The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Review

Dye's wife told him to raise the whole property so every hole would see the water, and he did, which is why the Ocean Course looks like nothing else on the American mainland. Dunes run the length of the site, the sand is left as waste area with no rakes and no penalty for grounding a club, and the sea is in view from all eighteen tees. It is also the most wind dependent course in the country.

A calm morning makes it a fair and beautiful test; an afternoon breeze off the Atlantic turns the identical holes into a survival exercise, which is what the professionals found here at the Ryder Cup and twice more at the PGA Championship. From the back tees it stretches toward eight thousand yards and nobody sensible plays it from there. Conditioning is consistently excellent, with paspalum turf that shrugs off the salt spray and greens kept firm enough to reward a low running approach.

The seventeenth over water and the eighteenth along the dune line make a closing pair that stands with any in the country. The cost is the catch. Visitors who are not staying at the resort pay well over four hundred dollars in season, resort guests take priority on the tee sheet, and a caddie is effectively required, so this is a package rather than a decision made on a Friday.