FRIPP ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA | Golfers can rattle off the names of South Carolina’s coastal golf destinations by heart – Myrtle, Litchfield, Pawley’s, Wild Dunes, Charleston, Kiawah, Hilton Head. With renovations to one of the oldest resort golf courses on the state’s coastal barrier islands, the name Fripp Island may join the list of go-to spots for golfers.
Fripp is a private barrier island near historic Beaufort (BEW-fert), South Carolina – between Charleston to the north and Hilton Head just south – for the exclusive use of vacation renters and homeowners. With three and a half miles of uninterrupted and uncrowded coastline – which has the distinction of being the only beach on the Eastern seaboard that’s actually growing instead of eroding – it presents a more remote and laid-back option to South Carolina’s enviable array of beach destinations.
That’s both its charm and its challenge as Seascape Hospitality Group balances buffing up Fripp Island’s two championship courses and resort amenities to attract new patrons while maintaining its cherished old-school, beach-escape vibe.
“We understand that Fripp Island isn’t for everybody,” Joe Guerra – co-owner of Fripp Island Golf & Beach Resort with Seascape Hospitality Group partner Adam Fuller – told Golf Business. “But we’re blessed in that we’re perfectly positioned. We’re an affordable alternative to some of the highest-priced destination resorts around the country. The value proposition is very high. I don’t know of another resort in the country that boasts the amenities we have at the price we have that is gated and guarded.”
While it doesn’t ooze the luxury of neighboring destinations Kiawah and Hilton Head that teem with McMansions and hotels – Fripp has no such pretensions and no hotel – Fripp Island draws rave reviews from publications including Southern Living (best islands in S.C. and among the South’s prettiest beach towns) and USA Today, which hailed its remoteness “that exudes a kind of laid-back charm you can only find on the best island vacations in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot for families to do here.”
“I always just tell everybody, roll all your windows down, turn your music off and drive 15 mph because everything slows down there. It’s just such a special place.” – Matt McGarey
“It’s just kind of a step back in time compared to the Hilton Heads or Kiawahs,” said Matt McGarey, who along with his mother, Cynthia Dye McGarey (Pete Dye’s niece), gave Fripp’s Ocean Point course a gleaming $2 million makeover. “I always just tell everybody, roll all your windows down, turn your music off and drive 15 mph because everything slows down there. It’s just such a special place.”
While Fripp brims with in-season visitors from June to August, it is refreshingly uncrowded when summer guests aren’t there and residents preside. That’s a great opportunity for golfers, as Fripp provides two championship-caliber golf courses – Ocean Point and Ocean Creek – that offer quality and value to resort guests in the shoulder seasons. The resort is expanding its pickleball facilities as well to enhance options for guests who rent one of the 200 properties of all sizes available through the resort management.
“Those two sports can be drivers in the off-season – those shoulder seasons – for us,” said Tom Frost, general manager at the resort. “It’s value-oriented. We like the market niche that we’re in, and we think we can do very well and be a great value for a golf group to come and have a unique experience here. Your whole group can stay in a house together versus in hotel rooms. You’re traveling around in golf carts. I mean, it’s a great group-golf destination.”
Guerra certainly understands that market. He got his start in the hospitality business as CEO of American Golf before starting his own company called Sequoia Golf that purchased a cluster of courses in Atlanta and expanded toward Texas before selling to ClubCorp (now Invited) in 2014. In January 2023, his Seascape Hospitality Group with Fuller bought Fripp Island Golf & Beach Resort from the Wardle family. After visiting Fripp on the advice of his brother, Guerra says the island “chose” him to get back into the hospitality game after a decade with a singular focus on nurturing a resort he hopes will sustain his and Fuller’s families as stewards for generations.
Seascape has poured in millions as part of an ambitious 10-year plan into upgrading facilities including a completed renovation of the Ocean Point course and the addition of Camelot Farms Equestrian Center on nearby St. Helena Island, which offers beachfront horseback rides.
