Arthur Hills Course at Palmetto Hall

The Arthur Hills Course at Palmetto Hall Plantation on Hilton Head Island delivers an 18-hole championship test through the plantation's wooded interior, featuring expansive fairways with strategic bunkering and challenging green complexes that play to 6,918 yards from the Gold tees.

Palmetto Hall Plantation's Arthur Hills course stands as a celebrated private layout on Hilton Head Island — a 1991 design that received immediate recognition when Golf Digest named it one of America's Top 10 New Courses the year it opened. That rapid acknowledgment reflected the quality of Arthur Hills's work on the site and the course's ability to provide championship-caliber conditions while utilizing the terrain's natural assets with considerable skill. Arthur Hills, a Michigan-based architect who developed a standout extensive and respected portfolios in American golf design, brought his characteristic approach to the Palmetto Hall property — an approach that emphasized finding the best golf holes within the existing landscape rather than transforming the terrain into something entirely artificial. The result at Palmetto Hall is a course that feels grown into its site: heavily wooded with towering loblolly pines and moss-draped live oaks, with crystalline lakes and wetland areas integrated as strategic elements rather than simply ornamental water features.

The course was built on land with historical significance — what had been a Civil War garrison site. That history is invisible in the landscape today, but it adds a layer of human narrative to the terrain through which the hole routing passes. The fairways, now defined by mature trees and carefully maintained rough areas, trace paths that once served entirely different purposes in a period of American history when Hilton Head Island was far removed from the resort and residential development it would eventually become. From the back tees, the Arthur Hills course plays to approximately 6,918 yards with a slope rating of 136 from the championship markers — specifications that confirm the course's serious competitive credentials.

The layout emphasizes shot accuracy and strategic planning throughout, with well-placed bunkers positioned to create approach challenges and protect greens that require careful reading. The design's crowning feature is the par-4 18th hole — a hole that Hills positioned as the course's dramatic conclusion, combining length, strategic complexity, and visual distinctiveness in a way that sends members and guests back to the clubhouse with a memorable final impression of the round. Palmetto Hall Plantation houses two courses: the Arthur Hills layout and the Robert Cupp design that followed it, together giving the community a two-course golf complex that covers different architectural voices within a single residential setting. The Hills course occupies the elder position within Palmetto Hall's golf program, and its Golf Digest Top 10 recognition ensures its continued standing as the plantation's flagship golf offering for members seeking the full measure of what Hilton Head Island's private course architecture can provide.

Arthur Hills's career produced a range of distinguished designs across the United States, and his Hilton Head work — including the companion course at Palmetto Dunes — reflects his particular affinity for the Lowcountry's botanical environment. The combination of mature tree canopy, water features, and the strategic bunkering that Hills employed throughout both his Hilton Head designs creates courses of sustained visual interest and competitive depth that have aged exceptionally well across more than three decades. For golfers who have experienced the Arthur Hills course at Palmetto Hall, the combination of lush botanical setting, thoughtful strategic design, and the course's history of immediate national recognition creates a round that consistently meets and often exceeds expectations. The final approach to the 18th green, with the clubhouse visible beyond the well-protected putting surface, provides the kind of finish that defines memorable golf experiences and sends players reaching for their scorecards to examine what their full engagement with Arthur Hills's finest Hilton Head design has produced.