MYAKKA CITY, Fla. – Nick Price’s enthusiasm is evident as we trundle across a pasture in a four-wheeled off-roader, skimming shallow puddles and curving around the sandy Florida scrub.
The three-time major championship winner keeps pointing out features about the land. See that stand of trees over there? That will be a tee box. See that hump? That’s a green. See that fence line? That will be a par 4. Let me show you the river, if you have time.
For almost an hour, Price shows off what will become Soleta Golf Club. The Zimbabwean couldn’t be more thrilled to be the lead architect. As I pepper him with questions, he chats amicably about his plans to transform all the former farmland around us into a top-tier private golf course, typically in great detail.
“You’ll have to come back to see how this works out,” said Price, 66, a former World No. 1 who retired from steady competitive golf eight years ago. “You’re going to love it. Well, I’m going to love it, I know that.”
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Before ground has even been broken, Price has made dozens of site visits, driving across the state’s peninsula from his Hobe Sound home in southeast Florida to what will be the club and residential community about a 40-minute drive east of Sarasota and 75 minutes southeast of Tampa. He plans to make the trip dozens of more times to keep an eye on every detail as the course is built, with a planned opening in late 2024.
Since Soleta – named for the indigenous Native American word meaning sandhill cranes, according to the club – was announced in July, Price has set about turning this fairly flat piece of Florida upland into the 27th golf course with his name attached, be it as a consultant or lead designer. And he’s determined to be hands-on.
“I’ve got to stand in this space while it’s being done, to make sure everything looks right,” said Price, who won two PGA Championships (1992, 1994), one British Open (1994) and 18 PGA Tour titles in all among his 48 worldwide wins. “I have a much better vision for distances and feel for the property when I’m actually here. That’s why I enjoy doing the dirt work. I’ll probably come out once every two weeks, for a couple days each time. I need to see it.”
Under development by a private group led by David Turner and Charles Duff, Soleta will include a planned 93 high-end residences and a village center. But those will be kept at the north end of the property separate from the golf, leaving Price more than a mile-long run toward the Myakka River. The club also will include a 30-acre practice facility designed by instructor David Leadbetter.
“From the very start, these guys have allowed us to put the emphasis on the golf,” Price said of the developers. “It’s not about the homes, not about anything else. The emphasis will be on the golf, and I love that.”
This is typical inland Florida, with one-light towns clustered around crossroads and more cattle than people. It’s a far cry from the traffic of Interstate 75 and the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. Drive these dozens of miles east of the Gulf of Mexico, and instead of golfers you likely will find farm workers lined up for lunch at gas stations. There are plenty of golf communities closer to Sarasota, but Soleta is well east of those crowds.
As with most of its neighboring parcels, the land for Soleta was farmed and family-owned for decades. This land is relatively flat with a few wet stretches, challenging Price to create what he desires most in a golf course: firm and fast conditions that incorporate the ground game.
“All the great courses I have played over the years allow you to run the ball in, at least on certain holes,” said Price, known as one of the top ball-strikers of his generation. “You use the bounce and you use the slope, and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
The plans are to move as much or more than 1 million cubic yards of dirt, creating a handful of small lakes, the digging of which will provide sand to lift the golf holes. Price plans to generate elevation changes where currently there are none, with wide expanses of sandy native areas and natural-looking landscaping between holes instead of what a golfer typically finds in Florida, which is great expanses of green turf among pine trees. Taming the water flow will be key.
“To me, the brilliance of any architect is how well they get rid of the water, especially in Florida,” Price said. “Here, we have so much water – the less time it spends underneath in the subsoil, the better. We’ll move the water away from the golf course to get those firm conditions.”
The planned layout features two loops playing southward toward the Myakka River, which this far inland is more like a gentle stream. The southern point of the club is a gorgeous Florida scene, the river slowly coursing through cypresses and oaks. The club plans to leave this area relatively untouched to protect the native wetlands environment. Price has altered the planned layout several times, tweaking his routing to take advantage of what the land offers as it approaches the river.
“We’ve got the bones of this plan looking really good now,” he said. “The angles will be everything.”
Price imagines a course built high enough upon the land to provide those firm bounces he craves, with a mixture of long and short holes that will make most players hit every club in their bags. The conversation keeps returning to firm and fast conditions, with Price’s love of old-school links golf in the United Kingdom evident.
“It’s like on links courses, where you have one little 5-yard bunker but it has a catchment area of maybe 40 yards where everything rolls in,” he said in describing ideal playing conditions. “You have to think about how you want to play that. You can’t ignore that one little bunker. That’s what we want to do here.”
Price goes on to name several architects – Gil Hanse, the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, even Tom Fazio in some cases – who have incorporated large areas of exposed sand into firm and bouncy American courses. He’s taking a similar tact at Soleta.
“It’s not just about how beautiful the flowers are,” he said. “You want a contrast of nature. That’s what I love. You never see anything with a straight line in nature, and very infrequently do you see anything dead flat in nature. I hate straight lines on a golf course, and I hate dead flat.”
Price is accustomed to building in Florida, with his biggest hit the original layout at McArthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound. Price partnered with Fazio to construct what is now the ninth-ranked private course in Florida and a top-100 modern course in the U.S., according to Golfweek’s Best rankings. He also built Quail Valley in Vero Beach alongside Tommy Fazio, Tom Fazio’s nephew. His other design credits stretch from Mexico to Myrtle Beach, from South Africa to Hong Kong.
Even with 26 courses already bearing his name, Price hopes to use Soleta as a springboard to expand his eponymous design business and his solo portfolio.
“I’m very focused on this project (at Soleta), he said. “I really always have protected my integrity with what I am putting my name on, and that’s what I want here, something that good.
“Beyond that, you know, I’m looking forward to the next 10 or 12 years to really being able to do some nice properties and do some nice things I can leave behind. More McArthurs and more Quail Valleys. Let’s see how far we can take this.”