Coasting Through

Golf Resorts On The NC Coast

When some people think of top-notch golf resorts in North Carolina, they don’t immediately think of our coast.

They should think again.

Take the Sunset Beach area, for example. This quiet, elegant part of the state is so loaded with terrific golf courses and resorts, some people think of it as a kind of Pinehurst By The Sea. Here you’ll find Sea Trail Resort and Conference Center, featuring three distinctly different golf courses designed by Rees Jones, Dan Maples and William Byrd, plus a PGA-sanctioned Golf Learning Center, and much more. Classic courses like Oyster Bay and Marsh Harbour are just a pitching wedge away.

A little further south, you’ll discover Brunswick Plantation and Golf Resort, a 1,400-acre, plantation-style resort, complete with 27 holes of challenging golf and luxury fairway condominiums. Just a short ferry ride from Southport is the magnificent Bald Head Island Resort, where the only mode of transportation for visitors is a golf cart. George Cobb sensitively carved his links-style course out of a maritime forest here, and water is a factor on the majority of holes. Two croquet greenswards and four tennis courts are also available to visitors.

And in the northern part of the Outer Banks, you’ll find the Currituck Club, Corolla’s only golf resort community. The Rees Jones-designed layout here ambles through wetlands and maritime forests and finishes spectacularly along the Currituck Sound.

Which is a fitting way to finish up our all-too-brief review of some of America’s finest coastal golf resorts.

added: December 22, 2008

updated: December 26, 2008