COURSE REVIEW
Willbrook Plantation: Twenty minutes and a world away from Myrtle BeachBy Tim McDonald,
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (Jan. 31, 2006) - If you're planning a golf trip to the Myrtle Beach area and want to match scenery with a little history - leaving the harder courses for later - you couldn't do much better than the Willbrook Plantation. The plantation course is in Litchfield, a 20-minute, tree-lined drive south of the T-shirt-shop lined Myrtle Beach, and a world and culture away, even though it's right off Highway 17. You turn into a sedate, upper-middle class neighborhood, and way in the back, past a couple of other golf courses, sits the plantation. The traffic noise dies and you're apt to see fish hawks nesting in old woodpecker holes, great horned owls and even Carolina chickadees. The course is overflowing with small tidal ponds, lakes and meandering creeks, with wood bridges taking you from dry spot to dry spot. "You'd never know you're in Myrtle Beach, would you? said golf instructor Mike Dreyer, playing the course in late Octobter. No, you wouldn't. It's a beautiful setting, set in the marshy Waccamaw River basin, among giant, spreading oaks, pampass grass and the marsh, with a few weeping willows tossed in. The course does wind through the houses of the neighborhood, but many holes are isolated and have an almost wild feel. Thick, marsh vegetation comes into play often, both when you're playing and when you're just fooling around, enjoying Carolina in the fall. Remnants from the old plantation days are still around. A plaque points out where the old slave quarters used to be, near the fourth green, where 149 slaves lived, worked the old rice plantation and left the golf to later generations. The remains of the original plantation itself can be found under some dignified, shady old oaks close to the No. 5 fairway where excavations have brought up artifacts from the 18th century. The course itself isn't as challenging as some others along the Grand Strand, but the Dan Maples design is beautifully laid-out. With a respectable slope rating of 133 from the back tees, it will give you all you can handle from way back yonder. No. 15 is a 572-yard par 5 from the tips, the No. 1 handicap mainly because of the ditch that juts across the fairway. A decent drive will leave you 180-190 yards to carry; many players lay up here, and those who get brutish and miss are punished. It's an elevated green with big bunkers guarding both sides. Or the closing hole, another par 5, playing at 535 yards, with a fairway that bends to the right. It's deceptive, though; you have to stay left to avoid a line of oaks along the right side of the fairway, which narrows as you get closer to the hole, squeezed by the trees. It also drops off to water left.
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COURSE REVIEW
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James from Greensboro wrote on: Jun 17, 2007
We played this course this morning and I was very disappointed. We were going to play another course but that course More »
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