Colleton River Plantation's Nicklaus Course

By Joel Zuckerman

olleton River Plantation’s Nicklaus Course is a remarkable golf experience.  It is superior in almost every important category.  It is well conditioned, wonderfully scenic, has many memorable holes, and requires sound strategy and execution to be played well.  But the single most impressive attribute of this golf course can be summed up in one word.
      Drainage. Drainage on a golf course is kind of like electricity in your home.  You take it for granted, unless you don’t have it.  On two separate occasions I have played the Nicklaus course after torrential rains.  Not garden variety rainstorms, but El Nino induced downpours that caused other courses in the area to close for the day and dry out.  Although there was water in some of the fairway bunkers as deep as six inches, the fairways themselves were mostly dry.  Pumps were being used to remove rain water from the bunkers so they would resemble sand traps and not lagoons, yet the golf ball never plugged in the grass.  Whether it’s a combination of engineering, architecture, or sandy soil; the ensuing results are fantastic.  The course should be re-named Colander River, because it drains like a colander.
     Architect Jack Nicklaus has designed some wonderful courses in the last thirty five years.  He began his architectural career on Hilton Head as Pete Dye’s design consultant at Harbour Town.  That initial foray, along with his home course of Muirfield Village near Columbus Ohio are easily among the best fifty in the world.  Others, like Shoal Creek in Alabama, and Valhalla near Louisville Kentucky, have been the site of PGA Championships.  Colleton River is considered by Nicklaus to be among his finest creations, and rightfully so. Nicklaus the golf legend was almost as well known for his strategic intelligence as he was for his raw power. Colleton River, playing 7,000 yards from the championship tees and 6,700 from the penultimate markers, sloped at 137 and 134 respectively, shows us examples from both facets of his personality.
     Compared to some of the scenic marshy vistas elsewhere on the property, the seemingly pedestrian 7th hole could be easily overlooked.  An average length par 5 of 540 yards from the tips, it is a hole that must be played in three shots by most golfers.  Any sort of reasonable drive leaves you with a difficult choice.  Hit your second to the left portion of the split fairway, and face a short third over a large water hazard. Or try and thread the needle with your second shot to the right side of the fairway, and if successful, be rewarded with a third shot that avoids the water.  This hole is reminiscent of his work on Daufuskie Island’s Melrose course, which Nicklaus designed some five years earlier than Colleton, in 1987.  It is as if the architect is saying “pay me now, or pay me later”.
     In contrast, the Herculean 10th hole weighs in at a shade less than 600 yards.  Large serrated bunkers guard the middle of this par 5, easily catching an errant second shot.  Only the longest hitters could succeed on this hole with anything less than driver, fairway wood, and medium iron.  A par here is a job well done.  The bakers dozen that lead you from the first tee to the 13th green are great holes.  Several are really cute and many are outstanding, such as the par 4 9th.   But for the most part they are solid, no-nonsense tests; nothing that’s astounding.  Then you get to the 14th tee, and the vistas change dramatically. Logically, one realizes that they are on a relatively small piece of acreage in the Carolina Lowcountry.  But it quickly starts to feel like you are on a cross-country golfing excursion.
     The 14th hole is a reachable par five that doglegs sharply to the right.  From the tee box it looks like a ball driven through the dogleg will clear the dunes on Cape Cod, and end up on a Massachusetts beach.  The very next hole looks a bit like northern Arizona.  Sand dunes peppered with love grass line both sides of the fairway, leaving an unmistakable target line.  The long par 4 16th hole has such a magnificent approach shot that it practically defies description.  The penultimate hole is a smallish par 3 hard by the Colleton River, and a howling wind is as much of an enemy as is the inevitable loss of concentration induced by the view.  The home hole, another strong par 4, returns not only to the clubhouse, but also to the more conventional style seen earlier in the round.  It’s a good thing too, as your average first time visitor will at this point be experiencing sensory overload.
     Playing a course like the Nicklaus effort at Colleton River is a real privilege, particularly as it’s recently been renovated and completely refurbished.  In a world where far too many golf courses are paint by number, this one is a modern masterpiece.

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