The King’s North Course at Myrtle Beach National Golf Club is set to reopen in early October upon the completion of the first stage of a two-stage renovation project.
The course closed on June 3 and is scheduled to reopen on Oct. 3, weather permitting that reopening date.
The project is being overseen by former Arnold Palmer Design Company lead architect Brandon Johnson, and it will be done over two summers.
The back nine of the 51-year-old Palmer-designed course will be overhauled next summer.
The front nine renovation was comprehensive and introduced a look with more native areas.
The course’s greens have been changed from Champion Bermudagrass to TifEagle Bermuda. They have all been restored to their original size and in some cases expanded, claiming an additional 30,000 square feet of putting surface, according to course owner and operator Founders Group International.
“The greens are going to be a lot bigger,” Johnson said in a press release. “It was fun discovering a lot of the old, original green boundaries; you kind of see where things might have been and then you start peeling back layers and go, ‘Oh, there was green over there.’ We were able to smooth the contours we rediscovered and there is a nice roll and flow to the new greens.”
Johnson worked for Arnold Palmer Design Company for 17 years before launching Brandon Johnson Golf Design.
Fairways are being widened, bunkers are being reshaped and redone with a Capillary concrete system that will aid with drainage and conditioning, and some mounding around greens are being lessened or leveled.
Johnson is expanding the layout’s waste bunkers to showcase the property’s naturally sandy soil.
Though the entire course closed for this summer’s renovation, the front nine is expected to remain open while the back nine is renovated in 2025.
King’s North is one of three 18-hole courses at the 54-hole property along with the West and Southcreek layouts.
The last major renovation of the King’s North Course was overseen by The King himself.
That was in 1995-96, and Arnold Palmer’s redesign of his original layout that opened in 1973 as the North Course resulted in the addition of ‘King’s’ to its name and led to a ranking among America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses by Golf Digest.
Doing the renovations over two summers “allows us to really do the scope of the redesign we want to do,” said FGI president Steve Mays in June. “For the next 30 years, we really want . . . to make sure King’s North is at the top of this market. That’s the goal of this renovation.”
FGI owns 21 Grand Strand courses and has been renovating many of them over the past few years, including the Grande Dunes Resort Course, Pine Lakes Country Club, TPC Myrtle Beach and Long Bay Club.
