# The Best Golf Courses in Beaufort County, South Carolina Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-beaufort-county-sc/ [The Course Rankings](/) County Rankings / South Carolina A golfer walking a fairway. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Beaufort County has 38 courses on our list, spread across Hilton Head Island, Bluffton, Okatie, Dataw Island and Daufuskie Island, and the county's problem is the opposite of most counties we rank. It is not finding eight good courses. It is leaving good courses out. Private clubs dominate the top of the list, resort golf holds one famous place, and the public golfer reads this ranking knowing most of it sits behind a gate. We score the golf first, then the day, then access, and the state context is in [the 5 best golf courses in South Carolina](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-south-carolina/). ## 1Harbour Town Golf Links Pete Dye designed it with Jack Nicklaus consulting, opened in 1969, and it has hosted the PGA Tour's RBC Heritage since 1969, played the week after the Masters. The red and white Harbour Town Lighthouse behind the 18th green is the county's signature image, and the course behind the image is a short, tight shotmaker's test at about 7,100 yards, with Dye's small greens and railroad tie bunkering that broke from 1960s norms. Resort access, at a premium. Nothing else in the county combines this history, this televised familiarity and this design importance. It is first, and it is not close. ## 2Colleton River Club Dye Course Pete Dye again, this time private in Bluffton, a links style design on the river playing par 72 at 7,403 yards with a 76.5 rating and a 150 slope, the hardest numbers in this ranking by a clear margin. It was a filming location for The Legend of Bagger Vance. If Harbour Town is Dye making a small course famous, the Colleton River Dye Course is Dye given championship scale and left alone to use it. Members who want their private golf to feel like an examination start here. ## 3Chechessee Creek Club Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, opened in 2000 in Okatie, par 70 at 6,641 yards with a 72.6 rating and 137 slope. The quietest great course in the county, re-grassed in 2015 with TifEagle greens and now with a 12 hole short course, The Scurry, by David Zinkand. In a county of big private statements, Chechessee wins its place by restraint, and by asking for position and touch instead of power. It also carries Beaufort's flag high in [our South Carolina state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-south-carolina/). ## 4Belfair Golf Club West Course Tom Fazio, 1998 in Bluffton, par 72 at 7,129 yards, rating 75.3, slope 144, and host of the 2019 PGA Professional Championship. The avenue of oaks entry is a Lowcountry landmark, and the West is the sterner of Belfair's two Fazio courses on the numbers. A private club that can host a national professional championship and still function as members' golf holds fourth here on both counts. ## 5Belfair Golf Club East Course Fazio's East Course at Belfair, 1996, par 71 at 6,936 yards, rating 74.4, slope 142, host of PGA Cup and USGA events in the club's history, reopened in 2018 after a four month renovation that restored the green complexes to their original size with TifEagle surfaces. Two courses from one club in the top five will annoy partisans of variety. The numbers, the events and the renovation keep them here anyway. ## 6Berkeley Hall Club South Course Tom Fazio, 2001, one of two Fazio courses at Berkeley Hall on the Colleton River, par 72 at 7,254 yards, rating 75.2, slope 141, host of USGA championships and The Players Amateur. The South edges its sibling North Course, par 72 at 7,148 yards and a 75.1 rating, on the smallest of margins, and a member who prefers the North will find no insult in the gap. Berkeley Hall's depth is the point. Bluffton is not a one club town at the top of this county. It is several. ## 7Haig Point Club Signature Course Rees Jones, opened in 1986 on Daufuskie Island, a private, car free island club reached only by ferry, with a 20 hole concept in its Calibogue and Sound routings and holes along Calibogue Sound. On pure golf it could argue for a place or two higher. On the day, no course in the county asks more of your logistics. The ferry is part of its identity and part of its cost, in time if not in money. Golfers who love that separation will rank it third. Our access scoring puts it seventh, proudly, with the disagreement noted. ## 8Colleton River Club Nicklaus Course Jack Nicklaus, 1992 in Bluffton, par 72 at 7,085 yards, rating 74.3, slope 138, host of the U.S. Senior Amateur and the U.S. Junior Amateur in the club's history, with the par 4 16th playing toward the Colleton River as its signature hole. As the second course at its own club it finishes eighth in the county, which tells you everything about Beaufort's depth. At most clubs in America it would be the headline. Beyond these eight, the bench keeps going: Fazio, Palmer and Davis Love III designs in Bluffton, Dataw Island's two courses, Hampton Hall's Pete Dye course at 7,503 yards with a 76.9 rating, and names like Long Cove, May River and Secession that any Beaufort golfer can place without our help. The back of a 38 course list here is inevitably more ordinary, residential golf that serves its communities without troubling a ranking like this one. The concession to the whole list is access. Seven of these eight are private, and the eighth is a premium resort course. Beaufort County may be the best county for golf in South Carolina and, for a public golfer without a connection, one of the hardest to actually play at the top. Both things are true at once, which is why the lighthouse at Harbour Town, visible to anyone who walks the harbour, ends up as the county's fitting symbol. The best of Beaufort is right there in view. Getting on it is another matter. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.