<img decoding="async" alt="Myrtle Beach’s Prestwick County Club No Longer A Secret Yet To Be Discovered" src="/media/images/Preswick_600x300.png" style="width: 600px;height: 300px" />
Story by Ian Guerin
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. | Unofficially, the third largest “city” along South Carolina’s Grand Strand falls at the end of South Carolina Highway 544 at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Ocean Lakes Family Campground is a behemoth. Some 20,000 overnight residents and guests are there during most peak times of the year &#8211; more than any city or town in Horry and Georgetown counties not named Myrtle Beach or Conway. Several bigger events throughout the calendar push the day-time figure closer to 35,000 people atop its 351-acre gated oceanfront property. It opened for the Fourth of July holiday back in 1971, and the impact of the largest campground in the Southeast has been undeniable. In many ways, it helped add to the allure of the Myrtle Beach area during its most noticeable tourist boons.
Some 50 years after it originally opened its gates, Ocean Lakes is a spectacular attention-grabbing locale that commands the notice of anyone who gets within a mile of its gates. The Jackson Companies, the ownership group of the campground, couldn’t have taken much of a different approach with another property just a few blocks up the road. <a href="https://www.mbn.com/courses/prestwick-country-club">Prestwick Country Club</a> debuted in 1989. It had the famed Dye design name attached to it, some membership dues boosting the initial coffers, some walk-in traffic from Ocean Lakes and a belief that it was a strong enough product to one day go fully private. That believe kept it a relative loner in the industry for years. And yet, times changed, and Prestwick changed with them. Market forces and waning memberships forced an adapted business model. And partly because of it, the country club is now out of the shadows. The ones cast by its huge sister company just up the street. And ones from within the Myrtle Beach golf industry that oft-prevented it from becoming a bigger part of the area scene.Thirty years after Prestwick opened for business, it is here. And it is now.
HONORED BY ITS BRETHREN
Spearheaded by Myrtle Beach Golf Trips, a recent project aimed to discover which courses area golf professionals deemed to be the top 20 of the 90 along South Carolina’s Grand Strand golfing mecca. Prestwick chimed in at No. 5. It was one of only three individually owned and/or operated among the top 10, and it’s hard to imagine that would have happened under the old business philosophy. “The restructuring was deliberated at length by <a href="https://www.mbn.com/courses/prestwick-country-club">Prestwick’s</a> owners and board of directors,” longtime Head Golf Professional Jay Smith said. “After 26 years, the membership model was not a successful model for Prestwick &#8211; like other country clubs it struggled with the membership component. Some country clubs around the nation simply closed their doors, but that was not considered an option for Prestwick. Leadership was determined to find a way to keep Prestwick open.” Beginning Jan. 1, 2016, <a href="https://www.mbn.com/courses/prestwick-country-club">Prestwick Country Club</a> abandoned its semi-private tag, admitting that its slowed membership growth wasn’t going to pay the bills for too much longer. It went to the standard daily fee model. <img decoding="async" alt="Myrtle Beach’s Prestwick County Club No Longer A Secret Yet To Be Discovered" src="/media/images/PRES5.jpg" style="width: 300px;height: 150px;float: right" />
It affected perception. Slowly but surely, Prestwick was accepted more and more by the rest of the Myrtle Beach golf clique, those inside the industry who were previously playing by a different set of rules. Eventually, the course that was once deemed by Golf Digest as one of the game’s best-kept secrets was now being recognized for what it truly was. A fantastic design that warranted more respect as an everyday option. What more and more players are discovering is that Pete and P.B. Dye certainly didn’t create a gimme golf course. At a shade over 6,300 yards from the white tees (7,086 from the tips, 5,210 from the ladies’), the family reputation takes hold, as off-set tee boxes shoot toward relatively wider landing zones and then well-protected greens. There’s water and railroad ties and some of the more creative bunkering around.
“[You have to] bring your imagination and your skill when you tee it up,” Smith said. “After the golfer experiences their first round at Prestwick and has gained a little knowledge of the course, they want to come back and take another shot at it. They want to see if they learned anything and if their game can take on the challenge.” <a href="https://www.mbn.com/courses/prestwick-country-club">Prestwick</a> has found several successful ways to take the edge off some of that. It begins with six sets of tees, and it has continued with a massive irrigation system upgrade over the last two years. Both allow players to better handle the course, but it also allows for the course to better handle the traffic. That’s a good thing, because rounds are up &#8211; alongside the expectations great golf for years to come to come.
BUILDING OFF ITS STRENGTHS
It’s naive to say that the switch to a daily fee schedule is the only reason Prestwick is being noticed. Nor would it be accurate to claim its recognition is completely new. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. Earlier this year, the South Carolina Golf Course Rating Panel included Prestwick as one of its top 32 Best You Can Play designs in the state, something that it also did for the first time in 2017 (the previous rankings of that category). Some of that can be attributed to some traction on new promotions and getting the word out that Prestwick is no longer holding on to the semi-private label. “We co-op with many of the package providers to try and gain more rounds of golf, as well as trying to promote ourselves to more locals now that we are a public facility,” Smith said. “We also market to the guests of [Ocean Lakes]. We are heavily involved in the community with tournaments and organizations.”<img decoding="async" alt="Myrtle Beach’s Prestwick County Club No Longer A Secret Yet To Be Discovered" src="/media/images/PRES6.jpg" style="width: 300px;height: 150px;float: right" />
Indeed, one of <a href="https://www.mbn.com/courses/prestwick-country-club">Prestwick’s</a> biggest attributes &#8211; aside from the actual golf &#8211; is where it is located. Highway 544 is one of the two primary thoroughfares steering folks toward the beach, so it’s relatively easy to get to from inland. It’s also located smack-dab between U.S. 17 and King’s Highways, the two north-south roads most used east of the Intracoastal Waterway. It’s also a second-closest course to Myrtle Beach International Airport, lending some fly-in/fly-out traffic to the tee sheets. Of course, none of that would matter if it wasn’t boasting a near-flawless playing option. Prestwick won’t ever have the same number of bodies crossing its gates as its sister company up the road. Slowly but surely, though, everyone is appreciating it more and more.
Ian Guerin is a DJ and freelance writer based in Myrtle Beach. You can follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/iguerin?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@iguerin </a>and Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/IanGuerinWriter/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">facebook.com/IanGuerinWriter/</a>

Myrtle Beach’s Prestwick Country Club No Longer A Secret Yet To Be Discovered

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