Photos: The Chain short course, designed by Coore and Crenshaw, opens soon at Streamsong

Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw turn up the volume with The Chain at Streamsong.

BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – There are expectations for architects as they design a golf hole. Length, width, severity of contours, difficulty, placement of the green – there’s room for creativity, sure, but stray too far from tradition and a few eyebrows certainly will be raised.

Except for short par 3s. Great architects have long let their imaginations wander with the most miniature of holes on many acclaimed courses.

“It seems that’s there a theme that every wonderful, great course I’ve ever seen always includes a little short par 3 somewhere,” said Ben Crenshaw, the two-time Masters champion, golf historian and design partner with Bill Coore. “Short par 3s are pretty tantalizing for a lot of people. There’s so many brilliant examples of that. It just adds spice.”

Coore and Crenshaw have included many such holes on the dozens of golf courses they have designed together. Often not much over 120 yards or even shorter, these pint-sized par 3s are famed for offering intrigue as players plan for birdies but often pencil in bogeys or worse on their scorecards.

Soon comes a new chance to play a string of such holes as Streamsong opens all of its newest short course, The Chain, to preview play March 31. Until then, the resort is allowing limited preview play on less than the full course as it continues to grow in. The Chain is expected to fully open to resort play later this year.

The new par-3 course, The Chain, at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Matt Hahn)

Built by Coore and Crenshaw, The Chain will offer 19 holes ranging from 41 to 293 yards, each offering a vast teeing area that allows players to pick a length. Want to play No. 8 with a driver? Step back to the huge metal chain link sunk into the ground and swing away. Want to play the same hole at 170? Go for it. It’s totally up to each group, or even each player. No. 1 can be 57 yards or 110, all the way to No. 19 at that ranges from 115 to 145.

The resort never refers to par for any hole, though the vast majority of them will require just one full shot for most players. Call them par 3s, or call them whatever you like – the resort’s operators don’t really care as long as players are having a blast.

The course was laid out in such a way that players can take a six-hole or a 13-hole loop, but resort operators expect most to play all 19. The Chain is a short walk from The Lodge at Streamsong, so late-afternoon tee times will be at a premium after many players tackle one of the resort’s highly acclaimed full-size courses – Red, Blue and Black – in the mornings. The Chain should prove especially popular during Streamsong’s peak winter season, when curtailed daylight might prevent a second 18-hole loop, and among players arriving to the resort mid-afternoon or simply those who just don’t want to stretch their golf to 36 traditional holes a day.

Streamsong Chain
Nos. 18 and 19 of the new short course, The Chain, at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Matt Hahn)

Also expect to encounter plenty of fun shots on The Chain. Coore and Crenshaw were granted a feast of freedom in designing the layout that maxes out at 3,026 yards, and they dreamed up plenty of internal contours and ground features that will only improve as the greens and their sandy surrounds continue to mature and become even more firm and bouncy.

“We can do things with a shorter course, where players are hitting shorter shots and you can be a bit more aggressive with the greens and some of the things,” Coore said recently after a tour of the layout alongside Crenshaw. “Things are in more of a reduced scale, and you can take more liberties and a few more risks to do greens and surrounds with interesting things that you might not be able to do with a regulation course. …

“For years, people have said (about full-size courses), ‘You can’t do that, it won’t be accepted, that’s too radical.’ With a par-3 course, you can kind of dispense with that a little and say, ‘It’s a par-3 course; we can do that.’ If you’re in our profession, it gives you freedom to work.”

The Chain includes a bunker in the middle of a green at No. 6, the aforementioned No. 8 that can play for many as a short par 4, and several trips across water and quarries at the former phosphate mining site. There are plenty of slopes that will help feed golf balls onto the putting surfaces and more devious contours that can sweep a ball off a green.

