Summary
Our travel group played the Barefoot Norman course in North Myrtle Beach, SC on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Barefoot Resort hosts three other courses named after their architects (Love, Fazio, and Dye) three of the courses play out of a single tremendous size clubhouse (Dye has its own). What strikes you as you arrive at the main clubhouse is the level of organization and sophistication to the golf operation. They have to be efficient with one central area servicing all three courses.
Make sure to get to the course an hour early if you like to warm up. Barefoot has a beautiful all grass driving range facility with complimentary balls and ample hitting space, but it’s about half a mile down the main road and is only accessed by shuttle once you’ve parked and unloaded. The bag attendants will call the shuttle when you’re ready to go hit but you do need about 15 minutes extra time for the transit. Our group either warmed up on the range or putted, but didn’t have time for both and we arrived 45 minutes ahead of our time. A special shout out goes to our shuttle driver who unloaded a golf bag for an elderly lady and took it out to the range to make sure she was set up with her clubs and balls at a hitting station.
On the course, Greg Norman’s layout is very playable for every handicap level. The playing surfaces are Bermuda on the tees and through the green but the putting surfaces are Bent, which I was very comfortable on. There are no tricked up holes or greens with buried elephants to frustrate you. Just a classy straight forward well designed golf course with excellent conditioning. The routing takes you through a mix of isolated holes in the natural landscape, gentle doglegs, with a few holes running through the community. At no time did we feel any of the condos were intruding on our play.
The beauty in this course is in the par-3s. #3 is long and narrow with water in front. #7 (shown below) is a shorter hole protected by a large waste bunker, and #10 (also below) is the signature hole that plays about 180 yards and runs downhill along the Inter-coastal Waterway. There’s always some party boat or jet ski navy cruising by to add entertainment value.
Value (3.25 out of 5.0)
We played on Wednesday when you get a $20 price break on your greens fees. Ours was built into our package, but this is not an inexpensive play. Barefoot is a high end resort and the Norman course is very nice, but we elected to forego the $60 replay charge and play in the afternoon for $45 back at The Legends Parkland course, where we were staying. I’ve played the Fazio and Dye courses here which are also good plays, but I’d place all three a notch below other top end courses like True Blue, Grand Dunes, and Tidewater.
Facilities (3.5 out of 5.0)
Big plus is the size and amenities available in the clubhouse and driving range. We dined after our round in the sit down restaurant and the food and service were excellent. Unfortunately the staging area can get really crowded when they are setting up play for three courses. For some inexplicable reason they located an outdoor bar right in the staging area where customers can drink or sit for a light meal. Initially I thought this was a cool idea but after seeing the foot and cart traffic trying to share the same space, had to reconsider. Barefoot also has a policy of trying to limit unnatural objects on the golf courses. That means no water coolers or trash cans. On this day, the weather was perfect but several years back, I had to quit from dehydration during a round on the Norman course. I would have loved to have had regular water stops available and that negative experience is etched in my psyche, so I brought extra water in my golf bag that I didn’t need. Still, the marshals brought coolers with water and beverage cart hit us up several times. There is one rest stop servicing the 10th and 13th tee with a bathroom and water fountain.
Customer Experience (3.75 out of 5.0)
The shuttle driver and bag drop guys were top notch, as was the lady running the beverage cart. Marshals were friendly and ready to assist. But the golf carts are equipped with GPS units that bombard you with adds. On every hole, you need to touch the screen to clear the adds and get back to the golf course map. Everyone in our group found this as an irritant. The rating here would have gone higher with time to practice my putting after hitting the range, but the shuttle time compressed everything. Once we hit the course we were in for an excellent relaxing experience.
Overall Rating (3.5 out of 5.0)
Norman was a solid well maintained golf course and very fun to play. We played the black tees (one set up) at 6,374 yards and I carded an 8-over par 79.
All About Golf 
Brian
Great review. I like reading about all aspects of a course: the goods, bads, and some uglies. The Norman course does sound like a great track and your tip about arriving early is a very good one. Nice score by the way.
Cheers
Jim
Jim, I’d call Norman a very good play but not great when measured against some others in the same class. Gotta keep it as real as possible.
Thanks!
Brian
Looking at the pics, I think it is about perspective when talking about classes of courses and conditions. We here in the Northeast don’t get the “pristine” course as a rule. They exist, but usually are private. We get decent courses but rarely get the immaculate gem due to a fairly short season and lack of new courses popping up. I think I am going to view all Myrtle courses as above the norm I am used to when I head down in 2 weeks.
Nice writeup, I agree with Jim, good the hear about all the warts as well as the good stuff. Thanks for sharing.
-Brian
Good points. You can rate all the Myrtle Beach courses as above norm, but you should still get as much intel on your destination venues as possible. Down there, they are not immune to the same types of problems on some of their courses. For example, last year, I learned that all the Barefoot courses had lost their greens for the spring and summer due to a greenskeeping mistake. Same thing happened the year before at Tidewater. We had a bunch of rounds booked at Barefoot and moved them all to alternate venues. I’d look at blogs and TripAdvisor to get the latest info. Thanks for commenting and enjoy your trip!
Brian
great tip, thanks very much !