Even though about 14 golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area have faded into nonexistence recently, one golf course owner decided to turn his golf course around and rebuild it with the hope that a fresh new look will increase rounds and improve business.
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Sea Gull Golf Club, built in 1966 by E.W. Jerdon and his partners on an old rice plantation, was one of the first golf courses on the south end of Myrtle Beach. The course, which has some natural elevation changes, sits in between the intercoastal waterway and the ocean. The Gene Hamm-designed course was considered to be cutting edge during the 1960s. At that time, it was a top-notch course with a good variety of holes, according to Ben Steen, the course’s golf course superintendent.
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Sea Gull Golf Club turned out to be profitable for Jerdon and his business partners. Eventually, Jerdon leased the golf course to various management companies throughout the years. In the 1980s, Jerdon went on to build Indian Wells Golf Club and Burning Ridge Golf Club – both Gene Hamm designs – in the Myrtle Beach area.
Time for a change
Three years ago, the last management company that ran Sea Gull, The Links Group, went bankrupt, according to Steen, and Jerdon stepped back in, and, with partner Rowland Thomas, created a management company called Classic Golf Group. Because they didn’t know much about operating golf courses, they hired Skip Corn from the TPC of Myrtle Beach to become the general manager of their courses.
“He was brought in to restructure and eliminate the bad debt and re-establish credit with vendors,” Steen says.
Jerdon and his partners spent $1.5 million renovating Indian Hills and completed a bunker renovation project at Burning Ridge. But the big project Corn envisioned was to rebuild Sea Gull. The tired course needed a makeover because it had never been renovated before. During the last few years, before the course closed for the reconstruction, it wasn’t making as much money as it had in the past, according to Steen.
In the fall of 2004, Corn hired Steen as the superintendent of Sea Gull – it was Steen’s first head superintendent job.
“I worked at True Blue Golf Club and Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, and Skip met me when I was there,” Steen says. “I was involved with renovations prior to Sea Gull. From the time I arrived to the time we decided to renovate, my staff and I turned Sea Gull into the best shape it had been in a long while.”
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Steen’s experience had been at courses with large maintenance budgets, and now he was working to turn Sea Gull around with a budget of less than $500,000.
Jerdon and his stockholders gave the OK to renovate Sea Gull in the spring of 2005, and the name was to change to Pawleys Island Golf Club because people are familiar with Pawleys Island and it’s a good name to market, Steen says.
In the summer of 2005, Corn and Steen talked about what kind of look they wanted for the renovated course. They both liked the work of golf course architect Mike Stantz, who recently passed away from cancer.
“We wanted a natural looking course that blended into its surroundings, which includes long-leaf pines,” Steen says. “We didn’t wanted a course with a hard-edge look. We wanted minimal rough and generous fairways.
“Skip and I went on a road trip to look at other courses in the area,” he adds. “We didn’t want to copy other courses, we wanted to gain ideas. We played the courses and did research. We compiled a binder full of pictures and ideas.”
After that research, Corn and Steen chose an architect. They were interested in having Mike Strantz design the course, but he was completing another project and was sick with cancer. Corn and Steen then looked at Tom Walker, Davis Love, John Fought, Paul Albanese and Chris Lutzke.
“After we contacted them all, we brought each one to the site an interviewed them,” Steen says. “Each one was excited to do the project. We wanted Tom Walker because Tom came back and said he wanted to come meet with us and show us some conceptual drawings along with his own ideas. That did it for us. That move made the decision. We spent three hours doing that. Walker went above and beyond and his willingness to do what we wanted.”
Walker says his presentation blended with Corn’s and Steen’s ideas.
“I committed 400 hours to the presentation,” he says. “I knew this was a contest. I presented my drawings and design philosophies, making the course look difficult but play fair. It’s a real opportunity for me.”
After a few months into the Sea Gull project, Corn left for another job.
To date a golf course builder hasn’t been confirmed yet, but Steen says a verbal agreement has been made with Peak Golf Construction.
The course, which competes with five courses in the Pawleys Island area, has been closed since November of 2005.
Approval process
Getting approval to start the reconstruction project appeared to be easy, but Corn and Steen quickly discovered it had its challenges. At one point, Corn and Steen were told by an environmental consultant permitting for the renovation wouldn’t be a problem. But after he checked out the site further he said they had to hire another land consultant.
After talking to the other land consultant, he said the possibility to start moving dirt was good, but then the permitting process became more entangled with red tape. Eventually, they were given the approval.
“Currently, we have a permit, and the dirt moving is tentatively scheduled to start in August, and the course is scheduled to be grassed in May 2007 and opened by September 2007,” says Steen, who is working on his sixth construction project. “Right now, the place looks like a prairie because I sprayed the course with Roundup, except the greens, to kill the
Bermudagrass while the course was open.”
The course is flat on one side, so it needs to be reshaped so it can drain better, according to Steen. Wanting to remove earth from the ponds on the course caused alarm during the permitting process because the Clean Water Act was changed in 2005.
“We are allowed to excavate the ponds, but not fill them, which is what we were hoping to do from the beginning,” Steen says. “We’re digging out all golf course ponds to get dirt for reshaping the course and to deepen the ponds because they were only a few feet deep.”
Walker says the corridors aren’t great but are better than average.
“What excited me about this project was the sand profile,” he says. “We dug holes and found nothing but sand, which give it a Pine Valley flair with expansive waste areas in the periphery. Rarely do I get to work on such as nice property.
“We decided to make the slopes dramatic,” he adds. “Back nine enjoys more topographic change than anywhere on the grand strand. There are 40 to 50 feet of elevation changes.
The turfgrass on the newly renovated course will have Diamond zoysiagrass on the shaded tees, 419 Bermudagrass on the rest of the tees, roughs and fairways, and TifEagle Bermudagrass on the greens. GCN