Myrtle Beach Golf Course Renovations: What's New in 2026

Every summer a handful of Myrtle Beach courses close for a few months, and every fall a handful reopen looking different. 2026 is a bigger year than most. Two of the most played courses on the Grand Strand have been rebuilt from the greens out, a third has just finished a three year project, and one resort has built something the market has not had before: a proper short course under lights.

If you played here last year, some of what follows changes how you should think about your lineup. If this is your first trip, it is a good year to arrive, because several courses are in the best condition they have been in for decades. Here is what has changed at each one, and how to fit it into a package.

King's North: An Arnold Palmer Favorite Reimagined

King's North at Myrtle Beach National is the course most first time visitors have heard of before they arrive, and it is the one that has changed the most. Arnold Palmer designed the original in 1973 and came back to redo it himself in the mid 1990s. That is when it picked up the King's name and a place on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Public Courses. Nothing much was touched for the next thirty years.

The renovation that fixed that was led by Brandon Johnson, who spent 17 years as the lead architect at Arnold Palmer Design Company before starting his own firm. It was done over two summers, the front nine first and then the back, and the full 18 reopened in October 2025. This fall is the first full season with every hole finished and grown in, which is why it belongs at the top of a 2026 list.

The greens are the headline. Johnson's crew peeled back decades of encroachment and found the original green edges underneath, then restored and in many cases expanded them. The front nine alone regained around 30,000 square feet of putting surface. The contours were smoothed rather than flattened, so the greens still move, but the pin positions that had been lost to shrinkage are back. The surfaces themselves were switched from Champion to TifEagle Bermuda, the same ultradwarf that Founders Group has put down at Grande Dunes Resort, Pawleys Plantation and Long Bay.

Around the greens, much of the old mounding was lowered or taken out altogether. The result is that you can see the whole hole from the tee and the whole green from the fairway, and the approach areas play tight and mown rather than shaggy. Every bunker was reshaped and rebuilt on a capillary concrete base, which keeps them from washing out after the afternoon storms this coast gets in summer. The waste areas were expanded to show off the naturally sandy ground the course sits on, and fairways were widened.

The two holes everybody photographs both got real work. On the island green par 3 12th, Johnson enlarged the putting surface and rebuilt the SC bunkers on the left side, breaking them into seven separate traps that still clearly spell out the letters. On the par 4 18th, which used to carry 41 bunkers, a good number of them are gone. What is left is fewer, better placed hazards around a green sat against the pond front right, with a slope to the left. It is still a hard finishing hole. It is now also a fair one.

Alan Blondin covered the reopening in detail for On The Green Magazine, including the work on 12 and 18: read the On The Green Magazine article.

For a package, King's North sits in the middle of the Strand and pairs easily with almost anything. Our King's North course page has the tee time picture and the reviews. If you were put off the course by tired greens on a past trip, that reason is gone.

Wild Wing Avocet: A Myrtle Beach Favorite Returns September 19

Wild Wing Plantation, off Highway 501 in Conway, closed its Avocet course on May 18 and reopens it in full on September 19. The clubhouse has been shut since June for its first major remodel since the property opened in 1990. Both come back at once, which makes this the biggest single reopening of the fall.

The Avocet opened in 1993 as one of Golf Digest's 10 Best New Courses in America. It was designed by Jeff Brauer with three time major champion Larry Nelson, and Founders Group brought Brauer back to oversee this renovation. That is the same approach they used at King's North and it is deliberate. The original designer knows what the course was supposed to be, and the aim is to restore it, not reinvent it.

So the greens have been rebuilt and expanded back to the size Brauer drew in the first place, and regrassed with TifEagle Bermuda. Two of the most severe surfaces, on the 3rd and 4th, have had their slopes softened. And a piece of the course that regulars will remember has come back: the hollow at the front left of the 9th green, long known as the Valley of Sin, has been dug out again, and there is once more a pin position on the low front tier of that two level green.

The bunkers were the other big job. All of them were rebuilt on capillary concrete, and the total sand on the course was cut from roughly 160,000 square feet to about 90,000. That is not a cosmetic change. The huge, deep trap with grass islands to the right of the par 3 12th green has been reduced and softened, as has the big front bunker on the par 5 7th. An overgrown patch in front of the long par 4 3rd was turned into a pond, which looks better and plays friendlier than what it replaced. A new set of forward tees, shorter than the old 4,300 yard reds, gives the course seven sets of markers.

