2026 Myrtle Beach Golfers' Report Card: What the Latest Golfer Reviews Reveal

Every golfer who books through Golf Trek is asked to rate each course they played, and many of them write a line or two about what they found. This report card reads the written reviews left over the past 12 months, course by course, and grades the Myrtle Beach courses on what golfers actually said in 2026 rather than on reputation. Research date: October 9, 2026.

How the grades were built

The source is the golfer reviews shown on each course page of this site, which are the reviews our own package customers submit after their trip and which also appear on the Myrtle Beach golf course reviews page. Two numbers appear on every course page and they are not the same thing. The lifetime rating counts every star rating ever left for a course, written or not, and it runs into the hundreds or thousands for the busiest courses. The report card below uses only reviews with a written comment, dated within the past 12 months, so the two figures are shown side by side and never mixed.

The brief was to lean on the last 90 days first. Those 90 days, from July 11 to August 5, 2026, produced only 49 written reviews across 50 courses, because July and August are the quiet months on the Grand Strand and the newest review in the feed is dated August 5. No course has more than five reviews in that window, so grading on it would mean grading on noise. The report card therefore uses the full 12 months, and the 90 day numbers are called out where they tell a different story.

Grades are assigned only where a course has at least 10 written reviews in the window. The scale runs A for a recent average of 4.50 or better, A minus from 4.35, B plus from 4.20, B from 4.00, B minus from 3.85, C plus from 3.70, C from 3.50 and C minus from 3.30. Courses under 10 reviews are listed as Not enough recent reviews. The praise and concern columns are drawn from reading every review in the window, not from a keyword count. Nothing below describes a course condition that a golfer did not describe first.

The 2026 Myrtle Beach golf course report card

Thirty one courses cleared the 10 review bar, and between them they account for 649 of the 751 reviews. Courses are listed by recent average, with the lifetime rating from the course page beside it for comparison.

A note on the Legends courses. The lifetime figure on their course pages counts far fewer ratings than the written reviews in the feed, which points to a separate counter for those courses, so no lifetime comparison is drawn for Heathland, Heritage, Oyster Bay, Moorland or Parkland.

The highest rated Myrtle Beach golf courses in 2026

Six courses earned an A. Three of them are the courses golfers most often named as the best round of their trip, and the three are not the same three.

• Man o' War, 4.73 from 15 reviews. Twelve of 15 are five stars and none fall below three. The greens drew the most comment: "The greens were unbelievable" on August 4, 2026, "rolled well and consistent" on May 18. The only real knock was the clubhouse, called dirty in an April 10 review.
• Rivers Edge, 4.62 from 26 reviews. Twenty one five star reviews, the highest share of any graded course at 81 percent. It was called "the jewel of the week" on April 9 and "the star of the week" on April 8, both by different groups. Two reviewers in the fall wanted faster greens, and one mentioned the drive from the beach.
• Pawleys Plantation, 4.59 from 17 reviews. No review under three stars. Staff and the clubhouse food were praised as often as the course, with a June 7 review calling the views "some of the best in the area". The 13th and 17th across the marsh were singled out, and the wind on them was the only complaint.
• Grande Dunes, 4.56 from 32 reviews. Twenty four five star reviews, and the one course where "always in great condition" appears again and again. Golfers praised the practice area and the clubhouse more here than anywhere else. A June 17 one star review hit the rye to Bermuda transition, which is a seasonal risk, not a pattern.
• Barefoot Love, 4.55 from 20 reviews. The best graded of the four Barefoot courses, and the one with a perfect 90 day record: all five reviews in July and August were four or five stars. The two complaints were both about delays at the starter and a round over five hours.
• Shaftesbury Glen, 4.50 from 10 reviews. Just over the sample line, with six five star reviews and no one below three. The elevated greens take a club more than you think, and reviewers who worked that out loved it.

Kings North, Arrowhead and Barefoot Dye sit just behind at A minus. Kings North is the most interesting of the three, because its 33 reviews split into two stories. Golfers who played after the renovation finished called it "pristine" and "a gem", and 22 of 33 gave five stars. The dissenters were few. A March 4 review found the new greens rock hard, an April 25 review called the condition terrible, an April 27 round was timed at five hours and fifteen minutes, and a July 2 golfer found too much sand for a fun round.

