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, Pine Lakes features natural elevation change and a classic design that has long made it one of the Myrtle Beach area's most popular courses.

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Revised: 05/21/2021 - Article Viewed 2,818 Times - View Course Profile

About: Brian Weis

Brian Weis is the mastermind behind GolfTrips.com, a vast network of golf travel and directory sites covering everything from the rolling fairways of Wisconsin to the sunbaked desert layouts of Arizona. If there’s a golf destination worth visiting, chances are, Brian has written about it, played it, or at the very least, found a way to justify a "business trip" there.

As a card-carrying member of the Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA), International Network of Golf (ING), Golf Travel Writers of America (GTWA), International Golf Travel Writers Association (IGTWA), and The Society of Hickory Golfers (SoHG), Brian has the credentials to prove that talking about golf is his full-time job. In 2016, his peers even handed him The Shaheen Cup, a prestigious award in golf travel writing—essentially the Masters green jacket for guys who don’t hit the range but still know where the best 19th holes are.

Brian’s love for golf goes way back. As a kid, he competed in junior and high school golf, only to realize that his dreams of a college golf scholarship had about the same odds as a 30-handicap making a hole-in-one. Instead, he took the more practical route—working on the West Bend Country Club grounds crew to fund his University of Wisconsin education. Little did he know that mowing greens and fixing divots would one day lead to a career writing about the best courses on the planet.

In 2004, Brian turned his golf passion into a business, launching GolfWisconsin.com. Three years later, he expanded his vision, and GolfTrips.com was born—a one-stop shop for golf travel junkies looking for their next tee time. Today, his empire spans all 50 states, and 20+ international destinations.

On the course, Brian is a weekend warrior who oscillates between a 5 and 9 handicap, depending on how much he's been traveling (or how generous he’s feeling with his scorecard). His signature move" A high, soft fade that his playing partners affectionately (or not-so-affectionately) call "The Weis Slice." But when he catches one clean, his 300+ yard drives remind everyone that while he may write about golf for a living, he can still send a ball into the next zip code with the best of them.

Whether he’s hunting down the best public courses, digging up hidden gems, or simply outdriving his buddies, Brian Weis is living proof that golf is more than a game—it’s a way of life.