The Best of Outer Banks Golf

Breath-taking scenery, unexpected encounters with wildlife and enjoyable hours spent with friends and families all serve as highlights for typical Outer Banks beach days.

Photo above: Positioned along the windswept terrain of the Roanoke Sound, a most-challenging par-3 #15 at Nags Head Golf Links offers a dramatic, picturesque backdrop during the evening golden hour. Jeff Donohue Phoneography.

As it turns out, the same can be said for typical Outer Banks golf days—minus the sand, of course. No golfer wants to spend time digging out of a bunker during their round!

Each year, we ask you to vote for your favorites in 140 categories for Coastal Life’s BEST of OBX Readers’ Choice Contest, and the results are in! While there are plenty of well-known restaurants, service providers and local businesses to celebrate in the pages that follow, we thought it would be fun this year to trade in our flipflops for spikes and our fishing poles for clubs to chat about what makes the local golf courses such special places. Coastal Life caught up with someone from each course to share what they love about their oasis of green grass along these sandy shores.

GOLD
Duck Woods Country Club

It’s a testament to how much its members love the place that Duck Woods Country Club earned the top spot this year—despite being closed for a renovation project to rebuild all the greens and fairway bunkers on the course. The course is scheduled to reopen in June after what board president Glenn Riggin calls “an important investment for the future.”

Riggin and his wife, Carol, joined Duck Woods in 2012 before they moved to the beach a year later. The club helped them meet people and get into the flow of their new life on the OBX, he says, which is part of the reason why Duck Woods won first place in the contest.

Duck Woods Country Club opened in 1968, designed by master artchitect Ellis Maple, meanders through the beautiful woodlands and canals of Southern Shores. Fairways can be narrow and water comes into play on no less than 14 holes, making shot placement a big deal especially on windy days. Photo courtesy of Duck Woods Country Club.

“For me, there’s two big categories: First and foremost, it starts with golf. This is a classic architecture golf course designed by Ellis Maples, and his design integrates a golf course into the natural beauty of the Outer Banks,” Riggin explains. “The other big one is that sense of community.”

With a men’s golf association boasting more than 200 members and a ladies’ group over 140, it’s impossible to not find someone to play a round with. That goes for non-members and visitors, too, as Duck Woods also welcomes outside play.

When folks tee it up for their trek through 250 acres of maritime forest, they’ll enjoy scenic views of 14 holes with water on them, bald eagles and ospreys soaring overhead, and other surprises from time to time.

“Almost every time you go out there, you’re seeing wildlife,” Riggin says. “Two years ago on 16, two young coyote pups sat on the fairway sunning themselves. We played through and they were just watching the game of golf.”

SILVER
Nags Head Golf Links

Tiffany Schisler grew up at Nags Head Golf Links, playing with her dad, Manteo High School teammates and an endless array of members and guests at one tournament after another. So even though she now lives in Raleigh, she wasn’t about to miss the chance to play another event on a recent cool, windy spring weekend.

“I would never pass up a time to play Nags Head Golf Links,” she says. “It’s a special place—extra special to me.”

It’s where Schisler honed the skills that would take her to a Division I golf team at Western Carolina University. It’s where she shot a memorable 5-under-par 66 one day coming out of Covid when golf courses offered the perfect pandemic escape. Most notably, though, it’s where she played round after round with her father, Tim—a Nags Head Links legend who passed away last October.

“Every Sunday all summer long, every year, they’d do 5 o’clock nine-hole Captain’s Choice events we would play,” she recalls.

Events like that for members, residents and tourists alike offer some spectacular golf and scenery, including the picturesque 15th hole and the par-5 fifth and 18th that play all along the sound. Time your round right and you get “some crazy sunsets,” Schisler says, but no matter when you play Nags Head Golf Links, be prepared for a test.

“It can be some of the toughest golf ever played—one day the wind’s in one direction, one day it’s in the other,” she says. “It’s so unpredictable. It’s a golfer’s paradise for always being demanding. You’ve gotta earn it.”

BRONZE (tie)
Sea Scape Golf Links

Jonathan Daniels also has quite the family connection at Sea Scape Golf Links. His grandfather, Johnny Johnston, was the first pro at the Kitty Hawk track when it opened in the ’70s, and his aunt is longtime LPGA Tour member Cathy Johnston-Forbes.

While it might have made for some awkward conversations at family gatherings were he to be a member somewhere else, Daniels says Sea Scape is a course to enjoy for a variety of reasons.

Designed by renowned architect and Masters champion Art Wall in 1968, Sea Scape Golf Course showcases a blend of natural elements of a Kitty Hawk maritime forest with strategic layouts. Photo provided by Sea Scape Golf Course.

“Convenience is big. It’s centrally located if you finish work early, and on Saturdays you don’t have to cross the bridge and deal with traffic,” he says. “Another thing I like about the course is the layout. The links style is fun to play. No two rounds are ever the same, and the wind always makes it a little more challenging.”

Daniels laughs when asked about his favorite hole on the course—“No. 6 is my least-favorite. That one always gets me!”—but adds that the challenge of uneven lies and tight fairways can make every hole an adventure. The long par-3 17th with water to the right and no houses nearby is, however, a pretty hole that he enjoys … even though it also gives him a run for his money.

