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The 18th hole at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, S.C.
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South Carolina's Kiawah Island is quiet but magnificent

South Carolina's Kiawah Island is quiet but magnificent

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — Understand one significant aspect when making the 17-mile drive on Bohicket Road through an umbrella of oak trees and turning onto an island made famous by a golf battle royal that altered the game’s balance of power and forever stoked the patriotic passion of two continents nearly 30 years ago: 

This is not Myrtle Beach. Nor Hilton Head.

This is Kiawah Island, quiet but magnificent, tranquil but invigorating. There are no endless bands of restaurants or doughnut shops, no boardwalks or miniature golf courses. Kiawah Island gets into your soul, its disarming beauty embedded in your consciousness.

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It is a dose of good ol’ Southern charm heaped with 10 miles of white beaches, five designer golf courses and 22 tennis courts, where nature and 35 miles of shaded paved bike trails co-exist. Relaxation is matched only by solitude, where a big night out is an oyster roast at Mingo Point. Oh, there is shopping and dining, trendy stores and boutique shops, all contained in a cozy three-block square of low country flavor called Freshfields Village.

And, if you really want to be spoiled, stay at The Sanctuary, the only five-star hotel in the state where the ocean is always in your view. The 255-room seaside mansion — elegant but not formal — opened in 2004 but looks as though it has been there for years. That’s because the resort transplanted more than 400 trees, including 160 50-foot-high live oaks, to create a vintage feel. The hotel site was raised 20 feet so that, once inside, guests receive an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean from the ground floor.

This is Kiawah Island. And, guess what? They keep trying to make it better.

There is no watching time stand still at Kiawah Island, the stylish resort located approximately 40 minutes from the historic city of Charleston. There is no resting on their award-winning laurels or ignoring the changing landscape of resort life and family vacationers. They have a back-to-the-future mentality, and that is never more evident than the new development at West Beach Village, where the past is being reinvented. West Beach Village was the first lodging, shopping and dining development at Kiawah, the nucleus of the resort, back in 1976. But look what they’re doing to it now.

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A new hotel to replace the original beachfront inn, a conference center to attract more corporate groups and business meetings and a spectacular new clubhouse at the first and oldest course on the island, the Gary Player-designed Cougar Point.

Gone is the original straw market, where ice cream, casual dining and island apparel were one of Kiawah’s lone attractions. But it will return, bigger and better than ever, as part of a new entertainment complex at Night Heron Park. The expansion will also include four four-bedroom oceanview cottages at the Ocean Course. The resort is calling the massive project “Kiawah 2.0: The Next Generation.”

“We feel these projects will be transformative for the future of this resort,” said resort president Roger Warren, a former past president of the PGA of America.

Kiawah has two major attractions: The five designer golf courses, headed by the Ocean Course, home of the most famous Ryder Cup matches of them all — the 1991 “War by the Shore” — and the 2012 PGA Championship won in dominating fashion by Rory McIlroy; and its endless stretch of white beaches that have ranked as one of the 10 best beaches in America for the 10th consecutive year by Dr. Beach. But it doesn’t end there.

Kiawah offers just about every imaginable outdoor activity for summer vacationers, everything from dolphin tours and gator walks to nature programs, shelling, kayaking and kid camps. There are 135 ponds on the island, all connected through a series of pipes and salt marsh, and wildlife is everywhere. There is even a sunset cruise.

“It’s pretty amazing how much opportunity we have to get out on the water, get out on the beach, and enjoy the wildlife,” said Jake Feary, assistant director of recreation, who is known as “Captain Jake” when he is on the cruise boat.

Golf is a smorgasbord of championship layouts. In addition to the Ocean Course, which attracts players from all over the world, Kiawah also offers Turtle Point, the Jack Nicklaus-design where three of the finishing holes border the Atlantic Ocean; Osprey Point, a Tom Fazio design that capitalizes on the natural beauty of the island (not to mention a battalion of sun-warming alligators at the turn); and Cougar Point, which began as an executive course but was stretched and strengthened by Mr. Player into a big-time layout and reopened in 2017. Now it has a clubhouse that is every bit as impressive, if not more so, than the other courses.

As an alternative, the Clyde Johnson-designed Oak Point sits just off the island along the Kiawah River. It was completely renovated in 2015. Like all the other courses, it has undergone a major re-grassing of the greens and tees with paspalum, a perennial turfgrass that has replaced Bermuda grass in many seaside and coastal-area courses.

