Pillar golf companies passing torch into new era in Myrtle Beach

The sale of 12 courses and other assets by National Golf Management to the Chinese investor company Founders Group International this week signifies not only the passing of the torch in the Grand Strand golf market, but also a near extinguishing of the torch carried by two of the longstanding pillar companies in the industry.

The sale greatly diminishes the roles of Burroughs & Chapin Co. and Myrtle Beach National Co., which were on the ground floor of the solidarity that resulted in marketing cooperative Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and the proliferation of the golf market into one of the world's most popular golf destinations.

“We should tip our hat to those businessmen and women who built Myrtle Beach golf to what it was, which was a unique environment of business cooperation among competitors,” said Matthew Brittain, a Myrtle Beach National board member whose father, Clay, was a founder of both MBN and Golf Holiday.

National Golf Management was created through a merger of the two companies in March 2012. Though an eight-member board consisting of executives from the two companies still oversees a rebranded course management company called Strand Golf Management, it manages just three Strand courses with short-term contracts.

B&C’s course ownership dates to the opening of the Myrtlewood Pines Course in 1966, when it was one of the first seven courses built on the Grand Strand. Then Myrtle Beach Farms president Edward Burroughs had the course built on the site of a cow pasture.

Myrtle Beach Farms merged with the Burroughs & Collins Co. in 1990 to form B&C.

B&C’s golf contributions to the area include the building of the two courses at Myrtlewood and the Grande Dunes Resort and Members Club courses, as well as a multi-million-dollar restoration of Pine Lakes Country Club that kept both the golf course and its grand clubhouse on the National Register of Historic Places.

It grew to own five courses and operate a total of 10 at the time of the merger.

Myrtle Beach National has had an even larger influence in the Myrtle Beach golf market since its formation 44 years ago. It owned 10 and operated a total of 14 courses before the merger.

“Myrtle Beach National was always right at the front,” said Cecil Brandon, who arrived in Myrtle Beach in 1959, has been an MBN stockholder since its founding and spent more than 30 years as the volunteer executive director of Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday until 1999. “It was always involved and very influential in getting things to work together.”

The beginning

The golf business began to take shape in the 1960s, as J. Bryan Floyd, Skeets Bellamy, General James Hackler, Buster Bryan, Ed Martin, Charlie Byers, Ed Jerdon and others began building golf courses to go with The Dunes Golf and Beach Club, Surf Golf and Beach Club and Pine Lakes.

Bryan helped start a marketing cooperative called Golf-O-Tel – the predecessor to Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday – to create golf packages that included hotel rooms and tee times and to promote and market them.

According to Brandon, Bryan got eight hotels to put up $5,000 apiece. Brandon said the golf company Bryan was a partner in, Pine Tree Corp, which built Robbers Roost, Possum Trot and other businesses, matched the funds.

A competing group started by hoteliers Herb Forrester and Joe Ivey called Golf Holiday formed and the two coop groups eventually merged into Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday in 1967.

As the golf business grew there weren’t enough tee times to fulfill the demand, so a group of hotel and campground owners, including Forrester, Ivey and Clay Brittain, joined forces to create Myrtle Beach National Co.

“It was started because the guys couldn’t get any tee times,” said Brandon, who handled marketing and advertising for Golf-O-Tel, Golf Holiday and later Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday through his Brandon Advertising agency. “The starting times were kind of assigned on the people who had given them business, so if you were a new player on the block you couldn’t get any times.”

Myrtle Beach National Co. formed in 1971 when there 10 golf courses on the Grand Strand, and by the time Myrtle Beach National Golf Club opened in 1973 with the North Course, there were 17 layouts. The West and SouthCreek layouts followed on the property in 1974 and ’75.

Brandon enlisted the help of forester Doug Williams, with whom he regularly bird hunted, to find a good piece of land for Myrtle Beach National.

Clay Brittain, the Chesterfield Inn owner, was considered the best choice to run the company, but Brandon said it took repeated coaxing to convince him to become the president of Myrtle Beach National, a position he held for about 35 years until 2006.

Brittain, who with his family served his hotel guests breakfast daily, was considered patient and diplomatic and served as president of both Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and the Myrtle Beach Area Golf Course Owners Association.

Brittain was often the arbiter of discord and talk of defections and splinter groups from MB Golf Holiday. “He turned out to be the catalyst for keeping the golf business together,” Brandon said. “He was our go-to guy. … Clay had a knack for waiting for you to get thinking like he did, and usually he was always right, and he was very patient.”

Myrtle Beach National Co. introduced the beach’s opportunities to Arnold Palmer, who is credited for the design of the three courses at Myrtle Beach National with Francis Duane. He returned in the 1990s for a renovation and rebranding of the North course to the King’s North Course.

Palmer and Brandon played against each other in college – Palmer was at Wake Forest and Brandon at Davidson – and Brandon said they still talk regularly. The North Course was one of Palmer’s first few designs.

Growing the business

From the 1980s and into the 2000s, Myrtle Beach National added to its course holdings through purchases of Litchfield Country Club, Willbrook Plantation, River Club, Waterway Hills, Aberdeen Country Club and Long Bay Club, and took on management contracts.

Clay Brittain remained a bonding force in the market throughout the company’s growth.

”What made Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday grow was the hotels and the golf courses worked together,” Brandon said. “When I was running Golf Holiday I could call a meeting and get 85 percent of them there in an hour, and they were all owners and they could all make a decision right away. It was amazing how they worked together.”

Today’s MB National board of directors includes, according to Brandon, chairman Pete Pearce, who was the manager of the Swamp Fox for shareholder Wilson Springs and has served as MB National secretary and treasurer since the company’s founding; president Matthew Brittain; Brandon; original shareholders John Pharr and Vernon Brake; and Leigh Mense, the daughter of original shareholder Neil Ammons.

Brandon said Myrtle Beach National still owns the Breakers Myrtle Beach Resort and Litchfield Golf & Beach Resort, and owns or has an ownership interest in Bay View Resort, Ocean Reef Resort, the Beach Vacations condo rental company and five Starbucks located in hotels. The properties and Starbucks are managed by Brittain Resorts, presided over by Matthew Brittain.

“Myrtle Beach National has no interest in going back into the golf business,” Brandon said. “We’re out. We’re going to be primarily in the hotel business now. We plan on expanding the hotel business. I know the Myrtle Beach National Company has no intention of expanding in the golf business here.”

MB National remained relevant and a driving and guiding force for the Myrtle Beach market into the changing age of Internet bookings.

”The Myrtle Beach golf community was in that company’s DNA,” said MB Golf Holiday president Bill Golden, who has been with the coop since 1998. “Myrtle Beach National was a pioneer in golf packaging and golf tourism, and led the way in the technology age and Internet booking. They’ve been a leader not only in Myrtle Beach but in the nation in terms of marketing golf, marketing golf tourism and leading the way into the technology age. They were really thought leaders.”

With the hotels and businesses they still have in the market, both MB National and Brittain Resorts are hoping to assist Founders Group International now that the torch has been passed.

”We hope [the cooperation] continues and we look forward to working with [FGI owners] Nick Dou and Dan Liu in this new venture,” Matthew Brittain said. “We’re big in the golf package business so we want them to succeed. They’re bringing an infusion of new capital and possibly Chinese customers, and we’re excited about it.”

This story was originally published April 26, 2015 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Pillar golf companies passing torch into new era in Myrtle Beach."