Already home to one of the best par-3 courses, Bandon Dunes will open a new layout on wild dunes.
Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, to a large degree, reinvigorated par-3 courses at resorts around the U.S. – and the world. The Oregon resort’s Preserve – opened in 2012 with a design by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean – has proved to be a massive hit with guests looking for a non-traditional layout that promises plenty of fun. All five of the 18-hole courses on the property are among our top 11 resort courses on the Golfweek’s Best 2024 list.
In May, the Preserve will have a sibling. Bandon Dunes’ new 19-hole par-3 course, named Shorty’s, will open in wild dunes not far from Bandon Trails. Built by the WAC Golf team of Rod Whitman, Dave Axland and Keith Cutten, the layout will play down a large hill, around and through the dunes and back up to a new clubhouse. Holes will range from 60 to 160 yards.
No. 16 is famous, but how does the rest of TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course shape up?
There’s a lot more to the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale than the famed 16th, the par 3 lined by grandstands and site of this week’s party at the WM Phoenix Open. Here’s your chance to see how the rest of the course sets up for the 2024 version of the PGA Tour event.
The Stadium Course opened in 1986 with a design by the team of Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish. It was renovated in 2014. The site of a Tour event since 1987, the layout will play to 7,261 yards with a par of 71 this week.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week at TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course.
How well do you know Pebble Beach? StrackaLine offers a detailed look.
Pebble Beach Golf Links in California – the main course to be used in three rounds of the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am –was designed by amateur architects Douglas Grant and Jack Neville and opened in 1919.
Pebble Beach Golf Links is one of two courses to host the Pro-Am. Also in play for the first two rounds will be Spyglass Hill Golf Club designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. Each player has one round on each course before the cut, then the final two rounds will be at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
The famed Pebble Beach layout on cliffs above Stillwater Cove and the Pacific Ocean has seen many renovations over the decades, including work done by William Herbert Fowler, Alister MacKenzie, H. Chandler Egan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and others.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
Used in the opening battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan, an Irish beach will soon be home to golf and a resort.
The American design team of Dana Fry and Jason Straka is headed to Ireland with plans to lay out a new course adjacent to Curracloe Beach in the southeast of the island.
If the beach looks familiar, you might have seen it on a big screen, as it was used in filming the opening landing scenes for Allied troops in the 1998 blockbuster “Saving Private Ryan.”
Named Curracloe Links, the new layout will be part of Ravenport Resort, which is scheduled to open this spring about a two-hour drive south of Dublin Airport, just north of Wexford. Groundbreaking for the golf course takes place in February with an expected full opening in 2026. The resort will include 50 rooms, a spa and a leisure club near what has been called the best beach in the island nation by the Irish Independent.
“The ancient linksland of Curracloe Links, with its rolling hills, long sea views and rugged natural bunkers, will offer a quintessential Irish golf experience and lure people from all over the world to its fairways,” Straka, past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, said in a media release announcing the news.
The planned routing for Curracloe Links in Ireland (Courtesy of Neville Hotel Group)
Straka, who plans to spend considerable time at the site, should be getting used to working near the sea: His recent renovation of Belleair Country Club near Tampa has proved especially popular since it opened in 2023.
Ireland-based Neville Hotel Group is developing the project. It will be Neville’s fifth property, joining Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire, Druids Glen Hotel and Golf Resort in County Wicklow, the River Court Hotel in Kilkenny and the Tower Hotel in Waterford.
StrackaLine offers a hole-by-hole guide for the Pete Dye Stadium Course for the American Express.
PGA West’s Pete Dye Stadium Course – one of three courses used for the PGA Tour’s 2024 The American Express in La Quinta, California – opened in 1986 with a design by the legendary architect whose name appears in the layout’s title.
The 7,187-yard, par-72 Stadium Course is the main track for this week’s event, hosting each player for one of the first three rounds as well as Sunday’s final round. The other two courses used in the first three rounds are La Quinta Country Club (7,060 yards, par 72) and PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course (7,147 yards, par 72). All the players have one round on each course before the cut is made for Sunday’s final round.
Worth noting, La Quinta Country Club has undergone a two-year renovation in which all the greens have been replaced. Also, the Pete Dye Stadium course will wrap up a multi-year restoration later in 2024.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week on the Stadium Course. Check out the maps of each hole below.
Cabot opens new courses in Florida and Saint Lucia, with more on the way.
