If you live off Retreat Avenue, you already know the summer sounded different. The morning quiet along Kings Way was less about tee times on Seaside and more about the low hum of equipment moving sand behind the tree line. For six months, the course closest to your driveway has been a construction site. That ends this fall, and the date on the calendar is doing more work than most residents realize.
October 18 is not just a reopening. It is the hinge that reorganizes where you play, where you eat, and how RSM week will feel this year.
The date to circle
The Seaside Course has been closed since May 1 for a restoration timed to its 25th anniversary as a Tom Fazio design. Led by Love Golf Design and executed by MacCurrach Golf Course Construction, the project preserves the course's original character while introducing some enhancements, and the course is closed May 1 through October 18, 2026 to complete this work.
The reopening is not arbitrary. It is scheduled to give the grass, the bunkers, and the tournament operations team exactly enough runway before the RSM Classic rolls in. Tee times resume in time for the RSM Classic and the fall season. If you have been watching cart paths through your back windows all summer, that is the reason for the pace.
October 18 reopens the course. November 19 opens the tournament. Thirty-two days separate the two.
That gap is the entire margin. It is why the crews you have seen at first light are not slowing down, and it is why hotel rates around Retreat Village have been quietly moving since July.
What Plantation and Retreat became this summer
For a neighborhood built around three courses, losing one for half the year forces a rearrangement. The golf club offers three championship courses: Seaside and Plantation, home of The RSM Classic, and Retreat. With Seaside dark, Plantation absorbed the traffic that usually spreads across two premium layouts, and Retreat became the practical daily-play option for members who did not want to compete for tee sheets.
That shift is worth understanding before it reverses. Plantation is not a fallback. Sea Island's original course opened as a 9-hole Walter Travis design in 1928 and was later redesigned by Rees Jones before Davis Love III and his brother, Mark, reimagined it in 2019. The modern par-72 layout leans into the course's history, with traditional touches restored like bulkheads, railroad ties, and a Punchbowl green, and the fairways run wider than Seaside's, and the wind matters less, making Plantation the course where many guests post their best score of the trip. Members who spent the summer there tend to know it in a way casual guests never do. That knowledge will not evaporate when Seaside comes back online.
RSM week, from the driveway
For residents inside the Island Club, tournament week is less a spectator experience and more a logistics puzzle. The event runs November 19 through 22, 2026 on the Seaside and Plantation Courses at Sea Island Golf Club, and the practical details that matter most are the ones nobody prints on a ticket.
A few things worth pinning to the fridge:
- Parking is off-island. Park for the tournament at McKinnon Airport, where guests are transported by free shuttles, with wheelchair accessible shuttles also available, and the scenic shuttle ride only takes between 5 to 10 minutes. If your guests are staying with you, plan for them to leave the car at your house and shuttle in from McKinnon rather than trying to drop off closer.
- Bikes are welcome. Guests can also ride a bike to the grounds. For anyone inside the Island Club footprint, this is the fastest route in and out during peak spectator hours.
- Two courses, one final. Tournament play takes place across Sea Island's Seaside and Plantation courses before concluding at the Seaside Course. Sunday traffic patterns concentrate on Seaside. If you want to walk holes with fewer bodies, Thursday and Friday on Plantation is the answer.
For context on the field: The 2025 RSM Classic was won by Sami Valimaki. He will be back to defend, which historically tightens the Thursday-Friday viewing crowds around whichever course hosts the leaders.
Where the neighborhood eats now
The dining scene inside a fifteen-minute drive of the Island Club has quietly reorganized itself over the last twelve months. If your RSM guests are pulling up restaurants they visited two years ago, several of those recommendations are out of date.
| Place | Where | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| King City Kitchen | 117 Mallery Street | This October marks the first anniversary of King City Kitchen and a big chapter in the history of 117 Mallery Street and owners Cat and Chris McDougald, an homage to "Old St. Simons." |
| The Rooftop Grounded | Ocean Lodge Resort | After more than a decade of hosting dining on The Rooftop, Ocean Lodge Resort now ushers in a new era by debuting The Rooftop Grounded, and the restaurant will now be on the 2nd floor, in the resort's former lobby area. |
| Wine Body & Soul | Redfern Village | After 15 years, the longtime Redfern Village favorite is now under new ownership, with Sharon Otto and her team, Dani and Claire, thoughtfully building upon the charm guests have come to love. |
| Coastal Coffee + Southern Peach | 1226 Ocean Blvd, Unit #2 | Coastal Coffee and The Southern Peach Artisan Market have joined forces to create one community-driven space, inviting you to sip, shop, and support local all under one roof. |
| LIFT Café and Smoothie Bar | 3803 Frederica Road | Located on the North End at 3803 Frederica Road, LIFT Café and Smoothie Bar is more than a coffee shop, built around wellness, connection, and community. |
Two more worth knowing about for tournament-week planning. Palmer's begins dinner service December 26th, and for over 15 years, Palmer's has been best known for its award-winning breakfast. That is after RSM, but it changes how you plan the December stretch when relatives extend their stay. And Dorothy's Cocktail & Oyster Bar, named for chef and owner Daniel Auffenberg's maternal grandmother Dorothy Crane, serves raw fresh seafood and coastal cuisine alongside dishes inspired by travels to Southeast Asia, with a large focus on craft cocktails, both original and classics. It has become the reservation of choice for tournament sponsors, which means Wednesday and Thursday nights during RSM week book out earliest.
One quiet thing to do before the crowds arrive
Between the Seaside reopening on October 18 and the first practice rounds on November 17, there is a four-week window that will not repeat. The course is fresh, the greens are new, and the tournament infrastructure has not yet arrived. Members who play Seaside in that stretch will see it in a state that professional tour rotation will erase within days.
The restoration itself is worth understanding on foot. A Tom Fazio re-design of the 1929 classic by famous golf course architects Harry S. Colt and Charles Alison, today's course ties the original Seaside with the old Marshside course, and along with the Plantation Course, it is the home of the PGA TOUR's RSM Classic, a FedEx cup event hosted by Love. Love Golf Design's work this summer honored those layers rather than replacing them. The bunker edges, the fairway lines, the approach angles into 13 with its view across the sound toward the Sidney Lanier bridge, all of it was preserved with the intent that a member walking the course in late October would recognize every hole they left in April.
That is the season's real story. Not that Seaside is back, but that the neighborhood's daily rhythm, its dining map, and its tournament routines all pivot on a single Sunday in October, and the four weeks after it are the quietest premium golf window the Island Club will see all year.
Let's talk about fall on the island
If you are thinking about how the fall calendar changes what your home is worth, or how RSM week affects short-term rental patterns around Retreat Village, Lori Lynn knows the streets inside the Island Club footprint the way you know your own driveway. Let's connect before the leaf-lookers and the tournament crowds arrive.
