Review - Natural beauty surrounds Tidewater golf test

[WUTiger]

It’s been called the Pebble Beach of the East, but Tidewater Golf Club offers more than just sandy views. It also offers marshland holes, plus several internal parkland routings through hardwoods. No. 3 green and No. 4 fairway, shown above, are representative of the many excellent holes.

Tidewater has drawn repeated accolades since it opened in 1990. It was recently ranked 39^th among Golf Digest’s Top 100 Courses That You Can Play.  And it has drawn national attention. In 2014, a Philadelphia foursome on its 45^th annual golf trip played their 10,000^th hole at Tidewater.

Archie Lemon, the general manager, gave me the background and the flavor of the course. The upscale daily fee course was developed and owned by Bill Cassels Jr., chairman and CEO of Southeastern Freight Lines headquartered in Lexington, SC. Tidewater, located in the North Myrtle Beach zone, is the only course he owns.

Cassels wanted the golf course to get preference in the land tract, which borders wetlands with conservation easements along the Intercoastal Waterway.

“He took the best property and put in the golf holes, and then developed what was left as real estate,” said Lemon.

The course architect was Ken Tomlinson, a tax attorney by trade who has a long-standing involvement with the U.S. Golf Association.

I told Lemon the Tidewater appears to have a steeper learning curve than most courses. He agreed with me. Players need to learn just how far they need to carry tee shots, and whether a green actually slopes to the left or right.

“One reason we have GPSs in the carts is to help the players,” Lemon said.

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“The third green is actually three greens in one – you need to know which tier to hit to..."

One particularly challenging hole to decipher is Par 3 No. 3. The shallow, well-bunkered green sets below the tee box, with a falloff into wetland left of and behind the green.

“The third green is actually three greens in one – you need to know which tier to hit to. Also, you have to learn the breaks,” said Lemon.

Another challenging hole is No. 4, a 430- yard dogleg left which skirts beach area the length of the hole 30 feet below. It sports a well bunkered triangular green at the end. A swale in front of the green makes lay-ups testy if you’re recovering from an errant drive. It reminded me of No. 8 at Pebble Beach, except it bends left rather than right.

I played this Tidewater in March. Locals said I had come at just the right time, as the temperature was  72⁰ F, sunny and very windy, especially on the back nine.

In early afternoon, the course went from breezy to windy. Drives with tailwinds easily flew inside the 100 yards, but anything into headwinds required hard work.

No. 17 bore this out. The uphill par 3 measures 177 yards, and we faced it with the flagstick bending back against us in the wind, even though we had our backs to the open water. Everyone tried a driver teed low, and just barely made it up the hill. I had to take a drop from reeds to the right of the green, but put a gap wedge 4 feet from the pin and salvaged a bogie.

This is a course where each hole is truly unique. And the scenery is breathtaking and varied. The turf was a bit fluffy on the fairways, especially on the back nine. This results from October flooding and persistent rainy days the rest of winter. Mowing was curtailed to prevent turf damage. Fortunately for me, this week was the first stretch of five sunny days in several weeks.

Nos. 1 and 2 and Nos. 10 and 11 are delightful warm up holes. After that, it’s battle stations! I bounced chip shots off the pin for tap-in pars on 1 and 11, but those were the only pars of the day.

Head pro Chris Cooper has worked at Tidewater for 18 years, since its opening.

He asked me what clubs I had used this day. As I recounted, I noted that the 7-Wood was the only one that stayed in the bag (which is unusual for me; it’s my go-to distance club).

“That’s what players find – they hit about every club in the bag.”

Once the course was completed, it has remained a work in progress to keep it high in quality. Typical SC turf plan: dormant rough with rye overseed on bermuda greens and fairways. The 2014 season saw play delayed to allow the new mini verde Bermuda strain to fully sprout on the greens.

Cooper said that the course crew had worked hard the last two seasons to make the course more user-friendly: challenging but not unfair.

“We enlarged the fairways, cleared out the rough – got rid of the underbrush – to make it easier to find your ball,” he said.

The crew “limbed out the trees,” removing lower limbs to about eye level so players could see what was in the rough. Also, it made recovery shots more available. The brush pruning meshes with a long tradition of activities to fine-tune the course.

“We’ve rebuilt No. 3 green at least three times, trying to get it right,” said Cooper.