Turtle Point Golf Course, Kiawah Island, SC

For our third day of golf while vacationing on Kiawah Island we chose Turtle Point. Located between Osprey and Cougar about midway out the island, Turtle was touted as the most challenging of the three. It also listed three holes on the ocean giving players a sense of what the famous Ocean Course would have in store. Sticking with our 9:30am tee time and being treated to a glorious day of full sunshine and warm temperatures, we were looking forward to getting out there.

Arriving at the course one of the things you see is the Learning Center. Kiawah offers a lot of golf lesson & play packages with most of the instruction happening here at the center. Like the other two courses, we had ample time to warm up on the nicely maintained driving range and putting green. Right off the bat though I noticed that the putting surface here was even harder and faster than the previous courses so putting was going to be a challenge!

We played our round without seeing another set of golfers on the course - no pressure from either side. There were a lot of people getting ready for an outing when we were wrapping up, but they never impacted us or the pace of play. Overall, this course wasn't as nice as the other two...a combination of the landscaping not being as lush and beautiful as Osprey and the course layout not as unique as Cougar. We all had our worse rounds on this course - the putting didn't help with everyone struggling on the read and the surface. But it was more than that - the houses surrounding this course were obviously much older and smaller; not possessing the charm and Southern flair of the ones on Cougar and Osprey. And the holes on the ocean were alongside the ocean but hidden from view by the high sand dunes. We missed any really beautiful, picturesque scenes that might have bolstered our opinion of the course. We'd rank this one a distant third and probably wouldn't play it again unless the price was much, much less.

I added pictures here of one of the holes paralleling the ocean and a view of the ocean if you climbed up the sand dune (where you were allowed to do so).