Cabot effectively was a niche golf operator for much of its existence since the Canadian company opened its first course in 2012 on the remote shores of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
The original layout, Cabot Links, was exceptional, and it was followed a few years later by the even more highly ranked Cliffs course. More golf was added in 2020 in the form of a new short course, The Nest. The destination was a home run for company co-founder and CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar, who wisely put the emphasis on best-in-class golf at the Cape Breton property that was aided by the interest and investment of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort founder Mike Keiser.
But like Bandon Dunes, Cabot Cape Breton is a long way from most anywhere, and the Canadian golf season that far north runs just six months. While the Cabot brand represented the peak of modern Canadian golf, a world-class destination not to be missed by any seasoned golf traveler, for most of its existence the company wasn’t quite a major world player.
That has changed.
Cabot has grown up, and much of the globe is now its playground. By purchasing existing properties when promising and building from scratch when necessary, Cowan-Dewar has expanded Cabot’s operations south into the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean to Scotland. He has developed a focus on high-end accommodations, frequently manifesting in the form of aspirational real estate. And without defining how far he hopes to take the Cabot brand, he doesn’t plan to slow down.
The split-fairway, par-5 14th at Cabot Citrus Farms’ Karoo Course (Courtesy of Cabot/Matt Majka)
The growth has come fast and furious in recent years, most notably with the concurrent introduction of two courses in two different countries.
The built-from-scratch Point Hardy Golf Club – on one of the world’s most jaw-dropping pieces of golf land – opened to its members in December at Cabot Saint Lucia in the southern Caribbean. It soon will be followed in late January by the public-access Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida opening its first course, named Karoo, for preview play on the site of the former World Woods Golf Club.
All that is on the heels of Cabot having purchased Castle Stuart in Scotland in June of 2022, rebranding it to Cabot Highlands and announcing plans to add a second course designed by Tom Doak slated to open fully in 2025. And don’t forget Cabot Revelstoke, a mountainous destination planned to come online in 2025 with a layout by Rod Whitman, who designed the original Cabot course at Cape Breton. Revelstoke is in Canada, but this development is on the opposite side of the continent in British Columbia. Both these properties also will feature residential opportunities.
All the sudden, Cabot has become a year-round operator with developments that span nine time zones. It is now a company on which the sun will never set during the long days of a Canadian summer.
“We’ve always got a lot of irons in the fire,” Cowan-Dewar said in December while he overlooked a tropical marina not far from Point Hardy, trying to relax for a few minutes during a casual interview the day before his private Saint Lucia property hosted its members’ first rounds. “Did I ever conceive it would play out just like this? Of course not. But we did have plans to grow.”
From left, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, Mike Keiser and Ben Cowan-Dewar at Cabot Saint Lucia (Courtesy of Cabot/Jacob Sjöman)
The golf always came first for Cowan-Dewar, whose early ambitions drew the attention of a like-minded Keiser. The American developer serves as a sounding board for the Canadian, and from the beginning his advice has been to build great golf holes, then establish a business model around them.
That starts with the course architects. For Saint Lucia it would be the acclaimed team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who also designed the Cliffs at Cabot Cape Breton, rated by Golfweek’s Best as the top modern course in Canada. At Cabot Citrus Farms just north of Tampa, Cowan-Dewar selected the up-and-coming Kyle Franz for the Karoo course and is employing Franz alongside Mike Nuzzo and advisor Ran Morrissett for the second full-size 18 named The Roost, still in development and ambitiously slated to open for preview play in the spring of 2024.
Then it’s just a matter of giving the architects enough latitude to create something special on beautiful pieces of land ideally suited for golf.
“We’re hiring some of the greatest people to ever practice their craft,” Cowan-Dewar said. “How many times in your life do you get to work with some of the greatest artists at a moment in time when they are the best? And we’re lucky to do that. So we want to give them the biggest canvas possible with no limitations. Trust in the architects, and we can figure out the rest around that.”
That trust has led to two very different golf courses in Point Hardy and the Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms.
All those descriptions and plenty more have been used in recent decades to describe the golf courses designed by the late Mike Strantz, whose layouts might best be described as fun for players looking for something completely different, classical orthodoxy be damned.
Having sharpened his pencil as a design associate to Tom Fazio, Strantz created or renovated only nine courses that bear his name as lead designer, most of them in his native Carolinas or nearby Virginia. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 50, a victim of cancer. A hands-on designer, he would spend weeks walking sites or exploring on horseback with a can of spray paint to mark features he either wanted to incorporate or build into the landscape.
