On the (former) Tour Championship Trail:
The Dunes Club defined by time, memories

By Shane Sharp,
Contributing Writer

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (Dec. 22, 2003) -- Walking through the narrow hallways of this understated clubhouse, one gets the feeling this storied club by the sea appreciated its six-year relationship with the Senior Tour Championship. The pictures and plaques commemorating the tournament's winners from 1994 through 1999 hang elegantly alongside the golf course's numerous awards and national rankings.

• Course remodels dominate scene, still there's plenty to crow about in Grand Strand • Myrtle Beach golf course reviews • Rees Jones Sounds Off

Raymond Floyd (1994), Jim Colbert (1995), Jay Siegel (1996), Gil Morgan (1997), Hale Irwin (1998), and Gary McCord (1999) were fine champions, no doubt -- a veritable who's who of the Senior Tour during the mid and late 90s. But a facility like the Dunes Golf and Beach Club doesn't define itself by tournaments; its legacy is created through the passing of time and the creation of memories.

Rees Jones remembers playing along the shores of the Atlantic while his father, Robert Trent Jones Sr. diligently designed every tee box, fairway and green on the 270-acre property. Jones was only 7 years old when the Dunes Club opened in 1948. But he recalls with amazing lucidity how important the job was to his father.

"I saw my dad's love for the course," Jones says. "What you have to understand is that he was doing the design for the Dunes after the (Great) Depression and World War II had him in moth balls for years. So here he gets a course right on the ocean with all those oaks and great undulations. The Dunes was one of his four great opportunities he had post WWII."

And perhaps his favorite, adds Jones, who recently completed a restoration of all 21 greens (three auxiliary). Around the same time Jones Sr. was designing the Dunes, he was also adding some brawn to Augusta National, designing a brand new course with Bobby Jones (Peachtree) and preparing Oakland Hills South Course for the 1951 U.S. Open.

It is easy to see why Jones Sr. gravitated to the Dunes Club project. Both Augusta and Oakland Hills were high-pressure remodeling projects, and Peachtree, while a wonderful, bold golf course, lacked the Dunes' ethereal, maritime setting. Moreover, Jones Sr. had carte blanche at the Dunes. George W. "Buster" Bryan and the cadre of businessmen who founded the club and commissioned the design of the course had little interest in micromanaging.

"It was his course to design and tweak," says Jones.

With a blank slate of Live Oaks, gently rolling coastal terrain and a setting a stone's throw from the Atlantic, Jones Sr. unleashed his version of a championship golf course. From tee box to landing area, the layout demanded accuracy and power. From fairway to green, he upped the ante to accuracy, power and courage.

Many design elements taken for granted in today's modern era of course design were employed for the first time by Jones Sr. at the Dunes: elevated green complexes fronted by deep, penal bunkers; water hazards that encroached into fairways; runway style tee boxes with as much as 100 yards difference between the members and championship tees; and elaborate fairway bunkers used as much for framing as they were for penalizing errant tee shots.

Many of these revolutionary design elements are on display at the famed 575-yard par-5 13th hole, known as "Waterloo." The V-shaped hole (dogleg is too gentle a modifier) is widely considered to be Jones Sr.'s first use of a "signature hole" and is considered one of the greatest three-shotters in North America.

Singleton Lake comes into play on both the tee and second shot and is thought to be one of the first true water hazards in U.S. course design. The hole's alternate routes ultimately would come to characterize Jones Sr. courses around the world and help define the concept of risk/reward.

"That hole has it all," Jones says. "The water hazard, the risk-reward second shot and the elevated green with four distinct quadrants."

Jones should know. He and his team rebuilt the green, expanding the putting surface back to its original size. They did similar surgery on the 16th and 18th greens, bringing a handful of new hole-cuts into play. In one of golf course architecture's sweet ironies, a course as big and bold as the Dunes was restored to its original grandeur with a green expansion here and an additional contour there.

"The greens have small targets within larger targets, which really evolved from the Old Course at St. Andrews," Jones says. "It is a very good championship course because the greens are elevated. If you miss them you have tough recoveries."

The Dunes Club reopened on Dec. 1 after being closed for six months while Jones worked his magic. While the course was under the knife, the club's owners opted to replace the tired old Penn Links bentgrass with A-1 -- a quicker, more heat tolerant strand of the true rolling, cool weather turf.

"The A-1 is faster so we had to expand some of the cupping areas," Jones says.

Expanded cupping areas didn't lead to more birdies for one golf writer who had the good fortune to sample the new-look layout shortly after it reopened. Scoring be damned, playing the storied course did lead to an appreciation for both Jones' talents and vision and superintendent Steve Hamilton's ability to produce and maintain near-perfect playing conditions.

After one trip around, it was easy to see how the course hosted a professional golf championship for six years, not to mention the Women's U.S. Open in 1962 and PGA Tour Qualifying School in 1973. And while the reading public may not realize it (or care), the Dunes Club has been the annual home of the Golf Writers Association of America's annual tournament for 50 years.

The GWAA event was born at the Dunes Club in 1954 at what locals would describe as a "good ole Lowcountry fish fry." That year, Jimmy D'Angelo -- the Godfather of Myrtle Beach golf -- asked golf writer Larry Robinson to invite golf writers to a testimonial dinner for none other than Robert Trent Jones, Sr.

Attendees the inaugural year included representatives from The New York Journal-American, The Detroit News, the Pittsburgh Press, and Herbert Warren Wind, who would later become the lead golf writer for Sports Illustrated. Many golf writers and historians point to the tournament as the beginning of the "golf boom" in the Myrtle Beach.

"If the Dunes Club hadn't been, Myrtle Beach may not have been what it is today," Jones says. "Jimmy helped bring the golf writers there and then it snowballed from there. It was a special place for my father and it is a special place for me."

The Skinny: Enough already about the Dunes Club only having one hole with a view to the Atlantic Ocean (the par-3 ninth). Yes, it happens to be the one hole pictured on all the club's sales brochures and yes, it has caused many a duffer to falsely assume he'll be playing Pebble Beach east. But if you owned the course, which hole would you feature? Thank you.

If you are looking for a course with real shot values and strategy that doesn't demand power yet still rewards it, there's no better golf course in the Grand Strand. And Rees Jones' brilliant restoration of his father's greens has only improved upon an already transcendental golfing experience. Superintendent Steve Hamilton, whose reputation lies somewhere between gold and platinum, has the course in the best shape in years.

Stay and play

In the fashion of many Scottish, English and Irish golf clubs, the Dunes Club is a members facility with limited outside play. A select number of tee times are doled out by a handful of local golf packagers and the club itself. If you're looking to package the Dunes Club with lodging and other area courses, call 866-409-2177 or 866-409-2177. Or click here.

Dining out

CentraArchy is one of the Grand Strand's largest purveyors of mid- to high-end eateries, and one its most popular, to boot. Carolina Roadhouse and New York Prime are two of the company's better offerings in proximity to the Dunes Club. The former is a golf caps and logo shirts style atmosphere with a hearty menu chock-full of steak, chicken and seafood. The later is a white table cloth, a la carte steakhouse for serious eaters (and spenders) only. For directions and menus, log on to www.newyorkprime.com.

Any opinions expressed above are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the management. The information in this story was accurate at the time of publication. All contact information, directions and prices should be confirmed directly with the golf course or resort before making reservations and/or travel plans.