What’s special about Pawleys Island golf course ranked among best in country
It’s one of the Myrtle Beach area’s most respected golf courses. A rare design by a famed, late architect, the layout and ambiance of the south Grand Strand course helped build its reputation amongst players.
Now, the course is receiving national recognition. USA Today’s 10 Best named Caledonia Golf & Fish Club the fourth best public golf course in the United States in its April 2025 ranking. USA Today’s 10 Best uses an expert panel to nominate courses, and readers vote for their favorite.
Caledonia was the only South Carolina golf course that appeared on the list. PGA Director Of Golf Operations at True Blue Golf Club and Caledonia Golf & Fish Club Bart Romano, said it was an honor that the course featured on the list and that finishing in the top 10 of a public opinion poll was “super humbling.”
In an October 2024 interview with The Sun News, Romano said the workers at Caledonia emphasize attending to the fine details of the course compared to the more expansive work needed on True Blue’s larger fairways and bunkers.
“We call those first-world problems, as far as the details, the flowers, the azaleas, the oak trees, the moss conditions of the golf course,” Romano said while discussing Caledonia.
Despite being a young course by Myrtle Beach’s standards, Caledonia’s developed a strong reputation since opening in 1994. Sun News readers voted it their favorite course in 2024, and Barstool Sports featured Caledonia on their golf-focused Fore Play Golf YouTube channel.
It’s even developed well-known traditions, as visitors cheer from the clubhouse’s back porch patio chairs as golfers wrap their round on the par four 18th hole.
How did this famed golf course designer make this Pawleys Island golf course one of the area’s most unique?
Part of that is due to the late designer who crafted the property into what it is today.
Mike Strantz designed less than 10 courses during his career but left a lasting legacy before he died in 2008. Indeed, Strantz’s first design was Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, and he later created True Blue.
Remembering Strantz’s work oscillates from respect for the layouts he created and the boundaries he pushed to comparing studying his work to heaping praise upon him by utilizing an expressive lexicon and grandiose metaphor.
Tim Cate is a North Carolina-based golf course designer who designed respected layouts like Thistle Golf Club, worked on the restoration of Sea Trail Golf Resort & Convention Center and has 35 years of experience in the industry.
In a June 2024 interview, Cate praised Strantz for his artistry in designing courses, adding that many creators today mirror Strantz’s innovations and ingenuity when working on his green grass canvasses.
Cate added that Strantz took an improvisational approach to his work and channeled his time at Miami University as a studio art student.
“Nobody got any plans. He would go out there and actually draw a picture of the hole, rip the sheet out of his sketchbook and give it to the shaper,” Cate said. “Look at those sketches. They’re absolutely realistic.”
Golf Digest called Strantz an “artist” and compared studying his “boundary-pushing career” to more prodigious golf-course designers like Pete Dye or Tom Fazio.
This contrast , Golf Digest noted, compared to being a historian of more “manageable” subjects like the near brush with nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis or Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings versus vast topics like World War II or the Bible.
The publication’s review of Caledonia provided even more reverence for one of America’s 10 best public golf courses.
“The design is ordered and composed, twisting low through the heavy tree canopy while setting up classic hole strategies into angled greens,” Golf Digest wrote in 2022 describing Caledonia. “There are touches of Pete Dye and just enough quirk to suggest something more intense and experimental brewing under the surface.”
Romano opted not to utilize such grand statements when praising Strantz’s work, yet he still called the late creator a gifted artist who designed courses that looked “diabolical” upon first appearance.
Whether that involved creating tee shots where players could see the approach, akin to courses built in Scotland and Ireland or high bunkers that caused problems, Romano said places like Caledonia have a unique look that other courses don’t have.
“His designs are very unique, and Caledonia actually is probably the most different because it was his first,” Romano added. “He just made super fun golf courses ... I think that is his lasting legacy on golf.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