“With everything we’re doing in West Beach, with the new conference center and hotel, when we get done with the project it will be something everyone needs to come and experience, whether you’re coming for golf or as a corporate group,” said Brian Gerard, the resort’s director of golf and recreation. “Whatever it might be, people will need to spend some time to see what we’ve done with that entire area.”

But first there was tennis

Long before it became known as a golf destination and received global acclaim for the 1991 Ryder Cup matches, Kiawah Island was known as a tennis resort. And the person who brought the sport to prominence on the island was Roy Barth, a former touring professional who can spot a flaw in the swing the way a dentist can detect a cavity.

Mr. Barth is one of the resort’s originals, the second-longest tenured employee on the island after bellman M.C. Heyward, who has him beat by two years. At the behest of his former doubles partner on the ATP Tour, Roscoe Tanner, who was the resort’s touring professional, he came to Kiawah as the tennis professional in May 1976.

He slowly built the resort into one of the leading tennis facilities in the country and was rewarded when the island named the tennis center after him in 2007. Today, the Roy Barth Tennis Center has 22 courts — three hard and 19 clay — with a staff of eight teaching professionals. Ten new courts were added this year to make up for the courts displaced by the expansion of the West Beach area.

Mr. Barth “retired” in January 2018, but he still teaches and hangs around the facility daily to help his son, Jonathan, who replaced him as director of tennis.

“It was really slow when we started,” said Mr. Barth, a two-time All-American at UCLA who played for the Indiana Loves of World Team Tennis when they competed against the Pittsburgh Triangles at the Civic Arena in the mid-1970s. “I thought I was going to die from boredom. It’s evolved to where we have eight pros that do all the programs from tiny tots to beginning ladies to doubles play to matchmaking.”

Instructional programs for juniors and adults are available throughout the summer. The Tiny Tots program offers fun 30-minute instructional clinics for kids ages 4-6 every weekday morning. Cost is $15.

Clubhouse dining

When it comes to dining, Kiawah does not have the endless supply of fast-food and chain restaurants like Myrtle Beach, nor does it have the many eating establishments and pizza shops that populate Hilton Head — South Carolina’s other top vacation destinations. In fact, the closest thing the island has to a chain restaurant is King Street Grille, located on the edge of Freshfields Village — the charming-but-trendy town square with a mix of dining, shopping, spa services, antique car store and boutique hotel.

King Street Grille, which also has locations in nearby Mount Pleasant and Myrtle Beach, is a popular hangout for Ocean Course caddies and island visitors as well. It even has the jersey of its part owner — Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger — hanging on the wall.

That, though, doesn’t mean Kiawah Island is lacking for fine dining.

At each of the four clubhouses, a themed restaurant is available to island guests, providing a little something for everyone. The Atlantic Room at the Ocean Course specializes in fresh-catch seafood and the wildly popular She Crab soup. At Osprey Point, the Cherrywood BBQ and Ale House is a Southern appetite’s delight, highlighted by its award-winning mac and cheese that won the 2016 Charleston Mac Off. For Italian lovers, Tomasso’s at Turtle Point makes all its pastas in-house to create more of a southern Italian cuisine.

“There’s something romantic about Italian food, making it by hand and doing it the old-fashioned way,” said Derick Wade, chef de Cuisine at Tomasso’s, who gets his fresh produce from local farms. “These are grandma’s recipes.”

At The Sanctuary, the AAA Four Diamond Ocean Room is the resort’s premier steakhouse with formal dining. Jasmine’s Porch specializes in low country fare and a breakfast buffet that is a must-stop. Not far from The Sanctuary, the village market offers a more relaxed eat-in or take-out dining with affordable prices, starting with made-to-order breakfasts.

Kiawah, though, realized something was missing on the property — a sports bar. But they addressed that with the opening of the new clubhouse at Cougar Point, debuting a three-meal, sports-themed restaurant with a 31-seat bar, 14 big-screen TVs and indoor and outdoor casual dining on a 4,300-square-foot deck that overlooks the daunting 18th green.

“We listened to what the people were telling us,” Mr. Gerard said. “Frankly, we didn’t have that and we knew that. This was an opportunity for us to create that. You can kick back and relax and watch all the different sporting events that are on, even if you’re not playing golf.”

It only keeps getting better at Kiawah Island. And that’s saying a lot.

Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac.

First Published: July 22, 2019, 1:00 p.m.

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The 18th hole at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, S.C.
An alligator on Kiawah Island, S.C.  (Gerry Dulac/Post-Gazette)
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The Clubhouse at Cougar Point, the first and oldest course on Kiawah Island, S.C., which recently reopened after a major renovation and redesign by Gary Player.
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