Golf at Hilton Head Island, SC
Golf at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, is as much a reason people visit as the beach. Harbour Town Golf Links hosts the RBC Heritage, the state’s only regular PGA Tour stop, and the resorts around it — Sea Pines, Palmetto Dunes, Shipyard, Port Royal — hold championship courses by Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus, Robert Trent Jones and Davis Love III. A few miles over the bridge in Bluffton, a second set of courses trades resort polish for daily-fee pricing and easier same-week tee times. Between the two, this stretch of South Carolina golf courses packs in more variety per mile than anywhere else on the coast — and a mild Lowcountry climate means a round is realistic almost any month you visit.
See the full Hilton Head golf courses directory — every course on the island and in Bluffton, public and resort.
Championship courses to daily-fee rounds
Most of Hilton Head Island’s golf sits inside its resorts and gated communities — Sea Pines, Palmetto Dunes, Shipyard, Port Royal — where each course is open to resort guests and, on most, the public with an advance tee time. HHI golf courses run the full range from Pete Dye’s tournament test at Harbour Town to gentler resort layouts built for a vacation round, and most share the same Lowcountry character — marsh and lagoon crossings, live oaks draped in Spanish moss, and holes that thread through maritime forest rather than open parkland.
Bluffton’s courses are a different trip: public and semi-private daily-fee tracks a short drive off the island, generally easier to book on short notice and priced accordingly. See the full course-by-course breakdown — public, resort, and semi-private access, grouped by area — for the complete list of golf courses hilton head and Bluffton golfers actually play.
Home of the RBC Heritage
Every April since 1969, the PGA Tour has come to Harbour Town Golf Links for the RBC Heritage. The course’s par-4 18th, playing straight at the red-and-white Harbour Town Lighthouse, is one of the most photographed finishing holes in golf, and it’s a real, playable public-facing test the rest of the year — not just a tournament backdrop.
Planning a golf trip
Spring and fall are the busiest stretches for golf in Hilton Head Island, so book tee times ahead of either season. Several resorts sell stay-and-play packages bundling lodging with discounted rounds, and multi-course passes exist for golfers who want to sample several layouts in one visit. Courses here overseed each fall for winter color, which briefly affects playing conditions — worth knowing if you’re planning a late-autumn round.
A golf season that runs most of the year
Winters here rarely get cold enough to close a course, so Hilton Head golf doesn’t really have an off-season the way courses further north do — it has a busy season and a quieter one. Spring and fall bring the mildest days and the heaviest tee-sheet demand around them; summer rounds start earlier to beat the afternoon heat and the occasional pop-up thunderstorm typical of a Lowcountry summer; and winter golf, once the overseed settles in, is often the easiest time to get a same-day tee time at a course that’s booked solid every other season.
All Hilton Head golf guides
The best golf courses in Hilton Head: 26+ Hilton Head Island golf courses to book tee times on, from Harbour Town to Bluffton’s daily-fee tracks.
Harbour Town Golf Links: the best Hilton Head Harbor Town golf course, home of the RBC Heritage every April since 1969, with the famed lighthouse 18th hole.
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