"Best Courses You Can Play in South Carolina" Announced for 2025
Panel Poll Produces Pair of Newcomers
By: Trent Bouts, Palmetto Golfer | Spring 2025 Edition
The most consistent feature of the Best You Can Play list from the South Carolina Golf Course Rankings Panel is, well, that it is most consistent. Every two years, a poll of more than 120 panel members produces a lineup with largely the same names as last time.
One of the major reasons for that, despite the game's massive growth in participation, is that next to no one is building public golf courses these days (see story page 26). So, it's perfectly understandable that a biennial poll to determine the best 30 publicly accessible courses will look a lot like its predecessor.
This year however, delivers some notable exceptions. Elbowing their way onto the list for the first time in the panel's 21-year history are two coastal courses usually over-shadowed by their higher-profile, higher-budget brethren.
The Legends at Parris Island and The Plantation Course at Edisto will never host a PGA Championship like the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Resort or secure and annual PGA Tour stop like Harbour Town Golf Links at Sea Pines Resort. But pound for pound – or maybe dollars per round – golf panel members say they are well worth a visit.
Just make sure you fire up your GPS. Because neither is the kind of place you stumble upon, unless you're lost maybe. They are simply not on the way to anywhere.
The Legends at Parris Island sits on a barrier island between Beaufort and Hilton Head. In fact, the location is deliberately out of the way, so that the island's other notable presence, a U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot, can do its thing – such as making loud bangs – without upsetting any neighbors, or being too easily spied upon.
The Marines have been on Parris Island since 1915, with the golf course – designed by the Scot Fred Findlay and Greenville's George Cobb – coming along in 1947. Historically, its fortunes are said to wax and wane relative to the commanding officer's interest in golf. FYI, the current Brigadier General arrived only last summer.
But things were so good at The Legends previously that it earned the South Carolina Golf Association's Club of the Year Award in 2023. In doing so, it became not only the first military course to win the honor, but also the first publicly accessible course to do so.
That is not to say it's accessible in the way of most other daily fee facilities. First, you have to get onto the base and that means you need a Real ID, which you will present to guards who will then politely search your vehicle. So, allow some extra time. And be sure to book your tee time in advance. The course, like all of them on the Best You Can Play list, is about as busy as it can be these days.
If anything, The Plantation Course at Edisto is even further off the beaten path. While it sits only about 15 miles south of the Ocean Course at Kiawah as the crow flies, it would take you an hour and a half to drive between the two. If you're headed there from Columbia, it's nearly 80 miles off I-95. For the grand opening in 1973, they dropped in Sam Snead and Bob Goalby by helicopter!
The original owner, David Lybrand, drafted a squad of locals to begin work on the course in 1971 before eventually bringing in designer Tom Jackson, from Greenville, to steer the final phase.
So what happened to bring these two old newcomers to the list? It's not like either has undergone a major transformation recently. And there has been no organized visit by the golf panel. One factor, rankings panel president, Mo York, says is that there was more "room" on the list this time, given that several courses that allowed public play two years ago are now fully private.
There's also a question of time. As the years roll by, more and more panelists have made the trek to experience what each has to offer. That accumulation of advocates just happened to reach a critical mass for both at the same time.
"Another major consideration is that, truthfully, there is very little margin separating courses once you get below, say, the top 20," York says. "Our poll identified 30 courses, but you could name another 20 that, but for a few votes either way, could easily have made the list. That's one of the great blessings to being a golfer in South Carolina. There's so much great golf to choose from."
In that spirit, in addition to the Best You Can Play courses, the panel provided a list of 20 courses that drew enough votes to warrant honorable mentions. Those lists appear divided by geographic region.
