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MYRTLE BEACH will ring a bell with those gents of a certain vintage and disposition. It's a bit like Mae West, a "come up and see me sometime" sort of town; expansive, bountiful and bulging with delights.
"If you don't have a good time here, boys," she could be saying, "then you ain't really tryin'..."
There's no need to look far for the evidence. The bustling main street, an explosion of neon at night, is the temple of eclectic entertainment, southern cuisine and good times that roll until the pre-dawn hours.
Here is the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood; over there is the Grand Old Opry, the mecca for Country & Western fans; next door is a sporty night-club or three, a cluster of theatres with live shows to suit every taste and more restaurants than you could count.
It may sound at odds with the genteel image of South Carolina, where gentlemen still stand for a lady and courtesy is second nature, but such brashness is only skin deep. The old southern traditions are just below the surface: smiles are legion and the welcome is genuine.
And such golf! America's golf magazines have strewn so many awards around here they could have a vested interest in the place. But see them and you'll know that the accolades are not misplaced, that the locals are not being immodest when they call their patch the Golf Capital of the World.
The old game is part of the fabric of life hereabouts, with more courses per square mile than anywhere on earth; the numbers increase annually and if there's a dud one they ain't telling...
Stay at any one of the 400 or so hotels and you'll be within easy reach of 110 courses of disparate quality and challenge, in fact by the time you read this the number could be 120, such is the pace of development.
This plethora of delights is scattered along the Grand Strand, 60 miles of coastline that touches the border of North Carolina.
Drive down Highway 17, the main artery, and the word golf will hit your eye at every turn. There are high street golf shops in profusion; there are putting greens and mini golf lay-outs by the dozen; restaurants and bars with a golfing theme stand shoulder to shoulder, and virtually every inter-section carries a sign enticing visitors to a golf resort or country club.
The area's hotels have their own 24 hour televised golf channel and its courses were the first to equip with satellite connected golf carts giving yardages and detailed course information on miniature computer screens.
Reach the tee and the screen will advise the length of the hole, the distances to the nearest bunker or water hazard and suggest the prescribed line. On one par-3 the screen requested me to repair my pitch mark "and one other," before asking: "Isn't this a beautiful hole?" I tell you, those computers are taking over...
Reputation and emphasis aside, golf is not the only attraction at Myrtle Beach (permanent population 35,000). It's also a sea-side resort of renown, in fact it was a family resort long before the golf boom began in the 1960s.
These days it attracts some 12 million family holidaymakers a year. They're drawn by the sparkling, 30 mile long beach and a theme park that's second only to Disney World. There are gardens in profusion, an aquarium and a zoo; there's fishing and boating of all kinds on the Intra-Coastal Waterway that passes through on its way from Florida to Maine.
There are 1,500 restaurants, a dozen major theatres, and the shopping malls and the night life would exhaust an avid hedonist in full fig.
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