Thistle Golf Club

The course

The golf at Thistle Golf Club

Tim Cate opened Thistle in 1999 and built it as a Scottish links, an approach that shows in the exposed ground, the fescue framing and the way wind changes the club in your hand. There are 27 holes here, played in combinations to a par of 71 with a slope of 136, and the course carries a hard difficulty rating. Greens are Tif Eagle. The practice complex is the most complete in this batch, with a chipping green, driving range and putting green all on site.

What the reviews describe is a course that plays firm and demands shot selection rather than raw length. Players repeatedly reach for words like outstanding and favorite. One first time visitor put Thistle straight into a personal top five for Myrtle Beach and rated the whole experience from bag drop to departure. Another called it one of their all time favorite clubs. The clubhouse draws its own praise, which matters more than it sounds when a group wants somewhere to sit afterwards.

The rating distribution is unusually clean. Of 182 reviews, 148 are five star and 25 are four star, leaving 7 threes, 2 twos and no one star scores at all. That is as close to a consensus as this market produces. The complaints that do exist are specific and repeatable. The bunkers draw the sharpest criticism, with one player describing the sand as like playing out of beach sand and calling it horrible, so anyone who struggles from bunkers should plan to avoid them. A second reviewer had a poor experience with a rude starter. Mornings run busy, mentioned by more than one player, though the same reviewers credit the club with managing tee times well. On site maintenance work during a round was another minor gripe. None of this dents the overall picture: this is the course in the group most likely to be the one people talk about on the drive home.