Trained in studio art, Strantz would hand-sketch in great detail each hole of a course before it was built, then lead his team of shapers in making his art come to life. Those golf holes often include nearly impossible-to-reach hole locations, wild bunkering, extreme greens, eye-popping mounding and dramatic slopes – all elements beloved by a growing cadre of adventure-seeking golfers.
Mike Strantz’s detailed sketches of the holes at Tot Hill Farm now decorate the new clubhouse, a refurbished farm house that replaced a trailer that was the previous clubhouse. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Imagine their despair when one of Strantz’s courses falls into disrepair, as happened with several of his layouts, especially in the wake of an industry-wide financial struggle starting in 2008.
Tot Hill Farm Golf Club in Asheboro, North Carolina, is one such example, having opened in 2000 but its former operators lacking the revenues to maintain and present the course as Strantz intended. Trees choked out fairways and strategic lines, bunker edges crumbled and playing surfaces suffered in recent years.
But that all started to change early in 2022 when native South Carolinian Pat Barber bought the course and amenities. Already the owner of two courses nearer the coast in the state – The Links at Stono Ferry and The Plantation Course at Edisto – Barber recognized an opportunity to restore Tot Hill Farm as acclaim for Strantz’s designs continues to grow, especially with the increasing popularity of the nearby Strantz-designed Tobacco Road.
“Working with the course itself, the overall natural beauty, that really attracted us to the property,” said Greg Wood, the director of operations for all three of Barber’s course. “I’ve seen Mike in video interviews saying that he felt this was one of the best pieces of properties that he got to use in his design work. All we could see was the potential.”
A restoration of Tot Hill began in the spring of 2022, and it’s easy now to say this layout has rejoined the brief list of can’t-miss Strantz designs. It would be oversight for any Strantz fan to head to the nearby golf mecca of Pinehurst or the Carolina coast and miss the incredible amount of work that has gone into turning around the rolling and rollicking Tot Hill Farm.
The site always held so much promise. With more than 250 of feet of elevation change and boulders littering the landscape, the holes frequently heave up, down and across rambling creeks, the greens often perched perfectly into hillsides. The whole place just needed somebody to come along and scrape away 20 years of hard times.
More than 1,500 trees were cleared, re-establishing fairway widths and playing lines. Several arbitrary bunkers that weren’t part of Strantz’s design were removed, and his original traps were reinvigorated. Players must plot their way around them, and with the corridors having been widened, there are choices available instead of the previous condition of bowling alley tightness between the branches that choked out shot selection as well the health of the turf.
The green at the par-5 fifth at Tot Hill Farm is shaped like no other putting surface this author has seen, with a tiny portion in the front that rises abruptly to a much larger back section. The shape leads to this green earning some unusual nicknames – think juvenile humor, but be sure to lay up well to the right on the second shot if you plan to hit it. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
The greens were rebuilt and surfaced with Prizm Zoysia, a new strain of grass that promises to withstand Asheboro’s cold winters that are too frigid for Bermuda grass and the hot summers that are too steamy for bent grass to thrive. The new surfaces are still growing in, but during a late-fall round they had started to pick up some steam and promise even more to come. An interesting fact about this strain of zoysia: The grass covering is so dense, it’s almost impossible to leave a pitch mark on a green, and that same characteristic is promising for the preferred firm and bouncy conditions.
Wood is quick to call all the work a restoration effort, not a renovation. Crews worked in painstaking detail to put back what Strantz had intended, frequently using the architect’s hand-drawings – those sketches now decorate the new clubhouse that has been created in an idyllic old farmhouse, replacing a trailer that served that function before. The restorers also had access to more than 40 hours of construction video featuring the original design.
“Over time, we figured out how it’s supposed to be,” Wood, a longtime PGA of America member, said of Strantz’s design which is a likely contender for future inclusion among Golfweek’s Best public-access courses in North Carolina. “And for somebody like me, figuring out the puzzle and the why – even now, as I walk a hole, I’ll find something new.”
Playing Tot Hill is a mixture of various wows and walking on eggshells, so far as the scorecard goes. Strantz clearly wasn’t interested in building easy golf, and several holes prove Tot Hill is no exception. Much like Tobacco Road just more than an hour’s drive away, Tot Hill Farm in particular punishes wayward approach shots, the greens frequently seeming to shrug off approach shots with a “not-good-enough” attitude.
