Both Tom Fazio deisigned courses at Wild Dunes have beautiful coastal holes on the Atlantic. This is the Links course.
Brian Walters
Golf has been enjoying a huge resurgence, and 2024 and 2025 have seen record tee time bookings nationwide. Despite the opening of many high profile new courses, the industry can hardly keep up, and with reservations very hard to come by at many famous resorts, and prices growing by leaps and bounds, many golf travelers have begun to look around for more affordable, more accessible and less high-profile alternatives that still offer everything you want in avacation for great golf travel. One such option is South Carolina’s Wild Dunes Resort, just outside Charleston, which just re-opened its flagship Harbor Course after a 6-month renovation project by world famous architect Tom Fazio.
Great Golf TravelCharleston, A Wonderful Tourism City
Wild Dunes is one of two major golf resorts on islands just outside Charleston, the other being the more famous Kiawah Island, whose Ocean Course is a Ryder Cup and PGA Championship venue, and likely the most expensive tee time in the state. As a result, Wild Dunes has always been a bit under the radar, a hidden gem, which also means more affordable, and one of its big competitive advantages is that it is much closer to downtown Charleston, close enough where resort guests regularly go into town for dinner or post-golf activities, whereas Kiawah is a bit too far out to make that convenient.
Charleston, South Carolina, USA cityscape in the historic district at twilight.
getty
Charleston in turn is atop many travel magazines’ “Best Cities” lists, and a wonderful destination full of history, charm and unique shopping. It also has an amazing culinary scene, from local “Low Country” flavors such as shrimp and grits to Southern staples like fried chicken and barbecue, alongside top steakhouses and award-winning fine dining experiences, such as the acclaimed Husk.
What few people know is that Charleston is also home to the first golf club in the United States, the South Carolina Golf Club in 1786, and it was this harbor where the first ever shipment of clubs and balls arrived from Scotland in 1743. The Club played in downtown park, Harleston Green, and it is said the “greens fee,” we pay to play today, got its name from dues at park. The city is celebrating its 250th birthday, and the local golf traditions are alive and well at Wild Dunes, which sits on Isle of Palms.
The just reopened Harbor Course is a coastal stunner
Brian Walters
For more information on visiting, check out the excellent tourism website from the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, Explore Charleston.
If you love golf travel and want to get better at golf, or know someone who does, check out my recent Forbes story on the best resort golf schools, or this feature on the Ultimate Winter Golf Destination for escaping the cold.
Wild Dunes Resort, A Great Golf Travel Destination
The 17th at the Links. Both courses have very strong oceanfront finishes.
Brian Walters
Wild Dunes has two standout golf courses, both originally designed in the Eighties and later repeatedly renovated by Fazio, including his very first solo design in the world, the Links course here, which was extensively restored a few years ago. Now with the grand reopening of the Harbor this month (November 2025) there are two eighteens in exceptional shape, both with some stunning holes along the ocean, the coastal marshes and the Intracoastal waterway.
The Harbor has long been infamously challenging, very wind exposed, with water, either hazards or natural marshes, on 17 of its 18 holes, but the recent project made it much more playable, widening landing areas. The greens, which had shrunk over the decades (a common phenomenon on golf courses, which are living, growing things) were nearly doubled in size, and now have the latest and greatest state of the art grass hybrids and construction techniques, and the putting was impeccable. The course was closed for six months for the renovations.
The family friendly Wild Dunes Resort also sits on a massive and very attractive beach.
© 2022 Peter Frank Edwards
It is not a radical redesign, but rather a greatly elevated quality experience for guests. As Bryan Bowers, the lead designer on the project for Fazio Golf Course Designers, told me, “You’ve got three holes along the intracoastal waterway, and if you were building these courses today you could never do that. I started coming to Wild Dunes in 2007, almost 20 years ago. It was a seminal project for Tom Fazio and these are two seminal low country golf courses, so we’re always excited to come back and make improvements.”
The Wild Dunes Resort includes two hotel options, the top tier of which is the Sweetgrass Inn, part of World of Hyatt, with a fitness center, large and very well-equipped spa with extensive sauna, steam and hot and cold plunge facilities, and several bars and restaurants including a rooftop bar. It opens directly onto a pedestrianized shopping arcade with more snack and dining options, at the opposite end of which is the sister hotel, the Boardwalk Inn. There are also a lot of rental condos, and the entire property, while expansive, is very user friendly and self-contained, and the Sweetgrass Inn is less than a 5-minute walk to the huge and wonderful public beach, which runs for miles. There is tennis and pickleball, a large marina, and shuttle service to the two golf courses, each of which has its own clubhouse and restaurant.
Local cuisine and fresh seafood are stars at Wild Dunes.
Andrew Cebulka
There are a number of golf resorts on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia in this region, and the competition helps keep prices reasonable, though few have the full range of amenities and dining options you will find at Wild Dunes. When I was there last week, early afternoon tee times on the just restored marquee Harbor Course, at the warmest time of day when it was about 70 and sunny, were just $119. Stay and play packages are also quite reasonable, especially in the low season from mid-October through February, and in late fall you can still get amazing weather for golf. It works well for buddy trips, couples trips or family trips, as Wild Dunes is very family friendly.
The food was especially impressive, with several restaurants focused on regional “Low Country” cuisine and local ingredients. Coastal Provisions, in the Boardwalk Inn, has local specialties such as She Crab soup and wild shrimp hushpuppies, while Oystercatcher in the Sweetgrass Inn had great fried local oysters and Italian classic whole grilled Branzino. Breakfast biscuit sandwiches were awesome, and even the pizza place is well above average, especially for a golf resort. And of course, there’s nearby Downtown Charleston (don’t miss stunning Lewis Barbecue).
All the greens on the Harbor Course were massively improved.
Brian Walters
In this era of aviation aggravation, when flying continues to be more and more of a hassle and challenge, Charleston has a wonderful and user friendly airport that is fast, modern and efficient, small enough to be homey but large enough to have lots of flights on all the big airlines, with non-stops from New York, Chicago, Washington and many other major cities, and it’s just about a 25-minute ride to the resort, making it very easy to get to and from, perfect for great golf travel.