Ranking the top public golf courses you can play in every state, as judged by Golfweek’s nationwide group of experts.
Not a member somewhere? Not a problem.
With this list of Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play, we present the best public-access courses in each state, as judged by our nationwide network of raters.
The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged together to produce a final rating for each course. Each course is then ranked against other courses in its state to produce the final rankings.
All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. (For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern and classic courses in the U.S.). * indicates new or returning to the rankings.
(Pictured atop this story is Sweetens Cove in Tennessee.)
TPC Sawgrass Players Stadium Course is No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play in Florida, with Streamsong claiming Nos. 2, 3 and 4.
Sure, we all know about the 17th hole of the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. That island green soaks up much of the attention every year in the PGA Tour’s Players Championship.
As the No. 1 course in Florida on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access layouts, the Players Stadium is the epitome of golf in the Sunshine State. Built by Pete Dye – with plenty of inspiration from his wife, Alice Dye – on flat, swampy ground and opened in 1980, it is a perfect example of the challenges that often face course designers in golf-rich Florida and the creative ways in which architects attempt to address them.
Golfweek ranks courses by compiling the average ratings – on a points basis of 1 to 10 – of its more than 750 raters to create several industry-leading lists of courses. That includes the popular Best Courses You Can Play list for courses that allow non-member tee times. These generally are defined as layouts accessible to resort guests or regular daily-fee players.
The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is No. 1 on that list, and it can be a beast for amateurs in the 51 weeks a year the course does not host the Tour’s best. Water, long rough, plenty of length – there’s no shortage of challenges. But it’s the creativity of the shaping and the demands on shotmaking that set the layout apart from most courses in Florida.
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That famed 17th green is a perfect example of the Dyes’ creative thinking to handle the challenges architects often face when building in Florida. Designers frequently dig ponds all around a course, both to handle drainage from frequent heavy rains and to supply building material to lift fairways and greens above the water table. Dye’s island green certainly wasn’t the first in Florida – it wasn’t even the first on that stretch of A1A, as that honor goes to No. 9 at the nearby Ponte Vedra Inn and Club’s Ocean Course – but the 137-yarder he created faces players at a critical time in one of the Tour’s largest events.
For Pete and Alice Dye, No. 17 was a perfect opportunity to make something special instead of having just another pond – if you must have all that water, why not stick an island green in it? The results have had players shaking over their 9-irons ever since.
Streamsong Red in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Laurence Lambrecht)
Water wasn’t nearly as big a part of the equation at the next four courses on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in Florida. Streamsong Resort in Bowling Green and World Woods in Brooksville had something even better: sand. Lots and lots of it.
Within the past decade, Streamsong has opened three courses built on sand. The Red, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, ranks No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best list for public-access tracks in Florida. The Black by Gil Hanse is next at No. 3, followed by Tom Doak’s Blue at No. 4. Built largely on old phosphate-mining spoil, the layouts at Streamsong stand out because of their other-worldly topographies created by all that sand, which once was an ancient seabed – the place is littered with shark teeth – and that provides an ideal playing surface.
Streamsong Black (Courtesy of Streamsong Resort/Laurence Lambrecht)
On top of some of that sand sits new green surfaces for the nearly decade-old Red and Blue courses. Streamsong installed new Mach 1 putting surfaces on those two courses in 2020, ensuring its oldest layouts – dating to 2012 an hour southeast of Tampa or 90 minutes southwest of Orlando – remain fresh and provide world-class conditioning.
Streamsong’s threesome also has broken into Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses list. The Red is No. 39 on that listed, followed by the Black at No. 46 and the Blue at No. 57. The trio also made it into Golfweek’s Best Resort Courses list for the U.S., with the Red at No. 15, the Black at No. 18 and the Blue at No. 21, making Streamsong one of the premium three-course destinations in the world.
Streamsong Blue (Courtesy of Streamsong Resort/Laurence Lambrecht)
Tom Fazio’s Pine Barrens course at World Woods north of Tampa also utilized sand instead of water. Opened in 1993, Pine Barrens’ native, rolling terrain and large sandy waste areas offer a non-traditional Florida experience. Rolling Oaks, the second 18 at World Woods, ranks No. 20 in Florida on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can play.