The new clubhouse

The bit that will surprise returning groups is inside. The pub and grill has been rebuilt as a sports bar: new floors, a new bar with six taps instead of four, new furniture and lighting, TVs behind the bar and around the dining room, and a pair of golf simulators at the back of the room with their own screens. The pro shop was reorganised with a new counter and a lounge area, and the bathrooms were fully redone. Head pro Mark Andrews described the look as upscale casual, and the club is already talking about simulator leagues and instruction.

For a group, that changes what Wild Wing is. It was a strong course with a plain clubhouse. Now it is a place where the round can run into the evening. Details and tee times are on our Wild Wing Avocet course page.

Thistle Golf Club: Three Years of Improvements Come Together

Thistle, in Sunset Beach just over the North Carolina line, took a different approach. Rather than close the whole course, it rebuilt one nine each summer for three years. The Cameron nine went first in 2024, the MacKay in 2025, and the Stewart nine closed on June 1 this year and is due back on September 18. When it reopens, all 27 holes will have new greens for the first time since the Tim Cate design opened in 1999 and 2000.

The greens were already TifEagle, put down in 2014 and 2015 when the course moved off bentgrass. The problem was what came with them. That earlier changeover was done without digging out the old surfaces, so some contamination stayed in the rootzone, and over a decade the fairway Bermuda crept in from the edges. Superintendent John Pridgen, who has been at Thistle since before it opened, said the club had lost a handful of acres of putting green to that creep, and with it a lot of pin positions on the tiers and near the slopes.

This time each green was excavated about four inches deep and rebuilt from clean material, taken back out to its original size, and given a five foot collar of TifTuf Bermuda to keep the fairway grass from marching in again. On the first nine to be finished, the Cameron, the surfaces have settled into the firm, fast roll Thistle was known for while becoming more receptive to a well struck approach. The other two nines are following the same path.

Around the golf, the closures were used to fix everything that gets fixed only when a nine is empty. The wooden bridges on the Cameron and MacKay nines were rebuilt, three of them on the Cameron and three on the MacKay. The MacKay 6th tee was rebuilt as one large tee that holds three sets of markers. On the 17th the fairway was raised to sort out drainage in the landing area beside the creek. A waterfall now sits between the clubhouse and the bag drop, and the club has planned an open air bar near the range for the turn and for tournament groups. Underneath all of it, the multi year project to rebuild every bunker with stacked sod edges continues each winter, and every greenside bunker is now done.

Thistle was already one of the top rated courses in the market. The point of three summers of work was to keep it there, and it has. It is a natural anchor for a Brunswick County or North Myrtle Beach package, and our Thistle Golf Club page has the current picture on tee times.

The Piper: Myrtle Beach Golf After Dark

The fourth item is not a renovation at all. It is new. Legends Golf Resort, home of the Heathland, Parkland and Moorland courses off Highway 501, is opening The Piper on October 2: a nine hole par 3 course, fully lit for evening play, built into the resort's 30 acre practice ground behind and beside the clubhouse.

Ken Baker of Baker Golf Design laid it out on about 12 acres, with holes between 54 and 122 yards. The name comes from the wandering musicians of Scottish folklore, and the design leans the same way as the three big courses: open entrances into the greens, movement on the ground rather than in the air, and holes meant to be played creatively with a putter or a bumped wedge as much as a lofted shot. It is set up in three hole loops, so a group can play three, six or nine depending on how the evening is going.

That is the point of it. The Piper is built to be social. The lights mean it opens up the hours after a 36 hole day when most package groups are back at the villa. There will be music on the course, and food and drink outlets spread around the nine are planned, with the resort saying those should be complete by spring. The whole thing can be watched from the raised back patio of the clubhouse, which is where the people who have finished will be standing with a drink while the rest of the group plays the last loop.

Legends already runs one of the most inclusive resort setups on the Strand, with breakfast, lunch and two drinks built into a package round and free range balls for guests staying in the resort villas. The Piper adds a reason to stay on the property in the evening. Pricing for the course had not been set when the resort announced the opening, so ask when you book.

We do not have photographs of The Piper yet. It was still being finished in September, and we will add our own once it opens. The resort's three full courses are on our Legends Resort package page.

What this means for your package

Two practical points. First, a course reopening in mid September is at its most delicate in the first few weeks, when new greens are still knitting together. If you are coming in late September or early October, expect Wild Wing and Thistle's Stewart nine to look immaculate and roll a touch slower than they will by November. By the spring season they will be at full speed.

Second, all four of these are courses we quote as part of one price. If you want to see what a lineup that includes King's North, the Avocet and Thistle costs with lodging, or you want an evening at The Piper folded into a Legends stay, tell us the dates and the group and we will put the numbers together.