Myrtle Beach Message Board

We had a group of 10 guys in MB last week…. 10? Yep! 2 guys dropped out… So we had to play 4-3-3.

We stayed in the Breakers Paradise Tower at 21st Ave North… we had 3 3BR units. These work out really well and I recommend them! As usual, Gloria, the golf director did an AWESOME job for us! We got the exact tee times we wanted and we had no snags!

We play a 6-day tourney better ball of partners. We blind draw A/B player teams. The partners do not always play together. We figure everything out back at the hotel. I’ve got a spreadsheet that figures it all out and calculates handicaps…. We also post the scores using the same sheets we use at our home club. Entry fee is $125. We pay daily and end of week prizes.

We have special MB handicaps that we establish over the years. We all seem to play about 10 strokes higher down there… Different greens… and maybe too many cocktails… Anyway… We have a starting HC then adjust every day… Say you ended up last year as a 13 and your team won the tourney. We penalize you for winning (3 strokes) so you start as a 10. If you shoot 20 over the first day, you next day HC is 15, then if you shoot 25 over the following day is 20, etc… etc… 2nd place is penalized 2 strokes and 3rd 1 stroke. It has worked well for many years!

Courses….
Note: No one has GPS on their carts. I think Barefoot still does but none of the courses that we played… Fortunately a few of us had our own….

10/10 - Pine Lakes – a Robert White course! The same architect as our home course and the first course in MB . Just renovated and very nice. We all enjoyed the course and were treated very well. It is a much better course now post-renovations!

10/11 - Rivers Edge – 50/50 on this. Very expensive surcharge. The layout is okay but the conditions were not up to par for the surcharge! Slow greens! Some tees were pretty bare… But they did treat us very nice.

10/12 - Leopards Chase – Everyone enjoyed this one! Greens were much faster than Rivers Edge. The only issue we had was they lost their 1st green so we had to play a temp green. Other that that the course was in excellent condition! The layout is very good and a lot of fun to play. The service was also very friendly….

10/13 – Thistle – Another favorite… They were a bit disorganized but when we got out we found the course to be pretty darn good… Greens rolled well also… We play the Stewart-Cameron 9’s… They have a 3rd 9 there… The layout was good and we’ll definitely come back!

10/14 – Farmstead – It rained a little on us but we got the round in…. How do they survive? Hardly anyone playing there! Maybe because of the weather. The course is a good “1st day course”. Wide and forgiving. Grip it and rip it for us… Greens were faster than they looked. Staff was friendly. We planned to double up with Meadowlands but didn’t due to the weather. Watch the par 6 18th!

10/15 - Kings North – Another of our favorite layouts… We arrived at the “golf factory” to the normal MBN chaos loading carts all over… lots of activity. We were greeted with… we’re running behind… then we found out it was the dreaded cart path only… So we bitched under our breath but agreed with their decision on the 1st fairway. No way could carts be on the fairways. I did not gamble on the 6th (Gambler Hole). It’s a par 5 with an island fairway which makes it easy to reach in 2. Or take the chicken long round about way and make it in 3…. I hit a great drive and a second shot to 87 yards… Yuck a tweener! And yes I did chunk it into the drink and took a 7! Anyway we definitely enjoyed the day. If you can stand the factory character you should play Kings North!

10/16 - True Blue – We planned to double up with Caledonia but weather again prevented that. We got pretty wet at TB. But it is a great course and it was the last day of our tourney so we hung in there. Greens were faster than they looked… The course was in great shape. We weren’t happy that they split our group into 4-4-2 and added a 2-some to us. After my initial bitching we met the 2 members (Rita and Jim) that they hooked me up with. We really enjoyed playing with them. They live on the 17th hole. We knicknamed Rita “Giggles”. They were a bit older than me but they played very quickly! Everyone needs to play TB and Caledonia!

10/17 – Prestwick – Just a fun day on getaway day! I finally got something going! I was even after 5 and then the deadly words came from our opponent! After a great drive on 15 (started on 10) my friend had to drive over and say… hey you’re even… hit a good one… Yep… DAMN YOU GEORGE! Up pops a double! Then a par and on 17 a nasty Dye par 5 pops a triple… Great drive… pushed second shot… bump out and chunk in the water… Unreal! Then I parred 18 which is a tough par 4… BTW: I also parred the par 5 pth… also a challenging hole… If you like Dye you’ll love Prestwick… If you don’t like Dye… play elsewhere….

Food?
• Bummz – Always a good choice
• Soho – Usually pretty good… Sushi… Seafood… Steaks… We ate there a few times. One BAD piece of tuna though… My friend started eating it and he loved it then he ran into some major grizzle… They made good and took it off the bill.
• Flamingo Grille – Everyone gave this a thumbs up!
• Pat and Mikes Irish pub… we had a good lunch there…
• Some guys ate at Parmador’s or something like that on Grissom near the airport..
• Cheese Burger in Paradise – always a good lunch in somewhat hooky atmosphere
• Can’t remember where else we ate.

That’s it for now…

Best in golf!

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- Jeff

Great golf courses, great report.

Jeff, thanks so much for this trip report. You kept it interesting and informative, and I appreciate the fact that you had to invest some of your personal time and memory cells to get it done!

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