‘We delivered’: Dunes staff reacts to record setting Myrtle Beach Classic
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW) — With the inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic now in the books, crews have a lot to tear down at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club — and that work’s already been started.
The tournament set a record on Saturday for highest attendance at a first-time PGA Tour event, with more than 15,000 in the gallery.
“I don’t think anybody expected this, honestly. I mean we kind of knew, the community here in Myrtle Beach, golf capital of the world, we know it’s a golf savvy market here. So behind the scenes we knew we would get a lot of support, nobody, I don’t think even the operators, the PGA Tour, our club, our membership, nobody knew that we would get this kind of exposure,” said Dunes golf director Dennis Nicholl. “Whatever we thought we were going to be at, we delivered here, and it’s just been incredible.”
While tear down is going on, the clubhouse is still celebrating its major win as host of the first PGA Tour tournament Myrtle Beach has ever seen.
Last May, the PGA Tour and Visit Myrtle Beach announced a four-year contract establishing the Myrtle Beach Classic as a FedEx Cup event, making it the first sanctioned major tournament on the Grand Strand in 24 years.
It’s an honor the Dunes Golf and Beach Club doesn’t take lightly.
Some crews started as early as Sunday night to start the clean-up and it is going to take a while to get everything down.
It took about a month to put all of the equipment up, and Nicholl says crews worked very hard to get the course in tournament condition.
“Everybody’s got to just take a deep breath and then (marketing group) SPORTFIVE and the PGA Tour, they’ll be already starting tonight before the last putt drops,” Nicholl said. “They’ll be breaking down, roping and staking, and all of the structures that were built out here will start coming down.”
He says that it will take a few weeks to take everything down but they will resume operations like normal next week.
“Two to three weeks, we’ll probably have everything done and gone, out of here, it’ll look like nothing ever happened except for some spectator traffic lines but other than that we’re back to business.”
He said tee sheets for Tuesday are already full, with a member event on tap next weekend.
The PGA Tour will be back at the Dunes Club next year.
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Hannah Huffstickler is a multimedia journalist at News13. She joined the News13 team in January 2024 after graduating from Coastal Carolina University in December of 2023. Keep up with Hannah on Facebook and Instagram. You can also read more of her work here.
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