Course Profiles / South Carolina
Palmetto Hall Golf Club Arthur Hills Course: A Course Profile
The land remembers an older use. Palmetto Hall sits on the site of an old Civil War garrison on Hilton Head Island, and Arthur Hills built his course there in 1991, in a Lowcountry that was already crowded with famous names. That is the hard part of opening a course on this island. Nobody gives you a pass for being new, and nobody in 1991 needed another par 72. Golf Digest still put it on the list of America's Top 10 New Courses that year. Thirty years of resort golf since then have tested whether that early praise held up.
It has, mostly, because Hills did not try to outmuscle the island. The Hills Course at Palmetto Hall plays 6,918 yards from the back tees at par 72. That number tells you the intent. This is not a back tee ego trip built for a tour event that will never come. It is a second shot course in the Lowcountry sense, where position off the tee matters because the greens and the bunkering ask questions after the drive is done. Heritage Golf Group, which bought Palmetto Hall in 2022, understood what it owned. The Hills Course debuted renovated greens and new Better Billy bunkers in October 2024, the kind of unglamorous work that keeps a 1991 layout honest rather than letting it slide into tired resort conditioning.
Hilton Head rewards golfers who think in angles. Lagoons, live oaks, and marsh edges do not punish a ball the way length does. They punish a lazy line. Hills worked that ground for thirty years across the Southeast, and his Palmetto Hall routing leans into it. You can swing hard here, and plenty of visitors do on the first tee with rental clubs still in the plastic. The course gets interesting when you stop. The approach shots tighten. The misses that looked safe from the tee box turn into chips from awkward lies with green running away. That is good design wearing resort clothes.
One of two, and the sharper test
Palmetto Hall has two courses, and regulars separate them quickly. The Hills Course is the one people argue about on the drive home, which is a compliment. A resort area full of pleasant, forgettable golf does not need another polite walk. This one has enough movement in its greens and enough trouble in the right places to hold your attention for all 18 holes. If you only play one round at the club, play this side first. Our broader look at the best golf courses in Hilton Head Island puts Palmetto Hall in context against the island's private heavyweights, and the public access is a real part of that case.
Access matters here, and the record is plain about it. The Hills Course is semi-private, one of two courses at Palmetto Hall Golf and Country Club in Beaufort County, with public tee times available. That puts it in the useful middle ground of Hilton Head golf. It is not a private club you need a member to reach, and it is not a pure daily fee free for all either. Members get their course. Visitors can book in, play a Golf Digest recognized Hills design, and leave without pretending the island is cheaper or more open than it is. For a golfer building a Hilton Head trip around one or two splurge rounds and a couple of honest ones, this fits the honest category cleanly. It also holds up inside our South Carolina state ranking, where the top of the list is heavily private and the public argument gets thin fast.
Who suits it? The player who hits it straight enough to choose a side of the fairway and patient enough to take the fat part of a green when the pin is tucked. Who gets frustrated? The bomber who treats 6,918 yards as permission to hit driver everywhere and then wonders why he is playing sideways out of trees all afternoon. The course does not beat you with distance. It accumulates. A pushed drive here, a greedy second shot there, and the scorecard looks worse than any single hole felt.
The honest concession is conditioning history. Before the Heritage purchase and the 2024 work, Palmetto Hall had stretches where the promise of the design outran the shape of the greens and bunkers. Resort golfers notice that stuff, fairly. New greens and Better Billy bunkers do not guarantee anything forever, but they were the right first move, and recent visitors are playing a materially better version of this course than the one from five years ago.
Play it in the morning if you can. The Lowcountry light comes sideways through the oaks, the marsh air is still cool, and a 1991 course built on Civil War ground plays exactly as Hills drew it, asking for thought before power.