The tee markers at The Chain at Streamsong are huge chain links left over from mining. But instead of markers on each side of the tee, these links mark the front and back positions for each tee, which can stretch for dozens of yards, allowing players to select the yardage they will play each hole. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)

The hole most likely to be relived over post-round beverages is the 209-yard (max) 11th, where a punchbowl green awaits on the opposite side of a pond, just a thin slit in the nearly vertical bank showing the putting surface from the tee. Players can try to just crest the forward mounds with their tee shots, or they can intentionally take it deep past the flag and trust that the ball will roll backward onto the green – this might be the safest route, and it’s a blast to watch balls scamper back toward the putting surface as if pulled by a string.

“Probably most people would point to that hole,” Coore said when asked what he anticipates will be the biggest talker among the 19 holes. “You play over the beautiful lake. It used to be a flat piece of ground out there, and we just mined a bunch of sand out of it and made a big hole.”

But don’t expect No. 11 to be a pushover, even with slopes on all sides of the green to feed the ball toward the hole – especially for players who flirt with the water short or right in trying to play a shot to the yardage instead of just hitting it long. Streamsong Black, the 18-hole design by Gil Hanse, already offers a famous punchbowl green, but The Chain’s variation is much smaller and tighter in scope, fitting with Coore and Crenshaw’s focus on right-sized targets for the par-3 course.

“I think the long punchbowl hole, in this little family of holes, will probably be maybe the toughest hole because it’s a long carry,” Crenshaw said. “It’s basically an old idea if you have a long shot across something, that you have a gathering green, a punchbowl. That may be one at the top of the list” that players remember.

The new Bucket putting course at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Scott Powers)

Before or after a loop around The Chain, players can tackle The Bucket, the 2.6-acre putting course that sits within the par-3 course. Drinks and snacks also will be available onsite with the resort planning to add a clubhouse later, surely making the new complex a preferred hangout for resort guests.

Coore and Crenshaw also designed the Red Course at Streamsong, which opened in 2012 and ranks as the No. 2 Golfweek’s Best public-access layout in Florida and ties for No. 16 among all resort courses in the United States. The resort’s Blue Course by Tom Doak also opened in 2012 and ranks No. 3 among Florida’s public layouts and No. 20 among all U.S. resort courses, while the Black by Hanse opened in 2017 to become No. 4 in Florida and No. 23 on Golfweek’s Best resort list.

Coore said he’s always loved the allure of the site, where sand was piled high for decades as part of phosphate mining operations. The name of The Chain references the dragline chains used by miners, and The Bucket is so named because of the massive scoops once used to move earth at the mining site, one of which has been placed at the new putting course.

“People love it when they get here,” he said. “It’s a little mysterious the first time, but when they see it, they say ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in Florida.’ It has been so much fun to be a part of it.”

Crenshaw summed it up: “We do believe the Chain will be a positive extension of the journey.”

Check out photos of each hole below.

Check the yardage book: Bay Hill for the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational on the PGA Tour

StrackaLine offers a hole-by-hole course guide to Bay Hill and the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard.

Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, site of the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by Mastercard on the PGA Tour, opened in 1961 with a design by Dick Wilson. Arnold Palmer took over the property on lease in 1970, bought it in 1975 and made adjustments to the course multiple times over the following decades.

Bay Hill, which has been the site of the Tour event since 1979, ranks No. 5 in Florida on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access layouts in each state. It also ties for No. 191 on Golfweek’s Best list of all modern courses in the U.S., and it ties for No. 58 on the list of all resort courses in the U.S.

Bay Hill will play to 7,466 yards with a par of 72. The layout is one of the toughest on the PGA Tour each year.

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 Bay Hill.

Check the yardage book: PGA National’s Champion Course for the 2024 Cognizant Classic on the PGA Tour

StrackaLine takes you through the Bear Trap and the rest of PGA National’s Champion Course.

The Champion Course at PGA National – site of this week’s Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches on the PGA Tour – was designed by the team of Tom Fazio and George Fazio and opened in 1981. The course has been renovated by Jack Nicklaus over the past two decades.

