Heather Glen Golf Links - Myrtle Beach, SC

Heather Glen couldn't sound more Scottish, with its soft, lyrical syllables conjuring images of dewy mist rolling off the Irish Sea. Add to that the complete name, Heather Glen Golf Links, and you think there's a Scottish theme here? Of course there is, though it's hardly the only golf course in Myrtle Beach to look to the home of golf for inspiration. Nor is it hardly a links course. It's a course that has Scottish themes laid out on a tree-lined, parkland layout deep in the South Carolina backwoods.

There is another Scottish theme, if you'll pardon the stereotype: It's cheap. At least the green fees are cheap for what you get.

"We paid 50 bucks with a coupon," said Ryan Graves, playing with his father-in-law Joe Hailey on an overcast fall day. "To be honest, if they charged $72, or $73, I'd still pay to play it. For 50 bucks, no joke, it's outstanding."

Outstanding is just one adjective applied to Heather Glen when it first opened. Golf Digest named it the No. 1 new public golf course when it opened in 1987. A few years later, it made that magazine's top 50 golf courses in America list.

But, years passed and the Grand Strand saw other, ritzier, more expensive courses open with great fanfare. It isn't as if Heather Glen was forgotten, but it was as if the course was sort of put on the back burner, while all the attention focused on newer, bigger courses with big-name architects and big-time budgets.

Willard Byrd and Clyde Johnson are the designers of Heather Glen's 27-hole layout, and their design has stood the relatively short test of time thus far.