The Design Monsters of Myrtle Beach Golf

The biggest names in course design certainly delivered some haymakers along South Carolina’s Grand Strand golfing mecca. But for everything guys like Nicklaus and Fazio and Palmer and Dye did to influence the sport, the tenets of Myrtle Beach golf lay with four others.

Willard Byrd, Gene Hamm, Tom Jackson and Dan Maples can be credited with bringing the game into the mainstream, changing it into one that invited all to take up golf, and maybe just as importantly, to do so in the once-budding northeast corridor of the Palmetto State. In total, the foursome has their names attached to 20 current designs in the Myrtle Beach area (31 if you count the additional 11 just across the border in North Carolina). That’s roughly one-third of the total courses here. We have highlighted each of these designers and the Myrtle Beach-area golf courses they've designed.