Santee-Cooper Resort Fills Niche 

By SHANE SHARP

SANTEE--Norton “Shot” Shuler, general manager at the Santee-Cooper Resort, is the sort of good-ole southern boy that will look you in the eye and tell you like it is. So when he learns that a couple golf courses in Myrtle Beach have alluded to his resort as a “major” competitor, he can’t help but respond with a deep belly laugh.

“They (the Grand Strand) have something like four million rounds of golf a year down there,” he says. “If we could have one percent of that over all of Santee’s golf courses, we’d be doing just fine.”

Santee-Cooper Resort’s two courses, and the collection of other tracks in Manning, Sumter and Orangeburg that make up this often overlooked golf destination may not be able to compete with Myrtle Beach on quantity and quality. But when it comes to price, the Santee region is pulling golfers in hand over fist from all parts of the Midwest and Northeast.

“The majority of our play comes from within an eight- to 10-hour drive north of here,” says Golf Santee President “Cholly” Clark. “People from Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and the northeast all view this as the halfway point in their trip, no matter where they are actually headed. Some of these golfers have been coming back here for four or five years.”

But a large chunk of golfers are making the Santee-Cooper area their final destination, and Shuler and Clark are pleased as punch. Ironically, what players find when they arrive is essentially a spitting image of Myrtle Beach from 30 years ago. Located right off of I-95 and just 13 miles from I-77, the town of Santee is a collection of roadside motels, mom-and-pop restaurants, gas stations and strip malls that Shuler likes to call a “poke and plum town.”

“Unless you poke your head out of the window, you’ll plum miss the whole town,” he says.

The area’s first golf course, the Santee Cooper Country Club, opened for play in 1967 with the intent of being an upscale refuge for the local gentry. In 1979, Santee Cooper Resort’s developers decided to dabble in the golf tourism game, and hired Eddie Riccoboni to build the Lake Marion Golf Course. It took another 10 years for Santee to add its third golf course, the Porter Gibson designed Santee National Golf Club, but during the 1990s, a bit of a building boom ensued and a smattering of new daily fee courses popped up around the five-county region.

 “The oil embargo of the mid-1970s was probably the big event in the history of this destination,” Clark says. “Without all the cars on the interstate, golf courses had to go out and beat the bushes for new business. We promoted Santee all over the north and eventually it paid off.”

Calling Santee-Cooper a resort requires a very liberal use of the term “resort.” However, if the line of golfers at the first tee is any indication, no one seems to mind that there is no spa, tennis court, or even accommodations on site. A Ramada Inn just beyond the driving range serves as the primary place for duffers to bed down, and in the sweltering heat of the summer, the swimming pool can become rather spa-like on its own.

“I guess you’d call this a de facto resort,” says the resort’s Senior Manager, Bill Ziegler Jr. “We are a resort in the old sense of the word, before all the newer upscale products came around.”

Whatever you label it, the fact of the matter is that folks can secure golf packages up to six months ahead of time for between $40 and $70 a day, depending on the time of year. Throw in the fact that replays are available at most courses for $15 to $20       “You’d be surprised how many people actually know where Santee is,” Shuler says. “I have had people ask me where Pinehurst is in relation to Santee. That interstate is so important to us. It puts us on a lot of people’s radar.”

Fortunately for avid golfers, that radar screen blips with nearly 20 golf courses in the five-county area. Seven golf courses are within a half hour’s drive of the resort, and courses like Crowfield Golf and Country Club in Goose Creek and Hillcrest Golf Club in Orangeburg are fair game. For those content to squat around scenic Lake Marion, the resort courses, Santee National, and the Tom Jackson-designed Wyboo Golf Club are the choice pickings, while Foxboro, the Players Course and Royal Oaks cater to those on a shoestring budget.

For residents like Shuler and Clark, and the area’s thousands of annual visitors, affordable daily fee golf is the perfect remedy for a golf course supply chain that continues to churn out high-priced, upscale resort and country club facilities. Santee-Cooper’s one attempt at “snooty” golf, Black Water at Lake Marion, has fallen upon some tough economic times and no one seems to know exactly when the golf course will break ground.

“When those developers first arrived in town, they didn’t even bother to come and talk to us about the history of the Santee-Cooper golf scene,” Shuler says. “But we’re not just grit eaters. We know what it takes to fill the fairways around here, and when that fails, we know how to reinvent it.”

It doesn’t appear that the Santee-Cooper resort will be in need of any reinventing in the near future. With most of the country still dealing with economic setbacks and a fear of flying, the fairways at Lake Marion Golf Course and Santee-Cooper Country Club are brimming with golfers from all walks of life. The swings, for the most part, are wretched, and the prevailing denim golf attire would certainly turn up a nose or 200 in Hilton Head or Pinehurst.

But the smiles are legion and good times are only as far away as the next beverage cart.

“The tourists love the Lake Marion course because they feel like they are out in nature,” Shuler says. “The Country Club has homes around it, but then you get people that say they like that course because they like to look at all the nice homes.”

Gene Hamm designed the Santee-Cooper Country Club, and anyone who’s played one of the legendary landscaper’s layouts knows he never met a dogleg he didn’t like. The fairways are tight, the greens are small and the bunkers are plenty. The Lake Marion Golf Course stacks up better for those who prefer a wide-open layout with the occasional elevated tee box and green. Just down S.C. Highway 6 at Santee National, golfers will find a wide-open, links front nine and a tree lined back nine that gives errant drivers fits.

“Let’s be honest. What we do here is fill a niche,” Clark says. “We love Myrtle Beach because we like to think of ourselves as the mouth of the funnel to the Grand Strand. What we do is listen to what people don’t like about other golf destinations, and then we go out of our way to correct that. Myrtle Beach brings the golfers to this state, and then they find out about other hidden gems like us.”

But Myrtle Beach as a competitor?

“Heck, who knows? Maybe someday we’ll be able to say that we brought the golfers here, and then they found out about Myrtle Beach,” laughs Shuler.