Barefoot vs. Legends: Best Stay-and-Play Resort for Groups

Only two resorts on the Grand Strand let a golf group sleep inside the gates, play three or more different courses and never load the trunk between rounds. Barefoot Resort in North Myrtle Beach has four courses and the beach ten minutes away. Legends Golf Resort off Highway 501 has three on property, two more up and down the coast, and feeds the group twice a day. Both run a stay and play package through us, and both get asked for by name every week.

So we did what a trip organizer would do with a spare evening: we read the reviews. Every golfer who books a round through our engine gets asked to rate it afterward, and the four Barefoot courses and three Legends courses now carry almost 7,000 of those ratings between them. The headline is that they tie. Barefoot's four average 4.37 out of 5 across 2,492 reviews. The three Legends courses average 4.37 across 4,479. The golf is not where the choice gets made. The package is, and the two packages are built for different groups.

The Two Packages Side by Side What You Get

The names sound the same. The shapes are not. Barefoot's is a golf package with villas attached. Legends' is closer to an all inclusive, where the per golfer number covers most of the day rather than just the tee time.

Two details matter more than they look. At Barefoot the free round comes with the golf, so a group that would rather sleep on the ocean in North Myrtle Beach still earns it once all four courses are played. At Legends the meals, the drinks and the free round also travel with the golf wherever you stay, and only the unlimited range balls need a villa booking. Both resorts, in other words, reward playing the whole rotation rather than sleeping in a particular bed.

The Golf, by the Numbers Live Reviews

These are the ratings as of mid October 2026, from golfers who played the course on a booking made through us and were asked afterward how it went. Counts include every rating, not just the ones with a written comment.

B

Barefoot Resort Four Courses, One Gate

North Myrtle Beach · ★ 4.37 across 2,492 reviews · 58% five star

Dye leads the property at 4.47 across 743 reviews, and it is the one golfers keep naming as their favorite of the four. Love sits at 4.45 across 641, Fazio at 4.30 across 669 and Norman at 4.21 across 439. All four opened in 2000, all four are inside the resort, and the Yacht Club villas look across the water at the Norman and the Love.

“Favorite of the four for me. Challenging and fun. Very different from my courses at home. Also I left a bag in the cart. Staff retrieved it and returned it.” · Smith from Denver, Dye Course, October 2026

“Course was best of the week conditions wise, and the staff was friendly and helpful.” · Micah from Apopka, Love Course, May 2026

See the Barefoot package →

L

Legends Golf Resort Three Styles, One Address

Myrtle Beach · ★ 4.37 across 4,479 reviews on the three resort courses · 56% five star

The three on property courses are rated almost identically. Parkland is at 4.39 across 1,375 reviews, Heathland at 4.38 across 1,577 and Moorland at 4.33 across 1,527. What separates them is style rather than score: Heathland is a treeless links, Moorland a P.B. Dye target course with a slope of 143, Parkland a tree lined classic that is the longest of the three. The two off property courses pull in different directions. Heritage Club in Pawleys Island is the best rated course in either package at 4.47 across 1,242 reviews. Oyster Bay in Sunset Beach is the weakest at 3.80 across 1,290.

“I like this golf complex and the Heathland course was in excellent condition. The staff at this facility really seem to enjoy their job and are friendly and helpful. The food is terrific, breakfast and lunch make it a full day.” · Ted from Levittown, Heathland, May 2026

“My personal favorite of the three. More wide open which helps me.” · Jon from Florence, Parkland

See the Legends package →

Two things in those numbers matter for a group. First, Barefoot has the wider spread between its best and worst course, so a four round trip there has a clear peak on Dye and a quieter day on Norman. Legends' three are so evenly rated that the order you play them matters more than which one you skip. Second, Legends' five course rotation is only as strong as Oyster Bay, and the reviews there are split: golfers like the layout and the alligators and the included lunch, and they keep marking down the tee boxes and cart paths. The package can be customised, so a group chasing the free round can play all five, and a group chasing the best golf can swap Oyster Bay for another course and give up the bonus round.

Villas and Sleeping Arrangements Where the Group Lands

Both resorts put you in villas with full kitchens and living rooms rather than hotel rooms, which is what a group of eight wants at eleven at night. The differences are in the detail.