Where recent reviews disagree with the lifetime rating

The lifetime rating on a course page is a long memory. Where the last 12 months pull a long way from it, something is changing. The courses below moved by 0.25 or more with at least 10 recent reviews.

Rated higher by recent golfers

• Man o' War, lifetime 4.26, recent 4.73. The biggest climb on the board and the best conditioned course by the reviewers' account in spring and summer 2026.
• Founders Club, lifetime 3.55, recent 4.00. Ten of 11 reviews are four stars or better, with a layout golfers called creative and funky. Tee boxes are the thing holding it short of a B plus.
• Shaftesbury Glen, lifetime 4.11, recent 4.50.
• Pawleys Plantation, lifetime 4.23, recent 4.59. An April 12 reviewer who had not played in years was "pleasantly surprised with the changes".
• Sea Trail Byrd, lifetime 3.59, recent 3.89, and Sea Trail Jones, lifetime 3.80, recent 4.09. The renovation at Sea Trail is showing up in the scores even while the construction next door costs the Byrd stars for noise and dust.
• Blackmoor, lifetime 3.92, recent 4.13.

Rated lower by recent golfers

• Caledonia, lifetime 4.58, recent 4.17. Still named best course of the trip more than any other course, six times in 40 reviews, and 25 of 40 are five stars. But 12 of the 40 are three stars or lower, and the words in those reviews are consistent: tee boxes, bunker upkeep, greens below the usual standard and a price that raised expectations. Eight of the 12 low reviews fall between April 18 and June 15, 2026.
• Barefoot Fazio, lifetime 4.32, recent 3.93. Three of 15 reviews are two stars, and two of the three say the bunkers and conditions were not worth the cost.
• Long Bay, lifetime 3.82, recent 3.46. The renovated greens were called gimmicky by one golfer and great by another in the same week in May.
• Arcadian Shores, lifetime 3.83, recent 3.52. Five of 23 reviews are one or two stars, the highest share of any course outside the Sea Trail and Legends groups, and two of those five are from May 2026 with another in August.
• Burning Ridge, lifetime 3.97, recent 3.71. Dry fairways in a dry spring.
• Pine Lakes, lifetime 4.41, recent 4.21. Worth reading with the calendar in hand. Through July 29 the course was running at 4.56 across 25 reviews, with reviewers calling it "always top notch". Then four reviews from July 31 to August 4 reported freshly punched greens or no marshal on the course, and three of them gave one or two stars. That stretch is the entire 90 day story for Pine Lakes, which sits at 2.60 on five reviews in the window.

Underrated courses with strong recent feedback

These are courses whose lifetime rating or reputation undersells what recent golfers reported. Some are a few reviews short of a grade, and they are flagged as such.

• Litchfield Country Club. Lifetime 3.70, but six of eight recent reviews are five stars and the average is 4.75. An August 4 reviewer summed it up as an old school course under the oaks with "space from people". Eight reviews is not enough to grade, but there is not a single complaint among them beyond slow greens.
• River Hills. Lifetime 4.23, recent 4.38 on eight reviews, with one group playing it twice in the same trip. Called "a standard for our group" on June 12.
• Founders Club. Graded above. It is the cheapest looking line on a Pawleys Island itinerary and it has quietly become a solid B.
• Myrtlewood PineHills. Nobody calls it the best course they played, but 17 of 20 reviews are four stars or better and two different groups called it a perfect first day course. Pace of play was praised twice and criticized once.
• Aberdeen. Four five star reviews in June and August, including "impressed with the conditions for an off the beaten path golf course" on August 5. Eight reviews, so no grade.

