Golfers and students of the game's history are not the only ones eagerly awaiting the reopening of Pine Lakes International Country Club in Myrtle Beach. Golf course superintendents too are keen to see how the course, known as the Granddaddy, performs after an extensive renovation.

The specific interest is less about shot values than it is in the performance of an emerging salt and drought tolerant grass called SeaDwarf seashore paspalum.

When Pine Lakes reopens - which is currently scheduled for March of next year - it will be the only course on the Grand Strand and the furthest north along the Atlantic Coast growing paspalum wall-to-wall.

Sprigs will arrive next month to begin the planting process on greens, tees, fairways and rough areas. The only distinction between those areas will be how densely the sprigs are planted.

Tees will receive about 30 percent more sprigs than fairways, and greens will receive about 60 percent more. Then it will come down to mowing heights to draw the lines. Roughs can grow up to several inches, although 1 is recommended, while greens can be mowed as low as 1/10th of an inch.

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Colonial Charters Golf & Country Club owner Mike Matheny initially planned to close his course for less than a year to make alterations that would allow for additional housing on the property.

What he did was take a lot more time to create a lot more course. The layout is opening with a new name and a much different look.

Gone are 300 yards of length from the 1988 John Simpson-designed Colonial Charters, fairways cut almost exclusively through heavy wooded areas, and slightly elevated, push-up greens that repelled offline shots.

In their place is the 6,486-yard par-71 Rick Robbins-designed Palmetto Greens Golf and Country Club. The layout features more water hazards, a pair of man-made waterfalls, a lot more open space on and around fairways, and L93 bentgrass greens with more undulation and surrounding mounds as a backdrop....

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