# Moss Creek Golf Club North Course vs. Palmetto Dunes - George Fazio Course: The Hilton Head Island Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/moss-creek-golf-club-north-course-vs-palmetto-dunes-george-fazio-course/

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Course Comparisons / South Carolina


A golfer walking a fairway. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hilton Head golf splits into two worlds. There is the resort golf the visitors play, booked with a condo and finished at a beach bar, and there is the private golf behind the plantation gates that most visitors never see. This comparison crosses that line. The George Fazio Course at Palmetto Dunes is the resort test, known locally as the hardest of the Palmetto Dunes trio. The North Course at Moss Creek is the private one, a Tom Fazio design from 1978 that locals call Devil's Elbow North. Same island, same Lowcountry ground, two different ideas about who the golf is for. The shared surname on the design credits is a coincidence of family: George was Tom's uncle, and the younger Fazio built his name partly on work like this.

## Moss Creek North: the shot-maker's private test

Moss Creek is a private 36 hole club, and the North Course, designed by Tom Fazio and opened in 1978 as the club's second championship course, plays par 72 at just 6,510 yards, with a 72.3 rating and a 134 slope. Read those numbers carefully. The yardage is short by modern standards and the slope is not. This is a shot-maker's course, tight rather than long, with elevated greens surrounded by water or by the signature trees of the Lowcountry. The defense is accuracy and nerve, not distance.

The Devil's Elbow nickname tells you how the members feel about its hardest stretch. Courses earn nicknames like that over decades of ruined scorecards, and a private club course that keeps its members honest at 6,510 yards is doing something right. The course was also brought current recently: John Fought updated the North Course in a renovation running from March to August 2025, which signals a club investing in its second course rather than letting it coast as the spare.

Access is the catch, and it is a large one. Moss Creek is members and guests only. The North Course may be the better test on this page, but for most golfers reading a Hilton Head guide it is a rumor behind a gate. We account for it at the top of [our Hilton Head Island ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-hilton-head-island-sc/) because rankings should record the best golf, and then we tell you plainly that you probably cannot play it.

## Palmetto Dunes George Fazio: the resort's hard course

The George Fazio Course opened in 1974, the second of the three Palmetto Dunes courses, and it built its reputation as the trio's sternest exam. George Fazio's bunkering and the lagoon carries define it. On an island where resort golf can drift toward the scenic and forgiving, the Fazio course is the one the low handicap resort guests ask for by name, the round they book to test themselves between beach days.

That role matters more than it might sound. A resort with three courses needs a hard one, a course that gives the serious golfer in the group a reason to come back and a story to tell the others. The lagoon carries supply the stories. Water on Hilton Head is never far away, but Fazio put it where the aggressive line wants to go, and the course has been separating confident players from optimistic ones since 1974.

## The verdict

On pure golf, Moss Creek North wins. It is the tighter, more exacting design, recently renovated, with a slope that belies its yardage and a membership that chose it as their everyday championship test. Tom Fazio's early work here holds up, and the Devil's Elbow reputation is earned the slow way.

The concession is the whole other half of the decision. The George Fazio Course is a resort course, which means you can book it, this week, as part of a trip, and play a genuinely hard Lowcountry course with lagoon carries and a local reputation as the toughest of its trio. For the traveling golfer, that is not a consolation prize. It is the only one of these two courses that exists in your world. Take Moss Creek if the invitation ever comes. Take the Fazio, happily, every trip until it does. Both sit high in [the South Carolina state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-south-carolina/) for exactly that split reason.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.