The green of the par-3 third at Tot Hill Farm sits over a creek that wraps tightly behind the putting surface as well, with the back portion of the green guarded by a hill and a deep bunker. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Strantz included sections on several greens that might prove inaccessible to all but a tour player’s towering precision. The skinny back right hole location on the par-3 third hole, hidden behind sand aside a hill with a creek just steps off the back, will likely prove to an average player to be a no-go.
Another thrilling tear-jerker is the drop-down rear portion of the 10th green before the putting surface tumbles steeply downhill to form a double green with No. 12, the center portion now covered in tight fringe instead of even lower green-height zoysia. Just try and hit the back right portion of the par-3 13th green, hidden beyond a stream and behind a boulder.
There are other oddities. For example, several tees are routed in such a way that players must double back and play directly across previous holes, as noted on No. 4 and possibly No. 14 if a restored tee atop a hill is put into play. Such routing can create odd bottlenecks, and while it might be manageable on a private course with limited rounds, it could prove problematic on a packed day of public play.
These and other examples might cause a facial tic among some classic architecture purists. But with plenty of width now available, a thoughtful golfer can find a way around all the trouble, choosing to play to safer sections of the greens on each of the examples above, then putting the putter to use in search of par. All around Tot Hill Farm is danger to a golfer’s score, and close by is a safer route. It’s up to the golfer to put aside ego and expectation, accepting the limitations of what Strantz offered in some places while pouncing on opportunities when friendlier hole locations are identified. There are birdies out there.
In short, it’s all about the strategy. And that might begin even before the first tee shot, as the frustrations of Tot Hill Farm’s difficulties most greatly affect stroke play. This could be one of the best match-play courses in the U.S., for those who embrace that format.
“If you come back and play this course several times, the thing you’ll find intriguing is there are multiple ways to play every hole,” Wood said. “When I first took on the project, I didn’t really understand that. But as I continue on and on with it, I find that very intriguing and I’m enjoying it more and more.”
Nos. 10 and 12 at Tot Hill Farm share what originally was a pure double green and still plays that way, with the steep area between mowed to a tight and bouncy fringe height. No. 10 plays in from the bottom right, while No. 12 plays across the water from the left. No. 10 green proper features a huge downward slope midway through the green, which can send balls hit too deep cascading all the way down to the water or No. 12. (Courtesy of Tot Hill Farm/Ryan Barnett)
The layout reopened in the fall of 2023, and bookings are picking up speed for 2024. Green fees are relatively low, currently $70 through the winter with a peak of $125 planned for the new year – carts are an extra $25. Tot Hill Farm is also appearing as a packaged option around Pinehurst, which is less than an hour to the south via Interstate 74.
The best way to enjoy Strantz’s work at Tot Hill Farm might be to race across the Carolinas, playing Tot Hill and Tobacco Road in North Carolina before heading to the coast to sample Strantz’s Caledonia Golf and Fish Club and True Blue near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. For an adventurous group of golfers, that would be an unforgettable trek.
And it’s just such players that are most likely to book and rebook rounds at Tot Hill Farm. It’s not a classical layout, and it might be too severe in places to tickle every player’s fancy. But the recent surge in popularity for Strantz courses, particularly on Instagram and X-the-former-Twitter, will surely help Tot Hill’s operators fill the tee sheets.
“We think the adventure-style golf course, Mike was kind of at the forefront of it, and we feel like we’re bringing something that was almost forgotten back to people,” Wood said. “We feel really fortunate to be a part of it. Unfortunately, Mike passed away way too soon. For us to be caretakers of a Mike Strantz course, we find that to be a real honor.”
Long known as the Adobe Course, the Tom Lehman-redesign is now the Estates Course.
PHOENIX — Nearly 15 years after acquiring the property, and after an eight-month renovation during one of the hottest summers on record, the Arizona Biltmore Golf Club’s main attraction is back open for business.
Long known as the Adobe Course, the Tom Lehman redesign is now the public-access Estates Course. There’s a modern new clubhouse that’s up and running, stocked with the coolest apparel brands and logoed gear. While golfers are already making their way around the new fairways, complete with views of the Phoenix skyline in one direction and Camelback Mountain in another, there’s a lot more coming, including a new restaurant, balcony, ballroom and more.