The Ocean Point refresh was led by the Dye Designs Group to modernize the original George Cobb layout that opened in 1964. The Point, which sits at the north end of the island, boasts five holes overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and/or Story River, with four of its small and well-bunkered green sites (Nos. 9, 14, 15 and 18) sitting adjacent to the water.
Fripp Island offers horseback riding on the beach or a chance to relax at the Cabana Club.
The work done by the mother-son McGarey architect team of Cynthia Dye, 69, and Matt, 43, involved: reshaping and rebuilding more than 50 bunkers; adding 11 new greenside bunkers and incorporating new fairway bunkers; adding 5.5 acres of waste area; adding or leveling multiple tee boxes; constructing dunes with more than 13,000 native plants; and replacing all concrete cart paths with crushed shell and limestone.
“Our goal with the whole thing was to open it up and bring more of the ocean feel – the island feel – into the course,” said Matt McGarey. “The views are opened up. … The vegetation got so thick with all the palm trees that it got walled in. So basically, putting all those waste bunkers in really lightened it up and made it more defined.”
At the other end of the island is Ocean Creek – with its wide fairways and large greens on holes that meander through saltwater marshlands and freshwater lagoons – that was the first course designed by Davis Love III and Paul Cowley in 1995. The lush marsh environment and four dune ridges of the Ocean Creek site served as the setting for the filming of the Vietnam War scenes in the movie “Forrest Gump” before the course was built. Five holes are bordered by marsh and another six incorporate interior wetlands, with a network of wooden bridges and walkways through and around the plentiful hazards and gators (including an 11-footer the locals call King Arthur) that will keep your mind focused.
Love Golf Design is putting together a preliminary proposal for a similar refresh makeover of bunkers and tees at the Creek course, which has an interesting routing and green complexes that have held up well over 30 years.
In the meantime, adjacent to its racquet facilities across from the central Beach Club, Fripp is adding a PopStroke-style putting course designed by Augustin Piza, renowned for his butterfly concept of four six-hole loops with varying degrees of difficulty. It will be open in 2026.
Updating resort facilities including restaurants at the Beach Club, Bonito Boathouse, Cabana Club and Ocean Grille are in various stages of planned improvements. As is the expansion of its pickleball and tennis facilities.
The golf and resort make a perfect combination for a full day of activities. On a perfect day in late April, a first-off round in under three hours at Ocean Point allowed time for a few hours on the beach, lunch and a couple hours poolside at the Cabana Club (which sports a striking view at the southern tip of the island), an evening cruise through the creeks and rivers, dinner at the Bonito Boathouse overlooking sunset across the 62-slip marina and saltwater marshlands and a nightcap on our villa deck. The cruise captain took us to a spot on the Story River where the water depth suddenly drops from 10 feet to more than 80 feet – an unmarked “hole” where Capt. John Fripp reputedly hid his treasure and where pods of dolphins are typically frolicking and feeding.
How Fripp became Fripp has two origin stories – one a littler sexier than the other. The legend has it that Capt. Fripp – a late 17th-century privateer who used the island as his base to defend the English settlement at Beaufort against French and Spanish attacks – so endeared himself to King Charles II that he was granted the land that became Fripp Island. There are no receipts to verify the tale.
The story with an existing paper trail, however, is that the island was owned in the 18th century by William Reynolds, whose teenage daughter Sarah Harriet inherited his entire estate including what was then called Reynolds Island. When she married at age 17 a man named Otis Prentiss, it became Prentiss Island. Otis died when Sarah was a 21-year-old mother of four, and at 23 she married William Fripp – a descendent of the sea captain – in 1820 and it became Fripp’s (now just Fripp) Island for use as a hunting preserve.
It wasn’t until the 1960s when Fripp Island became accessible by the bridge across the Harbor River and Jack Kilgore began developing the private community and resort. Six developers have owned the resort since and helped it grow to what it is today, and now it’s Guerra’s and Fuller’s turn to carefully steer it into a new era without losing the essence of what defines Fripp.
“Fripp has its own unique culture and its own unique vibe,” said Frost. “You want it to be the same thing – just upgrade the amenities and upgrade things a little bit, but keep Fripp Fripp.”