Town Rankings / South Carolina
The Best Golf Courses in Bluffton
Bluffton used to be the place you passed on the way to Hilton Head. Then Palmetto Bluff grew up along the May River, the live oaks got a resort worthy of them, and the mainland quietly built a golf scene of its own. Now the bridge runs both ways: island visitors come off Hilton Head looking for better value and bigger land, and Bluffton golfers wonder why they ever paid island prices.
The town's golf splits cleanly. At the top sits one resort course of real ambition. Below it, a row of public courses does the daily work, marsh golf and parkland golf at mainland prices. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value, and Bluffton is one of the few towns in the Lowcountry where a public player eats well. The winner, though, is not a public player story.
1May River Golf Club
May River is Jack Nicklaus under live oaks at Palmetto Bluff, opened in 2005, and it is the class of Bluffton by a wide margin. Nicklaus has built harder courses and more famous ones. What he built here is a course fitted to its river ground, moving through oak canopy and along the May River, where the setting does not decorate the golf so much as set its mood: quiet, shaded, unhurried, and then a hole opens to the river and the whole Lowcountry is in front of you.
Access runs through the resort, the Montage at Palmetto Bluff, which prices the day as a luxury good and delivers it that way. The club has hosted local championship and charity events, but its real reputation is simpler. Golfers who play a lot of Nicklaus courses tend to rank this one higher than the famous names, because the land was allowed to lead.
The concession is cost and only cost. A May River day is a splurge by any public golfer's arithmetic, and if you measure a course by what a round returns per dollar, the publics below will beat it. Measure by the golf itself and the day around it, which is how this ranking is built, and May River wins Bluffton going away.
2Old South Golf Links
Old South is the public marsh course across the bridge, Clyde Johnston's 1991 design, and it gives Bluffton something Hilton Head itself is short on: public golf that actually shows you the Lowcountry. Marsh holes play across from the island, the water is in play rather than in the background, and the round has a sense of place that plenty of pricier courses pave over.
Public access, honest pricing, a layout that asks you to think about the tide wind off the marsh. That combination has made it the popular off island option for years, the round locals recommend when a visitor asks where to play without a resort reservation.
The concession is conditioning and congestion. Popular public golf near a resort island takes a beating, tee sheets fill, and Old South on a packed spring Saturday is a slower, scruffier experience than its design deserves. Play it early, play it on a weekday if you can, and the marsh golf underneath the traffic is still there.
3Hilton Head National Golf Club
Hilton Head National sits just off the island in Bluffton and splits the difference between the two courses above it: a Gary Player design from 1989 with Bobby Weed's work in it, public, and known for strong conditioning at public pricing. That last phrase matters more than design pedigree on a real trip. A public course that keeps its greens and fairways at a level above its price bracket becomes the reliable round, the one you book when you cannot risk a bad day.
Player's name brings a certain expectation of a fair, playable test, and Weed's involvement sharpens it. The concession is setting. National does not have May River's oaks or Old South's marsh drama. It is inland golf done properly rather than coastal golf done theatrically, and in a beauty contest against its own town it loses.
It wins its spot on substance. Third in Bluffton, and the course a sensible trip probably plays twice.
4Eagle's Pointe Golf Club
Eagle's Pointe, a Davis Love III design from 1998 with public and semi private access, rounds out the list. Love's Lowcountry work is playable by design, generous where a resort area course should be generous, and Eagle's Pointe fills the role of the relaxed round: the afternoon game, the mixed group, the day nobody wants to be beaten up by their golf course.
The concession is that relaxed can shade into forgettable, and set against a Nicklaus on the river and a marsh course with real character, Eagle's Pointe has the least to argue with. It is competently made, easy to get on, and easy to play. In this town, that is fourth place.
Bluffton's trick is that fourth place still leaves you satisfied. The drive back over the bridge at dusk, marsh going dark on both sides, makes even the ordinary round feel like it happened somewhere.