The 18-hole layout has taken the Estates name to better reflect the high-end exclusive enclave of this Phoenix community. The Biltmore had 36 holes in all, with the Estates Course situated on one giant piece of land and the companion Links Course meandering through the neighborhood.
Built in the late 1920s, Biltmore Golf occupies a prime piece of real estate.
“Looking down at the course and looking at the city, and the mountains around us and what it all represents, it’s so historic,” said Jerry Colangelo, one of the owners of JDM Partners, which bought the Biltmore during the economic downtown in 2009. “You can’t find a better piece of property in the heart of a major city than you can right here in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Arizona Biltmore.”
The Arizona Biltmore Golf Club in Phoenix (Photo: Golfweek)
Surrounded by multi-million dollar homes, in the shadows of the famous Wrigley mansion and within walking distance of the esteemed Arizona Biltmore Resort, the Estates course plays just under 6,700 yards from the back tees, making this par 71 a not-so-brutal test for golfers looking to have a fun time.
Work on the golf course finally started in April of 2023 after lengthy discussions and planning with homeowners, stakeholders and industry experts. The Lehman Design Group also had to battle Mother Nature through the course reopening in November.
“It was compounded by one of the worst summers. I don’t know how many trees were lost,” Lehman told Golfweek after returning from participating in the PNC Championship in Orlando with his son Sean. “That was one of the unfortunate and little bit unlucky parts of the project. The summer was merciless on the plants.”
A few trees were lost but most remain, giving the venue one of the few Phoenix-area courses with large, mature trees requiring, from time to time, some creative shot-making.
Built by chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. in the late 1920s, the Biltmore has hosted presidents and movie stars. The Adobe Restaurant’s walls were covered in large framed photos of George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower roaming the grounds. There’s also a painting of Lehman kissing the Claret Jug, commemorating his lone major championship, the 1996 British Open.
The restaurant is being demolished during the renovation, but the framed photos will grace the walls of the Gallery still under construction adjacent to the ballroom.
Lehman’s friendship with Colangelo goes back to the early ’90s, when Lehman first moved with his family to Scottsdale. At that time Colangelo was best known as the popular owner of the Phoenix Suns, a franchise for which he also previously served as general manager and head coach. While he relentlessly pursued an NBA championship, he ultimately fell short of that goal but he did bring a major professional sports title to the city when, as managing general partner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, he hoisted the World Series trophy just four years after the baseball team played its first game.
The Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix in the 1920s
Colangelo, who at age 84 says it’s still “fun building things,” also owns the Wigwam in Litchfield Park with his JDM partners, David Eaton and Mel Shultz, giving the group a property in the fast-growing west side of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Colangelo says it was important to have someone local on hand to re-do the Biltmore’s golf course, and Lehman fit the bill.
“I don’t know how many visits I’ve made to that golf course over the last five years, but it has to be in the hundreds,” said Lehman, who plans to play a full PGA Tour Champions schedule in 2024 while staying somewhat active in the design and renovation arena. “Living in the area, I made myself very available to them.”
Photos of U.S. presidents are featured at the Arizona Biltmore Golf Club. (Photo: Golfweek)
At the Estates Course, golfers are going to find a traditional, parkland-style layout with adjoining fairways allowing for the not-so-accurate tee shot to find a relatively friendly landing spot. The large, undulating greens will make for some creative putting opportunities. There is a manmade lake to store the course’s water near the 18th tee box. Along the sixth hole is a meandering creek.
The Estates isn’t expensive Scottsdale desert golf nor is it trying to be, and that’s OK. It’s the playability that makes the course fun. For example, the fifth hole brings golfers right back to the first tee, so for those who feel like sneaking in a late-day five-hole loop, the Estates Course can provide just that.
The large building still under construction just off the 18th green will have an outdoor post-round gathering area. The new restaurant will be a popular spot, and there will also be a grab-and-go place called the Pantry offering quick bites for those on the move. An upstairs balcony will allow for some fantastic sunset viewing. Also coming: a large ballroom for big parties, celebrations and perhaps even a piano bar, one of Colangelo’s favorite evening pastimes from his days on the road in the NBA.
“We have a great opportunity to have a bright future,” Colangelo said.
Former U.S. Open winner Jim Furyk is planning a nice practice spot for former British Open champ Cam Smith in Jacksonville.
