Oleander

Jekyll Island has a golf story unlike anywhere else in Georgia. The island's courses were built as part of a mid-20th century public takeover — after the Jekyll Island Club, the exclusive winter retreat for Rockefellers, Morgans, and Vanderbilts, gave way to a state-managed park in 1947. Golf became central to the island's new identity as an accessible destination for everyday Georgians, and today the Jekyll Island Golf Resort operates as one of the few state-run golf complexes in the American South.

Oleander is 1 of 3 named courses within that complex, sharing the island with Indian Mound and Pine Lakes. Playing here means navigating the low, flat terrain typical of Georgia's barrier islands — Bermuda fairways, salt-tinged air, and the kind of coastal light that shifts constantly through the afternoon. The Atlantic is rarely far, and the indigenous vegetation gives the layout a wild, unhurried character that resort-built courses rarely manage to replicate.

The setting rewards visitors who slow down. Jekyll Island itself is refreshingly uncommercial for a Georgia beach destination, and that tone carries onto the course.