True Blue

The fairways at True Blue Golf Club, one of architect Mike Strantz’s earliest designs, wind their way around an old indigo and rice plantation. Unveiled in 1998, four years after the course at Caledonia Golf & Fish Club debuted next door, True Blue was only the architect’s fourth golf project to open for play.

In The American Golf Resort Guide author Daniel Wexler writes: “with five par fives consuming 50% of the real estate, the remaining 13 holes aren’t so very long, and there are touches of predictability in holes like the 190-yard island-green 3rd and the 406-yard dual-green 6th, but exciting golf abounds here.”

Feature holes among many include the short par three 11th (playing 184 yards from the back tees, with the tee shot forced to carry an expansive waste area to a warped hourglass-shaped green) and short par fours at the 8th and 13th, where birdies can be made but only with proper thought (and execution) on both the tee shot and the approach.

In The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses Tom Doak said that “a few of our favorite Strantz features are found here, specifically the button hook par-5 4th that plays around a hazard and his [Strantz] stylish, large scale bunkers that sweep up to imaginatively configured greens. However, the water strewn finishing three hole stretch is let down by his own inventive standards.”