# Moss Creek Golf Club North Course vs. Palmetto Hall Golf Club Robert Cupp Course: The Hilton Head Island Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/moss-creek-golf-club-north-course-vs-palmetto-hall-golf-club-robert-cupp-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 Island sorts its golf into two kinds of days. One is the member's day, behind a gate, on a course built for shot making rather than spectacle. The other is the visitor's day, a tee time anyone can book, on a course designed to test you in ways you will remember on the drive home. Moss Creek's North Course and Palmetto Hall's Robert Cupp Course are the cleanest local example of each, and picking between them says more about what you want from Lowcountry golf than about which course is better in the abstract.

## Moss Creek North: the shot maker's course

Moss Creek is a private 36 hole club, and the North Course, known locally as Devil's Elbow North, is Tom Fazio's second championship course there, opened in 1978. It plays par 72 at just 6,510 yards, with a 72.3 rating and 134 slope. Those are modest numbers for Hilton Head, and they mislead. The North is described, accurately, as a shot maker's course, short and tight, with elevated greens surrounded by water or signature trees. Length is not the examination. Placement is, on nearly every hole, and the examination got a refresh when John Fought updated the course in a renovation running from March to August 2025.

The Lowcountry setting does the framing. This is Beaufort County golf under live oaks and along marsh, the island game as members play it week after week. A course that has to satisfy the same golfers 100 times a year cannot live on one famous hole. It lives on variety at short range, greens that ask for a shaped approach, and trouble that is visible and fair.

## Palmetto Hall Cupp: the public test

The Cupp Course at Palmetto Hall is semi-private, with public tee times available, and it could hardly be more different in temperament. Robert Cupp designed it as his flagship, opened in 1993, and designed it on a computer, a fact you can see in the geometrically shaped hazards and bullnose bunkers. It plays par 72 at 7,079 yards, rated 75.2 with a 149 slope. At opening it carried the highest slope rating in South Carolina, 152 from the back tees, before the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island passed it.

Those numbers are a warning and an invitation. The Cupp Course asks for committed shots over and around hazards drawn with a ruler's confidence, and it does not soften the request on the back nine. Where Moss Creek North whispers, Cupp states its demands in writing, at full length.

## The verdict

On the golf first: Moss Creek North is the finer examination of control, Fazio's routing asking questions at 6,510 yards that longer courses never get around to asking. On the day: Palmetto Hall wins for anyone without a member connection, because it can actually be booked, and a visitor choosing between a course he can play and a course he cannot is not really choosing. On value and access, it is not close, Cupp by default.

Concede Moss Creek its due first. If you hold an invitation, take it. A freshly renovated Fazio shot maker's course in the Lowcountry is the better round of golf, full stop, and our [Hilton Head Island ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-hilton-head-island-sc/) treats member golf there seriously. But the Cupp Course is the pick for the traveling golfer, and not as a consolation. A 149 slope, geometric hazards, and a flagship designer's full attention make it one of the sterner public tests on the island, the kind of course that earns its place in [the 5 best golf courses in South Carolina](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-south-carolina/) public conversation.

Pick Cupp for the challenge you can book. Pick Moss Creek North, if the gate opens, for the quieter and cleverer game. Either way you are playing real Lowcountry golf, not the resort imitation of it.

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