Arcadian Shores Golf Club

Rees Jones has Personal Stake in Myrtle Beach’s Arcadian Shores

Famed golf architect consulting with group on possible restoration of course

Courtesy of Alan Blondin
Myrtle Beach Online

Rees Jones looks over the second green as he tours Arcadian Shores Golf Club. (Photo by Steve Jessmore / The Sun News)

MYRTLE BEACH -- Rees Jones is one of a handful of the most respected golf course architects in the world.

He has designed approximately 140 courses by his count – including many ranked among the 100 best in the United States by several golf publications – and has earned the moniker “The Open Doctor” because he has reworked seven courses in preparation for a total of 11 U.S. Opens.

But that resume meant little to the course owners on the Grand Strand who closed three of Jones’ five designs in the area, with plans for redevelopment.

Jones doesn’t want that fate for his first true solo work after he broke from the design firm of his father, Robert Trent Jones, and he’s taking an active role to make sure Arcadian Shores Golf Club will be around for the foreseeable future.

Jones toured his 1974 layout Wednesday and will partner with course operator National Golf Management to formulate a plan for restoration of the course, which sits between U.S. 17 North and the Atlantic Ocean on Restaurant Row.

“I’m very happy because I love Myrtle Beach and I’ve spent a lot of time here in my life, and to see my number of courses keep dwindling, I didn’t want it to go any further,” Jones said over lunch at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club, which was designed by his father and renovated by Jones in 2001.

The 6,857-yard par-72 was named one of the top 100 courses in the U.S. by Golf Digest shortly after its opening, and features the 201-yard par-3 second hole over water with multiple tee angles, and the 408-yard par-4 13th with a downhill approach over water to a shallow green that is visible from Lake Arrowhead Road. Both holes were selected to The Sun News’ 2004 Dream 18, a collection of the Strand’s best holes according to a panel of experts.

“When you have an absolute classic in front of you that you can’t see anymore because it’s been cluttered with overgrown trees, mutation of grass, [etc.], but you know enough to rub that stuff away, what you have underneath there is an absolute masterpiece,” National Golf Management president Bob Mauragas said. “We feel a strong obligation to do what we can to restore that.”

Jones’ Gator Hole Golf Club, Belle Terre Golf Club and The Falcon at Wild Wing Plantation are among the more than 20 Strand courses that have closed since 1999, nearly all for planned redevelopment. He still has the Jones Course at Sea Trail Plantation.

Mauragas and Jones will take the restoration plan to the National Golf Management board of directors, and the board will weigh the options and vote. The restoration will likely be a multi-million dollar project.

“How we execute the plan is yet to unfold,” Mauragas said. “We’ll take the next month or so, I’d imagine, based on [Jones’] schedule and let his team work up the master plan. We’ll price that out together and look at a two-, three- or four-year plan to completely restore it.”

Mauragas has worked twice previously with Jones on new courses – the Oconee Course at Reynolds Plantation in Georgia and Forest Course at Fiddler’s Elbow in New Jersey. The need to improve Arcadian Shores’ condition was being discussed at a recent NGM staff meeting, and Mauragas decided to call Jones for his opinion.

“He happened to be in and was kind enough to say, ‘Why don’t I come down and take a look at it with you?’ ” Mauragas said. “… We would never touch a golf course in this company without consulting the architect. We think it’s important that the golf course maintain the integrity of the architect.”

The first stage of the pending project will include removing and pruning some trees that are inhibiting the growth of grass because of shade, installing new irrigation and improving aesthetics.

The plan will also include installation of a new ultradwarf Bermudagrass on greens and expansion of greens to their original size. It will possibly include the addition of tee boxes to add 100 yards or more to the layout, and the restructuring, moving or elimination of bunkers. Jones wants to reestablish the dramatic structured look of bunkers and bunker faces in the mold of classic Alister MacKenzie and A.W. Tillinghast architecture.

“The course has never been tampered with so the model’s there,” Jones said. “I was perhaps more involved in Arcadian Shores than a lot of [other designs] because when I did this it was basically me. I didn’t have a staff, etc. And just building the course next to The Dunes Club that my dad made so famous, then having Arcadian Shores make the top 100 and join The Dunes Club on that list for several years was really kind of a thrill.”

Arcadian Shores will likely close for short periods of a few weeks at a time over the course of the restoration, but Mauragas hopes to keep it open as much as possible.

Mauragas said an extension of an original 35-year lease for the land with the Hilton Hotel Group expired on April 30 and NGM now leases the course from Burroughs & Chapin Co., which is a 50 percent stockholder in the merger that formed NGM earlier this year with Myrtle Beach National Co.

Jones recently finished a course in China, has two others there in development, and is also involved in projects in Japan, Barbados, Iowa and New Orleans. He hadn’t visited Arcadian Shores in nine years before Wednesday.

“Every hole has different character. I’m very proud of it,” Jones said. “… It is so well located, and when these guys bring the conditions back and we can redo the bunkers, it’s going to be, I think, back to the standard we started with.”

Jones has an extensive history on the Strand. He spent time in Myrtle Beach as a child when his father was building The Dunes Club and has regularly visited in-laws who live on the Strand and previously owned a water park. Besides the five Strand layouts he designed, Jones renovated The Dunes Club and also did much of the design work on his father’s Waterway Hills Golf Links. He estimates he has played Arcadian Shores nearly 100 times.

Jones not only has faith his course will again gain acclaim, he’s bullish on the Strand golf market as a whole.

“I just think Myrtle Beach is a wonderful golfing Mecca for everybody,” Jones said. “...I think we’ll see a resurgence of Myrtle Beach.”