Santee Golf Trip

By searching the forum I see that their is a lack of threads about Santee, South Carolina golf courses. Possibly it's not that big of a golfing destination, but the prices are relatively low and the courses are pretty nice. I am going on a 3 day golf trip there with my younger brother and father. Day 1 we are going to drive down from NC and play 27 holes at Santee Cooper. We stay the night, and on day 2 we are going to play Lake Marion twice. We stay another night, and were planned to play Santee National, but the greens are being aerated the day before and that day, so I believe we are being relocated to another nearby course. I will follow-up with my review on Thursday. And btw, we are staying on location, and they have a driving range with stadium lights so we can hit the range at night!!

Santee, South Carolina is a must-play to anybody that passes through this town on I-95. It's 2 miles off the highway and the three courses we played were terrific. The villas were spacious, clean, and very nice. All in all, we ended up playing 5.5 rounds of golf in 3 days. The local food was great and the atmosphere was very laid back and friendly.

Santee Cooper- The first course we played was Santee Cooper, and was my 2nd favorite. On the contrary, my dad and brother liked this course best. The course was in pristine condition and we teed off at 10:30 and had nobody in front or behind us. Granted it was about 90 degrees, which actually felt refreshing compared to last week's 105. The fairways were soft with no bare spots. The layout was well designed and Santee Cooper was a fun track. There was slightly more dogleg lefts than dogleg rights. The greens were extremely receptive and gave a nice, fast true roll. On my full wedge shots, I would get about 4 inches of roll at the most, my 56 degree pitch shots were getting about 2 to 3 feet. I struggled with my tee shots all day, and managed to get up and down 6 times. The first 18 I shot a 94 (49-45) with only 1 par and 1 birdie. It was not a great round... My second I shot a 91 (46-45), which my goal is usually break bogey golf at a new course, which I wasn't too disappointed with. From the whites it was 6198 and 6589 from the tips.

Lake Marion- I am going to defer judgement on this course due to the fact the greens had been recently top dressed. While I played very well, with an 89 (44-45) with a triple on 18 , and then an 87 (43-44) I feel that I could have scored better than I would have. The fairways and tee boxes were in great shape though. The person who referred us to Santee said that Lake Marion is the best of the three, so I am interested to see how the greens will be when in better condition. The layout was favorable to my lefty draw with numerous dogleg lefts that I could cut the corner on and although the course was only 6122 from the whites and 6474 from the tips, the distance it played at was much more due to elevated greens, and fairways that climbed upwards from 150 in. After 36 holes, we were interrupted by an 30 minute thunderstorm and then we went back out for another 9 holes.

Santee National- My personal favorite was Santee National. The front nine was being aerated, so we played the back nine twice. The owner and pro shop worker had already told us that we were lucky because the back nine was more popular anyways. Due to large amounts of rain the night before couple with an early morning tee time, the first 3 holes were very wet. I started off triple double which did not put mean in a great mood, but I went 5 over the rest of the 9 resulting in a 46. The second time on the back nine I shot a 45 with a triple on the last hole .  The fairways were well groomed, and what I liked best was that the fairways were sort of funneled, with large mounds on the side. I don't really know why, but I like this design feature on courses for possibly just the boosted confidence off the tee. The bunkers were all well placed to punish a bad approach shot, and the second cut of rough near the greens were a real hassle to get out of. The greens were like Santee Cooper's but with slightly more undulation. The tee boxes were in terrific shape and the course is 6182 from the whites and 6899 from the tips.

These courses were great, and I am looking forward to perhaps an early spring trip to Santee.

Heard of Santee but never been there. Thanks for posting this. Now I know a new place to visit.