63 small beer by the current standards in the American market, where clubs seem to drop 10 or 20 million on their course before breakfast. And, given the budget, Johnson wasn’t able to do absolutely everything that he would have liked; regrading the fairways on this rather flat site, was not, for example, in the scope of work. But that said, even if the work is more subtle than it might have been, it’s none the worse for it. Johnson has rebuilt the greens with some significant contour – the collars now feature Tahoma 31 – and the crease that exits the back of the first green, for example, might be principally there as a route to drain water off the putting surface, but it makes golfers think very hard about their approach on this short par five. All the course’s bunkers have been rebuilt and lined with CapillaryFlow, with some of them moved, and quite a few eliminated – we will return to this later! He has widened fairways and added new forward and middle tees, and improved the course’s sustainability by replacing maintained bermuda grass with native areas, pine straw or waste bunkers. And he has done some selective tree work, removing a proportion of the ornamental planting that, aimed at beautifying the course, had actually disfigured it. The late architect Mike Strantz spent a lot of his career in the Myrtle Beach area: he was very deeply involved in the Wild Dunes course a little to the south, when working for Tom Fazio, and his own courses True Blue and Caledonia are also close at hand. And, though routed long before Strantz became involved in golf architecture. King’s North has some holes that are reminiscent of some of his: the par-four third, which offers golfers a clear choice from the tee, is one. Both routes involve a water carry, but if the player is cautious, they can go right of a copse of trees and treat the hole as a conventional two-shotter, but if they are bold, they can fire straight at the pin, where a beach bunker guards the putting surface. I don’t normally have much time for beach bunkers, but this one looks rather good, and fits nicely in its environment. It is a very Strantzian hole. So, for that matter, is the par-three fourth, which measures 180 yards from the back tee, and which again requires a water carry. The green at the other side of the water is what makes one think of the Maverick; it is rather wide and quite shallow, a favourite Strantz trope. “ The work is more subtle than it might have been, it’s none the worse for it” Photo: Founders Group International On the tenth, Johnson has reconfigured the left fairway bunker, converted mounds on the right into a massive landform with a bunker cutting into the feature and revamped the green to tilt right-to-left KING’S NORTH
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