Pete Dye’s windswept masterpiece has more seaside holes than any course in North America, and it announced itself to the world with the 1991 Ryder Cup — the “War by the Shore.” Since then it has crowned a record-setting Rory McIlroy at the 2012 PGA Championship and a 50-year-old Phil Mickelson, the oldest major champion in history, at the 2021 PGA. It’s brutally exposed, endlessly photogenic, and — best of all — you can actually play it.
Opened in 2017 on a former Lowcountry plantation, Congaree is Tom Fazio at his most rugged — sprawling sandy waste areas, firm turf, and centuries-old live oaks draped in Spanish moss. There are no traditional members here: founders Dan Friedkin and Bob McNair built the club around “ambassadors” who fund the Congaree Foundation and its college-prep golf program for underserved kids. The PGA Tour noticed too — Congaree hosted the 2021 Palmetto Championship and the CJ Cup in 2022.
Seth Raynor finished Yeamans Hall in 1925, and for half a century it drifted into gentle neglect — until the superintendent found Raynor’s original plans in the clubhouse attic. Tom Doak and Jim Urbina used them to bring the course back, restoring the massive geometric greens and template holes (Biarritz, Redan, Road) that make Raynor devotees weak in the knees; Urbina has remained architect of record since 2009. Quiet, understated, and pure — this is the connoisseur’s pick of the Lowcountry.
Founded in 1992 and laid out by Bruce Devlin with Derrell Witt, Secession routes fourteen of its holes along the tidal marshes outside Beaufort, where the wind decides how hard the course plays. It’s walking-only, caddies are part of the fabric, and the clubhouse culture — matches, member-guests, drinks on the porch — feels closer to Scotland than to a modern gated club. Ask anyone who’s teed it up in a Secession member-guest: they’re still talking about it.
The club dates to 1900, but the course that matters is the one Seth Raynor built on the Ashley River in 1925 — a template-hole showcase crowned by the famous 11th, a reverse Redan so severe it has been called the hardest par 3 in the state. The golf world got a long look in 2019, when the club hosted the U.S. Women’s Open. Charleston charm out front, Raynor menace on the card.