Five findings from 751 reviews

1. Staff earns more stars than turf. 154 reviews mention staff or service and they average 4.35. 135 reviews mention the greens and they average 3.78. Reviews that praise the staff and give four or five stars number 116, and only 23 reviews are critical of staff, starters or rangers. Put plainly, a Myrtle Beach course is far more likely to lose a star on its greens than on its people.
2. Aeration without warning is the single most expensive thing a course can do. Sixteen reviews mention aerated, punched or sanded greens, and they average 2.75 stars. Twelve of those 16 are dated June through August 2026 and average 2.58. Four reviewers wrote that nobody told them in advance, and two of those gave one star to courses that otherwise scored well. The lesson for golfers is in the summer planning section below.
3. Spring is when golfers are happiest. March 2026 was the best month of the year, with 114 written reviews averaging 4.35. April and May produced 330 reviews between them at 4.05 and 4.07. The full spring, March through May, accounts for 444 of the 751 reviews, or 59 percent. October 2025 was the weakest full month at 3.79 from 77 reviews, and a wet one: 77 reviews across the year mention rain, wind, cold, frost or drought, and those average 3.69.
4. Myrtle Beach proper outscored the border courses by four tenths of a star. Courses in the city of Myrtle Beach collected 346 reviews at 4.21. The South Strand, meaning Pawleys Island and Murrells Inlet, came in at 4.11 from 129. The North Strand scored 4.10 from 93. The North Carolina border courses averaged 3.81 from 183 reviews, and 87 of those 183 are from the three Sea Trail courses in the middle of a renovation.
5. Price almost never comes up unless the golfer is unhappy. Only 11 of 751 reviews mention price or value in any form, and they average 2.82 stars. Eight of the 11 are three stars or lower. The flip side is that 30 reviews call a course the best of the trip or their favorite, and those average 4.67. Caledonia was named six times, Rivers Edge and Grande Dunes five each, Kings North three.

One more number that matters for anyone reading ratings: 28 reviews in the window are about rounds that were rained out, frosted out or cut to nine holes, and they average 3.11 stars. Twenty of the 28 are three stars or lower. None of that reflects on the course, but it sits in every lifetime average on the Strand.

What golfers praise and what they complain about

Reading all 751 reviews, the compliments cluster around four things and the complaints around five.

Praise

• Conditions are mentioned in 263 reviews, the most common topic, and those reviews average 4.02. The courses praised for condition most consistently were Grande Dunes, Rivers Edge, Man o' War, Arrowhead and Barefoot Love.
• Staff praise is everywhere, but it is most specific at Pawleys Plantation, Pine Lakes, Blackmoor, River Club and Kings North, where reviewers named the bag drop, starter, pro shop or restaurant crews.
• Scenery appears in 60 reviews averaging 4.42, highest of any topic. Rivers Edge, Caledonia, Pawleys Plantation, Arrowhead and Myrtlewood Palmetto own the view comments.
• Layout comes up in 144 reviews at 4.26. Kings North, Rivers Edge, Prestwick and Glen Dornoch were praised as a challenge; Arrowhead, Grande Dunes and Caledonia as playable for all levels.

Complaints

• Greens: 47 of the 135 reviews that mention greens are three stars or lower, and those 47 average 2.38. Slow greens were the most frequent note at Rivers Edge, Arcadian Shores, Crow Creek and Barefoot Norman. Rough or inconsistent greens were reported at Sea Trail Jones, Glen Dornoch, Oyster Bay and Burning Ridge.
• Dry, thin or bare lies: 58 reviews, 24 of them three stars or lower. Spring 2026 was a drought on the Strand and reviewers at Kings North, Arrowhead, Myrtlewood PineHills and Azalea Sands said so explicitly, often while still giving five stars.
• Pace of play: 65 reviews mention pace, hours or rangers, averaging 3.74. Rounds over five hours were reported at Kings North, Pine Lakes, Barefoot Love, Legends Heritage, Myrtlewood Palmetto and Arrowhead. Several reviewers blamed split tee starts or overbooking rather than other golfers.
• Tee boxes were the most common single condition complaint at otherwise good courses, including Caledonia, Prestwick, Blackmoor, Founders Club and Legends Heritage.
• Construction and renovation at Sea Trail. The Maples renovation drew praise for the design and two star reviews for the waste areas and immature turf, while golfers on the Byrd next door complained of noise and dust in April and May.

