Bluffton moves at its own pace. The town sits along a bend in the May River where the oaks lean out over the road, and the tide sets the rhythm of the day, and most of what makes it worth visiting is within walking distance of a single stretch of Calhoun Street. That is the appeal, and it is why Old Town Bluffton Inn sits where it does.
But there is a reason golfers keep ending up here rather than on the island. The Lowcountry has some of the most recognizable golf in the country a few miles east, and the resort courses come with resort prices and resort crowds. What sits in between — eight minutes from our front door, quieter, and in better shape than most of what you will pay double for — is Hilton Head National.
We send more guests to Hilton Head National than to any other course in the area. Here is why.
Ask anyone around here to name the best-conditioned public course in the Lowcountry, and you will hear the same answer. Hilton Head National has held that reputation for more than thirty years, and it is not an accident of good weather or a lucky superintendent.
The course is owned by The United Company, a Bristol, Virginia holding company that started in coal and diversified into energy, real estate, and hospitality over five decades. That ownership matters more than it sounds like it should. A course owned by a group with that kind of balance sheet does not have to make the compromises most public courses make — the deferred bunker work, the greens pushed one more season past when they should have been redone, the equipment run into the ground. They spend the money. You feel it the moment you walk onto the first tee.
The TifEagle greens run fast and true year-round, and the club takes them offline when they need work rather than limping through — there is an aeration closure each spring and an overseeding window each fall, which is exactly the kind of thing a course cutting corners skips.
That last one is worth sitting with. Almost every course in this area is the centerpiece of a residential community, which means you are playing through somebody's backyard for eighteen holes. Hilton Head National sits on three hundred acres of pine and lagoon with nothing built around it. You notice the difference by the third hole.
Two designers, two nines, two personalities. Bobby Weed drew the front, Gary Player the back, and they play differently enough that you get variety without whiplash — Weed's nine with deeper bunkers and more movement in the greens, Player's back nine tighter and more demanding of a short game.
The signature is the par-4 sixth, with the course's largest lagoon running down the entire right side and pot bunkers guarding the left. It is a genuine risk-reward hole, and it will take your round apart if you let it. The closing par-4 eighteenth is the other one people remember: a narrow fairway with marsh running its full length, into an elevated green set at an angle.
What matters for most of our guests is that none of this requires you to be good. Four sets of tees mean you can play it at whatever length is honest for your game. I am a 25 handicap, and I enjoy every round out there, which is not something I can say about every course within an hour of here.
Hilton Head National opened in November 1989, the result of a mid-1980s handshake between a young golf professional and Jim McGlothlin, the Virginia coal magnate behind The United Company. The goal was straightforward: build the first genuinely public championship course in an area without one.
For years it was a 27-hole facility, and by all accounts a busy one. Then two things happened. An eminent domain taking for the Bluffton Parkway paved over three holes, and in 2009 the club retired a full nine — most of the old Player nine — to make room for what became Hilton Head National RV Resort. Sterlyn Mitchell, the head pro, has been candid about the fact that the change was not popular at the time.
What came out the other side is the eighteen that exists now, and it is arguably a better golf course than the 27 ever was. The RV resort next door turned out to be a genuinely high-end operation on ninety-seven landscaped acres — a beach-entry pool with a lazy river, walking trails, pickleball, a grill. Not a campground. If you have friends or family traveling by coach while you stay with us in Old Town, that is a combination worth knowing about.
Rates move with the season, and the spread is wide enough that timing your round is worth a minute of planning.
Peak windows — roughly March through late May, and again from late September into mid-November — run up to $169.99 for a morning tee time. Those are the two stretches when Lowcountry weather is at its best, and everybody knows it. But afternoon rates in those same windows drop to $114.99 and twilight to $84.99, and the course does not get worse at four o'clock. Summer and winter are where the real value sits: mid-June through September runs $74.99 to $84.99 after two, and the November-into-winter window sits in the mid-$80s all day.
Worth noting on the calendar: the greens close for aerification in late spring, and overseeding happens in mid-October. Both are short windows, and both are the reason the course plays the way it does the rest of the year. Check before you book.
Here is the part that will not show up on a review site.
Sterlyn Mitchell runs the golf shop, and he is a friend of mine — we have coached baseball together, and I know his wife, Beth, and his son, Declan. Audie Murphy is out there too, and between the two of them there is more personality behind that counter than most clubs manage in an entire membership.
When we send guests over, we tell them to walk in, say hello to Sterlyn, and mention that they are staying with us at the Inn. Now, Sterlyn is not in the business of giving things away, and I would not want anybody showing up with expectations. But you never know what kind of mood you might catch him in, and it costs nothing to say hello. At minimum, you will get a straight answer about what the greens are doing that week, which is more than you get most places.
Audie Murphy is one of the head fix-it guys at National, and you can hear him before you see him most of the time. Audie has been a longtime real estate client of mine, with one of the best laughs in the business and a classic name to boot.
The best version of a golf trip here does not involve staying at the course. It involves playing in the morning and then having somewhere to walk to afterward.
That is the case for basing a golf trip at Old Town Bluffton Inn. You are eight minutes from Hilton Head National and a short drive from a handful of other courses, and when you come off eighteen you are back in Old Town with more than twenty restaurants within walking distance — no second drive, no designated driver, no negotiating the bridge traffic to get dinner. Play early, get back, clean up, and walk to lunch at Bluffton BBQ or Captain Woody's.
For groups, this is the whole argument. Golf trips fall apart on logistics, and a foursome or three that can walk to dinner is a different weekend than one shuttling between an island resort and a restaurant reservation twenty minutes away.
Browse our rooms, take a look at group stays if you are bringing a crew, and book your stay at the Old Town Bluffton Inn — then get a tee time on the books before the good windows fill.