Barefoot Resort - Dye Course

The Dye Course at Barefoot Resort is Pete Dye's only solo design in the Myrtle Beach area, a 7,343-yard par-72 test nestled within the Dye Estates that showcases every trademark of its creator's penal genius — railroad tie faces, dramatic waste areas, native grasses, and visually intimidating forced carries. Consistently ranked among the top public courses in America by both Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, it is the longest and most challenging of Barefoot Resort's four signature courses.

The Dye Course at Barefoot Resort in North Myrtle Beach is Pete Dye's contribution to among the ambitious multi-course developments in American golf history — a project that opened four courses simultaneously in 2000, the only time a developer had accomplished that feat in the United States. Of the four Barefoot courses designed by Pete Dye, Davis Love III, Tom Fazio, and Greg Norman, the Dye Course is universally regarded as the most demanding, carrying the architect's signature visual language — mounding, waste areas, severe slopes — to their most uncompromising expression. Barefoot Resort took shape in the late 1990s when Silver Carolina Development and Barefoot Landing Inc. presented plans to North Myrtle Beach city council for a 2,345-acre resort and residential development built around four championship courses. The announcement that four courses would open simultaneously drew immediate attention in the golf industry.

The architects involved — Dye, Love, Fazio, and Norman — were among the most celebrated in the game, and the completion of all four designs at once required years of parallel planning and construction. Pete Dye brought to the Barefoot commission the design vocabulary he had been developing for four decades, rooted in his first great works at Crooked Stick and Harbour Town and refined through TPC Sawgrass, Kiawah's Ocean Course, and dozens of other landmark projects. At Barefoot, the site along the Intracoastal Waterway gave Dye the waterway views that his design language exploits most effectively — long, exposed holes where the combination of water, waste areas, and dramatic bunkering creates shots that require both physical skill and psychological resolve. The course stretches to 7,343 yards at par 72 — the longest and most demanding of the four Barefoot layouts.

The Dye Estate residential homes line the course corridors, but the design's character is defined by the sandy waste areas framing most fairways, the steep-faced bunkers that are a Dye signature, and the Intracoastal Waterway that provides dramatic backdrop on multiple holes. Fairways are surfaced with GN-1 Bermuda hybrid turf, approaches with Tifdwarf Bermuda, and greens with Champion UltraDwarf — a conditioning specification that keeps playing surfaces firm and fast in all but the most adverse conditions. The course consistently ranks among the top three courses in the Myrtle Beach area and has been included in Golf Digest and Golf Magazine lists of the top public courses in America. It hosts the Monday After the Masters Charity Golf Tournament annually — the largest single-day charity golf event in South Carolina — adding a community dimension to the course's identity that extends beyond daily-fee play.

Playing the Dye Course requires the same mental preparation as any Dye design: accepting that the course will demand your best golf, that missed shots will be punished, and that the combination of scale and strategic complexity is precisely what makes the experience memorable. For players who bring the right attitude, Barefoot's Dye Course delivers the most rigorous test available on the Grand Strand.