Florida’s Best Golf Courses: There’s more to the Sunshine State than theme parks and beaches
Below are excerpts from an article that originally appeared in todays-golfer.com.
Travelling to the sunshine state and planning a break from the theme parks and beaches? These are the best golf courses in Florida for you to get your golfing fix.
Despite being home to some of the best golf courses in the USA, the Sunshine State invariably gets a pretty bad rap for its golf courses as a large percentage of them exist only to sell houses. Couple that with Florida’s lack of elevation (its highest point – Britton Hill – if just 345ft above sea-level) and the fact outsiders tend to associate it with sweaty swampland and it’s no great surprise many won’t give its golf the time of day.
3. Calusa Pines Golf Club
A battle against cancer can have a significant effect on the way a man sees the world, prompting him to make decisions he might not have done prior to the diagnosis. Gary Chesnoff, a successful Chicago venture capitalist had a rare form of the disease and, with seemingly only months to live, decided to make his mark on the Florida landscape hiring Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry to turn a fairly unremarkable patch of flat scrubland a few miles east of the upmarket town of Naples into a fantasy golf course/club with just 275 members.
The architects dynamited rocks for months, dug huge lakes, created massive sand scrapes, and imported alien trees creating a wholly artificial layout that opened in 2001. Purists might not approve, but you’d have to be pretty short-sighted not to appreciate the amazing job the designers and their team of engineers, shapers, and construction/irrigation experts performed here.
8. Belleair Country Club (West)
As was the case with a lot of early golf clubs, Belleair’s first few holes were laid out by club members (in 1897) who had plenty of energy and enthusiasm but weren’t really familiar with the finer points of golf course design. In 1915, the club realized a more professional hand was needed, so engaged Donald Ross to make something of Course No. 1 (now the West Course), and design a second course – Course No. 2 (East). The Scotsman returned nine years later to renovate both creating 36 very highly-regarded holes.
In 2017, after decades of minor alterations and unchecked tree/plant growth, Dana Fry and Jason Straka were chosen to renovate the West Course but, with Covid, various permitting issues, and escalating costs, work didn’t actually get underway until early 2022. Using Ross’s 1924 drawings of the course, Fry and Straka restored the original by filling in man-made ponds, reconstructing streams that had once crisscrossed the course, and removing trees to enhance the views of Clearwater Harbor. They also rerouted the first three holes, built a new par-3 7th whose green jutted into the bay and, perhaps best of all, shifted the 6th fairway to the right so that it now sits hard against the water creating a scary, but wonderfully-strategic hazard.
Click here to read the full article on todays-golfer.com.