Located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and home to a stretch of holes dubbed the Bear Trap – Nos. 15, 16 and 17 – the Champion has major history. It was host to the 1983 Ryder Cup, in which the United States beat Europe 14 ½-13 ½, and it hosted the 1987 PGA Championship won by Larry Nelson in a playoff over Lanny Wadkins. Now PGA National is the first stop on the PGA Tour’s annual Florida Swing.

The Champion ranks No. 7 in Florida on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access courses in each state, and it ties for No. 69 on the list of top resort courses in the U.S.

The course will play to 7,147 yards with a par of 71 for the Cognizant Classic. No. 6 plays as a par 5 for resort guests (and is marked as such on the following yardage map), but it counts as a par 4 for the PGA Tour pros.

PGA National Resort is home to six courses, including two nontraditional layouts that include the new Match Course by Andy Staples, which features holes that can be played from a multitude of lengths with no set par, and the new nine-hole, par-3 Staple Course.

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 PGA National.

Check the yardage book: Riviera for the 2024 Genesis Invitational on the PGA Tour

These putting green heat maps are among the hottest on Tour. Check out the slopes.

Riviera Country Club – one of the highest-ranked courses on the PGA Tour schedule each season – was designed by George C. Thomas and William P. Bell and opened in 1927 in Pacific Palisades, California. It hosts the 2024 Genesis Invitational this week.

Riviera will play to 7,322 yards with a par of 71 for the Genesis Invitational.

The layout ranks No. 4 in California on Golfweek’s Best list of private courses in each state, and it’s No. 18 among all classic courses built before 1960 in the U.S.

Besides hosting the Tour each year, Riviera will be the site of the 2026 U.S. Women’s Open and the 2032 U.S. Open, as well as hosting the 2028 Olympic Golf competition.

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 Riviera.

Must-see video: Bandon Dunes’ new par-3 course, Shorty’s, opens in May

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.

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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.

Check out the accompanying video to learn more:

Check the yardage book: TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course for the 2024 WM Phoenix Open on the PGA Tour

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.

The layout ranks No. 4 in Arizona on Golfweek’s Best list of top public-access layouts in each state. It also ties for No. 83 on Golfweek’s Best list of top resort courses in the U.S.

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.

Check the yardage book: Pebble Beach Golf Links for the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

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.

Pebble Beach Golf Links ranks No. 10 on Golfweek’s Best list of classic courses in the U.S., and it is No. 1 in California on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access layouts in each state. It is also No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best list of all public-access courses in the U.S.

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.

Check the yardage book: Torrey Pines South for the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour

StrackaLine offers a hole-by-hole course guide for the main layout used in the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

Torrey Pines’ South Course in San Diego – the main layout used in the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour – was designed by the father-son duo of William P. Bell and William F. Bell and opened in 1957. The layout was extensively renovated by Rees Jones in 2001, and he made later refinements in 2019.

The first two rounds of the Farmers (Wednesday and Thursday) are split between Torrey Pines’ North and South courses, with the final two rounds (Friday and Saturday) on the South after the field is cut.

The South ranks No. 4 in California on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access courses in each state, and it ranks No. 111 on Golfweek’s Best list of all classic courses built in the U.S. before 1960. The North Course ranks No. 10 among California’s public-access tracks.

The South will play to 7,765 yards with a par of 72, while the North plays to 7,258 yards, also with a par of 72.

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 South Course.

Check the yardage book: PGA West’s Pete Dye Stadium Course for the PGA Tour’s 2024 American Express

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.

The Stadium Course ranks No. 11 in California on Golfweek’s Best list of top public-access courses, and the Nicklaus Tournament Course ties for No. 21 in the state on that list.

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 steps up as world player with opening of new courses at Citrus Farms, Saint Lucia

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.

Cabot Citrus Farms
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.

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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.”

Cabot Saint Lucia
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.