A new life for Oak Marsh at Omni Amelia Island Resort (GolfPass)
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AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. – Long grasses swaying in constant breezes, salty air and sandy soils…sounds almost likes the links of Scotland, doesn’t it?
Even if such a comparison is a stretch, the Lowcountry is one of America’s best settings for golf. The marshy coastal corridor that runs from just south of Myrtle Beach, S.C., to just north of Jacksonville, Fla. is a unique region with great cities like Charleston, Beaufort and Savannah as well as some of the most beautiful wilderness east of the Mississippi.
In the Lowcountry, two things are always close at hand: quality seafood and quality golf. The former is always on point but the latter recently received a boost when the Omni Amelia Island Resort reopened its Oak Marsh golf course in mid-May. Architect Beau Welling brought a walkable, low-profile 1972 Pete Dye routing into the 2020s with some thoughtful revisions, reworking bunkers and green complexes to create an engaging and playable resort layout that will be like catnip to avid golfers staying on property.
Simple golf course names are often the best, and “Oak Marsh” describes its own setting in the fewest possible characters. Live oaks feature throughout its inland holes, which wind through mostly natural corridors, with homes peeking through and confronting holes with close-by white out-of-bounds stakes only a small handful of times. When the golf course gets to the marsh – on holes 9, 12 and 16 through 18 – it exhales generously while still serving up a nice challenge.
Welling’s genteel manner, well-honed design sensibilities and golfer-focused approach has reoriented Oak Marsh for fun and playability. Selective tree management enabled his team to push short grass as close to the margins of holes as possible, granting friendlier looks off tee boxes even when there is not heaps of room to hit the ball in absolute terms. In this way, Welling’s approach is the opposite of that typically associated with Dye, who was known for concealing the amount of room many of his golf holes ultimately offered via various visual deception techniques.
The new bunkering and green complexes at Oak Marsh skew towards the golfer-friendly side of the spectrum while still providing interesting and challenging moments. Bunkers sit closer to the racing line than they used to, prompting strategic choices off tees and adjustments to approach angles. The putting surfaces mix their share of convex internal features and exterior falloffs with some gathering slopes that can contain marginal approaches and be used to guide others closer to hole locations.
One wonders whether the mischievous Dye may have thought a couple of of Welling’s design choices were too golfer-friendly, but in any case the overall experience of playing Oak Marsh is a distinctly enjoyable one. To Welling’s credit, his most important embrace of Dye’s influence can be seen in the way he preserved and occasionally enhanced the angling of the greens to the line of play, which is especially important given the course’s modest length. Confronting cockeyed, undulating targets puts some welcome pressure on the golfer’s short-iron and wedge play. The short par-4 8th and par-3 12th, with railroad ties that hold their elevated greens above the water, are the most overt nods to the course’s original architect.
Measuring just over 6,400 yards, par 70 from the tips might seem a hindrance, but at a moment in golf design where virtually every new-build course and renovation leans towards epic scale and maximum length, Oak Marsh is refreshingly intimate in feel, unfolding at a brisk pace. Where many new-school courses take upwards of five hours to play, a typical round at Oak Marsh knocks more than an hour off of that total without ever feeling rushed.
Those shorter rounds give golfers more family time at the presiding Omni Amelia Island Resort, which has an appealingly casual vibe. The beach, pool complexes and activities galore make it a wonderful family retreat that offers similar enjoyment as the likes of Kiawah Island and Sea Island at a lower price point.
Oak Marsh is worth playing multiple times during a stay, but the 10-hole Little Sandy par-3 loop is also well worth a visit, as is the shopping and dining village in which it is located. A Welling original, Little Sandy circles a lagoon with mostly sub-100-yard holes with more teeth than they first appear to possess. Alternate tee positions make it thoroughly playable for kids and beginners, too. And the nearby Amelia Island Club’s course, the Tom Fazio-designed Long Point, welcomes at least a couple of foursomes of Omni guests on most days.
Oak Marsh is accessible to guests of the Omni Amelia Island Resort, with peak-season green fees topping out at $245.
(Senior writer Tim Gavrich’s story first published at GolfPass on June 2, 2025.)