A lot of courses on the Strand boast about their memorable and distinctive characteristics, but Heather Glenn Golf Links uses its Scottish themes to imprint memories of beauty, challenge, drama, and glory. Inspired by the Scottish tradition of Gleneagles and St. Andrews, the challenging 18 hole championship course features dramatic elevation changes, grand oaks, and trickling winding streams and brooks (following the Scottish theme, the course calls them burns).

William Byrd and Clyde Johnson designed Heather Glen on old farmland and took the elevation they found to render a design that rarely repeats itself. The 400-acre area has the normal South Carolina features of pines and oaks but also has many Scottish elements such as the pot bunkers which lie in the middle of the fairways, one of which has even earned the name "The Devils Mistress."

Heather Glenn may be very player friendly but she is definitely not a pushover. The course has more than its share of memorable holes, notably the par-5 sixth and the par-3 eighth. The eighth is 224 yards from the back tees and the green is protected by a pond which is bordered in granite as well as multiple pot bunkers and mounding from front to back.

The two finishing holes on the first nine are also fantastic. No. 8, nicknamed "The Spectacle," features a fairway split by a wood-bunkered waste area and water. You can play it safe and go right, or you can take a chance and walk on the wild side. No. 9 is a 587 par-5 that can be reachable in two because the green sits at a slight right angle to the fairway. To reach it however, requires a skirt of tall trees and a carry over a long lake.

The outstanding greens, dramatic elevation changes, beautiful oaks, and flowing water areas all add to the list of reasons that Golf Digest named Heather Glenn as the No. 1 new public course when it opened in 1987. Don't let this one slip through your grasp when you plan your golfing vacation.