Barefoot sells two and three bedroom golf villas spread through neighborhoods along all four courses, plus the Yacht Club Villas on the Intracoastal Waterway. Each villa has a washer and dryer, a screened porch or balcony on a fairway or the water, and a pool and grill area in its neighborhood, with the large Yacht Club pool open to every guest. The honest caveats, straight from our villa guide: the package pricing is built on four golfers per two bedroom villa, which in the documented units means two sharing a king or one on the sleeper sofa. The buildings are walk ups with no elevator, there is no daily housekeeping on golf packages, and the minimum rental age with most managers is 25. Eight golfers who each want a real bed should ask for three villas rather than two.

Legends keeps its villas in neighborhoods beside the three courses and the practice ground, so the walk to the first tee and the range is a walk rather than a drive. The resort describes them as spacious villas with full kitchens and living areas, and it adds an outdoor pool and hot tub for the group that wants to sit in warm water and argue about the 16th at Moorland. One reviewer of the Moorland round this spring summed up the on property stay as simply as anyone could.

The locations are the real split. Barefoot is in North Myrtle Beach, across the waterway from Barefoot Landing and the House of Blues, with the beach minutes away by car or seasonal shuttle. Legends is inland on Highway 501, closer to the airport and to the courses of the central Strand but a drive from the ocean. A group that wants to see the beach after the round picks Barefoot. A group that would rather not leave the property at all picks Legends.

Food, Range and the Evenings Group Amenities

This is where Legends pulls ahead on paper. Every round at a Legends course comes with the breakfast buffet before and any lunch entree after, plus two draft beers or sodas, and the reviews mention the food more than the greens. A group of twelve that would otherwise split the check in three clubhouses a day gets the whole thing on one invoice before anyone lands. The range balls are unlimited for villa guests on a 30 acre lighted practice facility, and since October 2 there is The Piper, a nine hole lighted par 3 course behind the clubhouse that takes about an hour and was built for exactly the hour after dinner. The Ailsa Pub inside the Turnberry Park villas has been open since 1994 and Golf Digest once named it one of the Top 50 19th Holes in America. For a group that wants its evenings inside the gates, nobody on the Strand does it more completely.

Barefoot answers with a different kind of amenity. The two clubhouses serve breakfast and lunch but none of it is in the package, so the group pays as it goes. What it gets instead is the 30 acre lighted range with a Callaway Performance Center, a shuttle to the range that reviewers call out as a genuine plus, and a location that puts Barefoot Landing's restaurants and the North Myrtle Beach bars a short drive away. Reviewers talk about the bag drop, the outdoor grill and the pace of the practice day rather than the lunch.

What Groups Complain About Read Before You Book

Both resorts are busy, and the one star and two star reviews at both say the same word: pace. A Love Course reviewer in May 2026 described an almost hour long starter delay and a round over five hours. A Moorland reviewer last September counted three groups waiting on one tee and a six hour round. Neither is typical, and every on property course at both resorts scores between 80 and 89 percent four and five star, but a group of twelve should ask for consecutive morning times and expect the second round of a 36 hole day to drag in peak season.

Two complaints are specific. At Legends the clubhouse kitchen closes at 3 pm, and a Heritage Club reviewer who finished a slow afternoon round at 3:20 was offered a hot dog instead of the lunch his package included. Take morning tee times at Legends if the included lunch matters to you, which it should. At Barefoot the recurring gripe is water on the course in summer and a bar cart that does not come around, so bring a cooler to the villa and fill it before the round.

Which One for Your Group The Verdict

The golf is a tie. Pick by the shape of the trip.

There is a third answer, and it is the one most of our repeat groups land on. Stay at one resort and play the other for a day. Barefoot to Legends is about half an hour on Highway 501, and a Legends morning on Moorland with the included lunch, or a Barefoot afternoon on the Dye, fits inside either package once a Golfmaster builds it. The free round offers need the whole rotation, so say which matters more, the bonus eighteen or the trophy course across town, and the quote will be built around it.

Ratings and review counts come from verified post round reviews collected through our booking engine, current to October 14, 2026. Averages are across all ratings for each course; quoted reviews are reproduced as written. Package inclusions, free round offers and villa details depend on dates and availability and are confirmed in writing before anything is charged. Legends amenity details come from the resort's own site in October 2026.