On Grand Strand Golf: Local Golfweek Amateur Tour continues growth in 2016

Following a year of significant growth in 2015, the Golfweek Amateur Tour’s Myrtle Beach-Wilmington tour will continue growing this year with a beefed-up schedule through the summer that includes many of the Grand Strand’s best layouts.

Jason Dores, a 15-year Marine veteran who is in his final semester at the Golf Academy of the Carolinas in Myrtle Beach, is beginning his second year at the helm of the tour.

He was able to increase participation from about 50 to 79 players last year, and he already has 39 new players this year as he anticipates reaching a goal of 100 players in 2016. He believes he’ll retain more than 90 percent of last year’s players.

The schedule won’t hurt.

The tour tees off Jan. 23 with a two-player member-guest scramble at Arrowhead Country Club. Tournaments continue essentially twice a month through Labor Day weekend.

The 19-event schedule – including two regional events – includes the private Wachesaw Plantation, Tidewater Golf Club, World Tour Golf Links, Cape Fear National, The Thistle, Rivers Edge, the King’s North Course at Myrtle Beach National, Willbrook Plantation and Wild Wing Plantation. Majors will be held at Long Bay Club, Rivers Edge Golf Links, Glen Dornoch Golf Links and The Dunes Golf and Beach Club.

The first two-day event Feb. 27-28 is at True Blue Golf Club and Caledonia Golf & Fish Club and is joint-tour event with Golfweek’s Charleston Tour. The final event is a six-tour combo event with 240 players at Pine Lakes Country Club and the Grande Dunes Resort Course. The participating tours are Hilton Head, Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Downeast (N.C.), Pinehurst and Tidewater, Va., and the event will include a dinner reception and party for players and guests at Liberty Tap Room.

“The schedule is about as good as I can get now,” Dores said. “I’ve got courses you can’t just walk in and play. If you look at our schedule compared to any other tour schedule it has to be the best in the nation having that many top courses.”

The first regional is this upcoming weekend in Hilton Head Island at the Robert Trent Jones Course at Palmetto Dunes and Harbour Town Golf Links, home of the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage. The Southeast Regional on July 8-10 will be played at Kiawah Island with the final round on the Ocean Course, host of the 2012 PGA Championship. The regional majors are two-day events with a preceding skins game on Fridays.

Dores said he will be bringing both of those regional tournaments to Grand Strand courses in 2017.

A night Stableford/Skins event will be played in May on the Tupelo Bay executive course, with nine holes late afternoon and nine holes under lights.

Dores said he has partnered with the Prime Times membership program, which involves Founders Group International’s 22 courses on the Strand, as both entities are offering discounts to their members to join the other program. Eight women are among his 2016 members.

“I think it’s ahead of schedule, with the way I see it growing this year and the new members we’re attracting and the partnerships we’re doing this year with Prime Times, I’m seeing new members coming from that,” Dores said.

Dores played on his tour last season, but will not compete this year both to focus on tournament operations and because he may go through the PGA of America’s Apprentice program and lose amateur status. Dores is an assistant at the Grande Dunes Resort Course.

The cost to join the tour is $75 before Feb. 1 and $95 thereafter. Entry fees average about $90 for one-day events and $190 for two-day events, including prize money.

Interested players can visit http://www.amateurgolftour.net or contact Dores at myrtlebeach@amateurgolftour.net or 703-474-0920.

Dores intended to start a local Golfweek Amateur Senior Tour this year but the start has been put off until 2017. He estimates he would have had nearly 100 senior players this year based on preliminary response, and he expects to have 100 or so for next year’s launch and 140 by the end of the season.

McConnell adds course

Members of the Reserve Club in Pawleys Island and Members Club at Grande Dunes now have another course to play, as McConnell Golf has added the Donald Ross-designed Holston Hills Country Club in Knoxville, Tenn., to its stable of courses.

It gives the Raleigh-based company 12 layouts at 11 facilities and is its first outside the Carolinas. Members at McConnell courses have reciprocal playing privileges at the company’s other courses and the company recently added two new national memberships to its offerings.

Founded in 2003, McConnell Golf’s clubs in South Carolina includes The Reserve Club and Musgrove Mill in Clinton, and the company also manages the Grande Dunes Members Course and Ocean Club.

North Carolina clubs include Raleigh Country Club and TPC at Wakefield Plantation in Raleigh, Sedgefield Country Club’s Ross and Dye courses in Greensboro, Old North State Club in New London, Treyburn Country Club in Durham, Brook Valley Country Club in Greenville and The Country Club of Asheville.

The Brick hosting events

Brick Landing Plantation Golf Club in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., has hired wedding specialist Valerie Stinson to oversee and expand the course’s wedding and event business.

Brick Landing features a grand clubhouse overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, and course operators will try to take better advantage of it with outings.

Stinson has a background in floral design and horticulture study and was previously employed by Kickstand Events, for whom she worked on high end events throughout the Wilmington, N.C., area.

Swing class offered

DynaSwingFIT Golf School will be hosting a two-day instructional golf swing class for players of all ages on successive Fridays beginning this week from 2-3:30 p.m. each day.

The class will be held at the Dick M. Johnson Civic Center located at 829 North Pine Drive in Surfside Beach. The registration fee is $10 per day and includes a card offering a 45-percent discount to the driving range.

Register and pay at the clinic and bring a 7-iron. Clubs will also be provided. For more information contact Shelby Smith at 843-602-3118 or www.DynaSwingFit.com.

Cassique has new pro

Kiawah Island Club has hired a new head pro at its Cassique course to replace Michael Townsend, who died in a car accident at the age of 32 in early August just nine days after winning the Carolinas PGA Section Championship at the Grande Dunes Resort Course.

The win was Townsend’s biggest as a CPGA Section pro and qualified him for the PGA Professional National Championship later in the year.

New Zealand native Dylan Thew is the club’s new pro. For the past six years, he was the senior assistant pro at Deepdale Golf Club in Manhasset, N.Y., and in the winter months he served as the Director of Instruction at Birdie International Golf Academy in Guangzhou, China, and as a teaching assistant at the Jim McLean Golf School in La Quinta, Calif.

Thew received degrees studying golf and sports management in England from Cannington College and Buckinghamshire Chilterns University, where he played golf.

The private Kiawah Island Club solely for Kiawah Island property owners also hired Lee Stroever as the head pro at its River Course, replacing Charles Frost. Stroever was named last year’s South Florida Section Assistant of the Year at McArthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla., and was the 2013 South Florida PGA Southeast Chapter Junior Golf Leader.

This story was originally published January 11, 2016 at 8:26 PM with the headline "On Grand Strand Golf: Local Golfweek Amateur Tour continues growth in 2016."