One of the most unique aspects of Sea Scape is its remarkable expanse tucked away just off the bypass. The course stretches from the Home Depot all the way to the Sandpiper Cay condos in Kitty Hawk, something that Daniels and his regular group of 12 was marveling at during a recent spring round.

“It’s not totally surrounded by houses, and it’s cool to be in the middle of all the hubbub of the tourism and the construction and have this little oasis,” he says.

BRONZE (tie)
Kilmarlic Golf Club

After enjoying a house in Duck for years, Dan Goodwin was intrigued when Kilmarlic opened its doors in 2002.

“Lemme go look at this thing across the bridge,” he remembers thinking. “I played the golf course the first time and just fell in love with it. The people there are wonderful, the community is spectacular—it’s our little paradise on the peninsula.”

Kilmarlic Golf Club sits upon a massive Currituck mainland marsh, overlooking the historic Albemarle Sound. Known to be one the area’s most challenging layouts, those who play Kilmarlic will leave with an appreciation for both the game and the natural beauty of the Outer Banks. Photo courtesy of Kilmarlic Golf Club.

Goodwin was one of the initial members at the club, and he and his wife have had a house there since 2006. Over the years, he’s managed aces at Nos. 2, 5 and 13 but is still chasing holes-in-one on the 11th and 17th.

“I’m gonna get them before I can’t play golf any more,” he says with a laugh. “It’s a great track. It can challenge you every day no matter if you’re a scratch golfer or a 25 handicap. There’s a lot of water, a lot of swamp, but it gives you a great feeling if you can score well.”
Despite being a community club with memberships, there is plenty of public play at the course, and Goodwin says he also enjoys the golf—and fellowship—with the unofficial men’s group that plays a few times a week.

“We laugh more than we play good golf,” he says.

HONORABLE MENTION (tie)
The Pointe and Carolina Club

Katherine Schuster has played courses all over the country during her junior golf and Clemson days, and she’s about to play all over the world as part of the Ladies European Tour, but there’s still nothing like The Pointe and Carolina Club.

“They’ve been like a second home to me and treat me like family here,” Schuster says. “You can play courses around the world and there’s no course like The Pointe.”

From the teaching pros to the grounds crew, she loves the staff at both tracks in lower Currituck.

“With the two courses, where one lacks, the other one makes up for it. The Pointe is very player-friendly—still very challenging, but everything is kind of right out in front of you,” Schuster says. “Carolina Club is a little tighter, a little longer, more strategic.”

The Pointe Golf Club is recognized by visitors and locals as one of the most fun and playable courses, catering to golfers of all ages and skill levels. Consistently maintained in excellent shape, offering lush Bermuda fairways and high-quality A-1 bentgrass greens. Photo courtesy of The Pointe Golf Club.

At The Pointe, Schuster says the par-3 11th is her favorite hole due to the challenge: “Any other course I play in the country, if I have a 175-yard shot, I pretend I’m at The Pointe. I know if I can pull it off here, I can pull it off anywhere else.” The 16th offers both the beauty of a covered bridge and screams of delight from the waterpark across the road.

Carolina Club, meanwhile, has the fifth, sixth and seventh holes, a run that ends with the par-3 island green at No. 7.

“Locals call it the ‘Grandy Gauntlet.’ If you can finish those holes even-par or better, you’re in for a great round,” she says. “It’s eaten up a few of my golf balls before. It’s like The Bear Trap at Palm Beach, Outer Banks version.”

Steve Hanf is a former sportswriter who covered golf for years, including Payne Stewart’s win at Pinehurst No. 2 in the 1999 U.S. Open. He picks up his golf clubs at least once a year when cleaning the garage but maintains hopes of getting back on the course!

The Pointe’s Superintendent, Jay Brown: Off the Clock, Forever!

The Pointe’s Superintendent, Jay Brown

When Michael Jordan retired from basketball the first time, he famously told reporters he was going to sit at home and “watch the grass grow… and cut it, too.”

For the first time in decades, the GOAT of the grounds at The Pointe Golf Club on mainland Currituck no longer has to worry about grass. Jay Brown is finally heading into a well-deserved retirement as golf course superintendent of Keith Hall’s beautiful course.

“What people recognize about The Pointe is that it’s the most well-maintained golf course in the area, and Jay is a big part of that,” Hall says. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without him—he’s that good, has that expertise. We are indebted to Jay for all the years of service. He’s been here since we opened in 1995.”

Hall owns both The Carolina Club and The Pointe and has been working with Brown for 47 years, first at the old turf farm and then as golf course superintendent when the turf farm became The Pointe. Rain or shine, hot or cold, seven days a week, Brown was there.

Hall recently came across a photo of he and Brown from 1979 that stirred up plenty of happy memories—and a few laughs over their appearance. Jay’s brothers Bud and Bobby also worked years for Hall at either the turf farm or one of the courses.

“Jay has been a major, major part of my life and the success that we’ve had,” Hall says. “He comes from a family of really hard-working, high-character, trustworthy, dependable people—all the things you would want to have in a long-term friend and a long-term employee. That’s what I was blessed to have with Jay.”

Author: CoastalLife