1969–1970 · Golf course · Article 5 of 20
The First Nine Holes Open
By the end of 1969 Brierwood had nine playable holes. They would later become the back nine of one of the oldest 18-hole courses on the Grand Strand.
By the end of 1969, two years after the land was purchased, Brierwood had a golf course. It was a nine-hole course at that point, but it was open, and the first golfers were playing through the pines.
Those original nine holes did not stay the front nine. When the second nine was completed in the mid-1970s, the new holes became the front side and the original 1969 holes moved to the back. Residents who live along the back nine today live along the oldest part of the course.
Brierwood operated as a semi-private club, open to members and to visiting golfers alike. That model suited a town the size of Shallotte, where a members-only club would have struggled to find enough players.
Golf directories give different dates for the course. Several list it as built in 1969, the year the first nine opened. Others, including the trade press that covered the 2014 sale, use 1967, the year the land was bought. Both are true in their way, and both put Brierwood among the ten oldest 18-hole courses on the Grand Strand, a distinction later reporting gave it.
In 1969 that was not yet obvious. Brierwood was simply a new nine-hole course in a county that had very few. The hundreds of courses that would eventually crowd the coast between Wilmington and Georgetown were, for the most part, still decades away.