Which course to book, by what you care about

• Premium round, money no object. Grande Dunes and Rivers Edge delivered the most consistent five star experiences in 2026. Caledonia is still the course golfers most want to say they played, and 25 of 40 loved it, but go in knowing that the conditions complaints this year were real, and that eight of the 12 came between mid April and mid June.
• Average golfer who wants a fair test. Arrowhead, called "more open for us high handicapped golfers" on March 29, with no review under three stars in 33. Myrtlewood Palmetto was described as "gorgeous but also very playable". Barefoot Love for its openness.
• Groups of eight or more. The Barefoot and Myrtle Beach National complexes let a big group play three days without moving the cars, and both scored well: Love at 4.55, Dye at 4.36, Kings North at 4.42, West at 4.11. A 12 player group on March 21 wrote that everyone enjoyed MB National West. See the group package guide for how that is priced.
• Scenery first. Rivers Edge on the Shallotte River, Pawleys Plantation across the marsh, and Caledonia with "azaleas in full bloom along the ponds" in April.
• Value first. Founders Club, Myrtlewood PineHills and Shaftesbury Glen all graded B or better without a single reviewer questioning what they paid. Arcadian Shores was praised for value even by a 20 year regular who disliked the conditions this year.
• Service first. Pawleys Plantation, Pine Lakes and Man o' War drew the warmest words about people. For a tight itinerary, Pine Lakes in spring: three reviews in May and June called it the best or a yearly fixture.
• Playing in summer. Ask when each course aerates before you lock in a late June to August date. The 16 aeration reviews in this study produced the lowest score of the year at Pine Lakes, Barefoot Dye, Legends Heathland and Sea Trail Byrd, and four golfers said they were never told. A Golf Master can check the maintenance calendar when they build your package.

All of these courses can be combined on a Myrtle Beach golf package with lodging, or priced on their own through the custom package builder.

Courses with not enough recent reviews

Nineteen courses on the site have written reviews in the window but fewer than 10, so they are not graded: Legends Moorland (9, averaging 3.89), International Club (9), River Hills (8), Litchfield (8), Meadowlands (8), Aberdeen (8), Azalea Sands (7), Lion's Paw (6), Leopard's Chase (6), Diamondback (6), Legends Parkland (5), Crow Creek (5), Colonial Charters (4), Eagle Nest (3), Dunes Golf and Beach Club (3, all five stars), Hackler (2), Panther's Run (2), Lockwood Folly (2) and Beachwood (1).

Seventeen courses show no written reviews in the feed for the window at all, among them TPC Myrtle Beach, True Blue, Tidewater, Thistle, the two Wild Wing courses, World Tour, Willbrook, Tradition and Wachesaw East. Their lifetime ratings on the course guide remain the best available signal, and several of them, TPC at 4.58, Thistle at 4.75 and True Blue at 4.50, are among the highest on the site. Not having recent written feedback is not a mark against them.

For writers citing this research

This report card is original research by Golf Trek, drawn from 751 written golfer reviews submitted between October 9, 2025 and August 5, 2026 and published on YourGolfPackage.com course pages. It may be quoted with a link to this page. A short summary for citation:

Golf Trek's 2026 Myrtle Beach Golfers' Report Card analyzed 751 written reviews across 50 Grand Strand courses, submitted between October 2025 and August 2026. Six courses earned an A on a 12 month average of 4.50 or better: Man o' War (4.73), Rivers Edge (4.62), Pawleys Plantation (4.59), Grande Dunes (4.56), Barefoot Love (4.55) and Shaftesbury Glen (4.50). Reviews mentioning staff averaged 4.35 stars against 3.78 for reviews mentioning greens, and reviews that mentioned aerated greens averaged 2.75. March 2026 was the highest rated month at 4.35 from 114 reviews. Research date October 9, 2026.

Three headline options for coverage:

• Golfers Grade Myrtle Beach: Six Courses Earn an A in 2026 Review Study of 751 Rounds
• Staff Beat Greens: What 751 Myrtle Beach Golfer Reviews Say About Who Wins the Five Stars
• Caledonia Still the Favorite, Man o' War the Climber: The 2026 Myrtle Beach Golf Report Card

Every number above can be checked against the reviews shown on the course pages linked in the table. The next edition will be published after the fall 2026 season closes.