Glen Kernan Golf and Country Club’s new ownership group has one Claret Jug to its credit, plus a U.S. Open trophy won by its new course designer.
The Jacksonville, Florida-based private club was purchased Friday by local developer Corner Lot, which counts 2022 British Open champion Cam Smith as an investor and 2003 U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk as heading up the course renovation. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
“I’ve had the pleasure of becoming friends with Cam and Jim over the past couple of years,” wrote Andy Allen, CEO of Corner Lot Development Group, a privately-owned real estate developer in North Florida, in a text. “When this opportunity came up, I wanted to put a team and partnership in place with an aligned vision for a golf club that will have a greater impact on our community by bringing a golf experience second to none in Jacksonville. Corner Lot’s mission is to build up our city through smart development and partnerships. This one may take the cake.”
Smith, who defected to LIV Golf shortly after winning the Open at St. Andrews in 2022, the same year he won the Players Championship, initially struggled to find a permanent place to play in his adopted hometown after losing access to TPC Sawgrass in the wake of his leaving for LIV. He has since become a member at Ponte Vedra Inn & Club and March Landing Country Club. But this will be Smith’s first foray into the golf ownership business.
“Andy Allen kept saying I want you to meet with Cam Smith, and that’s how it happened,” said Travis Norman, an executive with Hampton Golf, which will manage Glen Kernan. “I went and met with his business team, and he’s in.”
Smith may have to wait a little while to make Glen Kernan, which was designed by Robert Walker and opened in 1999, his home course. The plan is to shut it down for a year and renovate the course, which sits on 260 acres. Lot lines and home sites are more removed from the golf holes than on some other courses in the area, leaving wide corridors for the golf.
“There’s a significant amount of deferred maintenance to be addressed in the first year to make it a premier club in the area,” Norman said. “We know that demand is high for a high-end private club with limited membership, and the supply is lower in this market.”
Norman said they also will expand the clubhouse and freshen other amenities at its athletic park including pickleball, tennis and a fitness center.
Furyk, a 16-time winner on the PGA Tour who at age 53 remains active on PGA Tour Champions, already has been engaged by another course to be managed by Hampton Golf: Glynlea Country Club at Wylder, a new community planned for Port St. Lucie on the southeast coast of Florida.
“I got the opportunity to walk the first six holes at Glynlea with Jim, and just to hear him talk and see the shaping and his green complexes and bunker design, it was very impressive,” said Norman, whose company already manages Palencia Club, Blue Sky Golf Club and Eagle Harbor among others on Florida’s First Coast. “So his design ability coupled with his knowledge and passion for this golf course made him an obvious choice. Plus, he’s been around this golf course for 20 years. He’s played it with his son and father and he knows every mound on this golf course.”
Furyk has been a longtime member at Glen Kernan. His parents eat there regularly. Furyk said the course is one exit away from Pablo Creek Golf Club, where he practices often, and so it will be convenient to make regular visits.
“The golf course has a lot of promise and good bones,” Furyk said. “Our plan is to make a few holes a little more playable for our average golfers and extend some tee boxes to lengthen the course for our better players.”
Asked if he expects Smith to be involved in some of the design decisions, Furyk said, “I’m sure he’ll be interested. I think Andy has let him know that he can have some input on the practice facilities (at the double-sided range) and such, so I’ll talk to him a little bit about that. I’m sure Cam will want some privacy at the back of the range to get his work done and get ready for tournament golf.” (Smith’s management team didn’t return a call seeking comment.)
Friday was the last day the club was open for play as Corner Lot officially assumed control, and construction is scheduled to begin next week. “We want to create the premier experience in this market,” Norman said. “We think we have the right footprint, the right designer and we’re going to make something special.”
The seller (the Hodges family) also sold land to a local developer who plans to build in the neighborhood of 100 homes.
Kapalua’s Plantation Course is steep, but exactly how steep? A hint: No. 18 tumbles down more than 50 feet.
Kapalua’s Plantation Course in Hawaii – site of this week’s season-opening The Sentry on the PGA Tour – was the first course built by the now-legendary design duo of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The mountainside layout opened in 1991 and was restored in 2019.
The Plantation maxes out at 7,596 yards with a par of 73, and it has only one par 3 on the back nine. With several downhill tee shots and the possibility of several drives rolling out past 400 yards, the course usually plays significantly shorter than the yardage might indicate.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week. Check out the maps of each hole below.