So while the Players Stadium Course has made the most of its water, the next four public-access layouts in Florida on Golfweek’s Best rankings took advantage of their sandy environments. For a state that prides itself on beach life, these five layouts are a perfect meeting of water and sand.
Each year, we publish the three lists that are the foundation of our course-ratings program: Golfweek’s Best 2020: Top 200 Classic Courses, Golfweek’s Best 2020: Top 200 Modern Courses and Golfweek’s Best 2020: Best Courses You Can Play.
These are the best courses you can play in Florida.
TPC Sawgrass (Players Stadium), Ponte Vedra Beach (No. 22 m)
Streamsong (Red), Bowling Green (No. 39 m)
Streamsong (Black), Bowling Green (No. 46 m)
Streamsong (Blue), Bowling Green (No. 57 m)
World Woods (Pine Barrens), Brooksville (No. 171 m)
Trump National Doral Miami (Blue Monster), Doral (m)
Black Diamond Ranch (Quarry), Lecanto (m)
Bay Hill Club, Orlando (m)
Innisbrook (Cooperhead), Tarpon Springs (m)
Hammock Beach Resort (Ocean), Palm Coast (m)
PGA National Resort & Spa (Champion), Palm Beach Gardens (m)
The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged together to produce a final rating for each course. Then each course is ranked against other courses in its state, or nationally, to produce the final rankings.
The AJGA is adding invitationals in 2021 at two top venues: Streamsong Resort and Champions Golf Club.
The American Junior Golf Association tends to celebrate long weekends with tournament opportunities. As this weekend’s AJGA Simplify Boys Championship at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas, approaches, the AJGA has added two more similar championships.
This marks the first time since 2007 that boys stroke-play invitationals – which draw the deepest fields on the AJGA schedule – have been added to the AJGA lineup.
The organization announced on Wednesday that it would host the Team TaylorMade Invitational on May 29-31, 2021. Top juniors will spend Memorial Day weekend at Streamsong Resort’s Blue Course in remote Bowling Green, Florida.
Streamsong Blue lands in the top 20 on Golfweek’s Best 2020 list of top resort courses and has never hosted an AJGA event before. The U.S. Golf Association hosted the second U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball at Streamsong Resort in 2016. The Florida State Golf Association frequently uses it for a championship site, and the inaugural Golfweek Streamsong Amateur was played on the Blue Course in December.
Along with the Team TaylorMade Invitational, the AJGA last week added the Jack Burke Jr. Invitational to the August schedule. The 54-hole boys event will be played at Champions Golf Club Cypress Creek course, where the U.S. Women’s Open was played in December.
Interestingly, the event, to be played Aug. 3-6, grew from parent support. When four parents of AJGA players posed the question of whether Champions Golf Club ever host an event, the wheels began to turn.
A group of golfers walk down the fairway after tee shot off the 11th tee box during the third round of the U.S. Women’s Open at Champions Golf Club. (Photo: Erik Williams-USA TODAY Sports)
“One of the biggest challenges for junior golf is obtaining high-quality courses for tournaments,” said Chris Spaulding, one of those parents, in an AJGA release. “We all have junior golfers and we know this first hand. We thought it would be excellent if an AJGA Invitational were held at Champions and on the Cypress Creek course. We knew that it would be a very special event and, as we knew would be the case, when we raised the possibility with Robin Burke and Bret Nutt, Champions immediately got behind hosting the event.”
The Jack Burke Jr. Invitational is named, of course, after the founder of the club – a man who had an illustrious professional career that included the 1956 Masters title. The invitational has no corporate sponsor. Instead, support from Champions Golf Club members will fund the championship in 2021 and beyond.
The resort’s new Mach 1 putting surfaces produce some of the truest Bermuda grass putting greens found anywhere.
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BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – Rolling, rolling, rolling, keep those golf balls rolling. And if the ball never bounces on a green during a putt attempt, even better.
That’s the approach for Streamsong Resort in Central Florida, which on Thursday will reopen its Red and Blue courses after re-grassing the greens over the summer. The new turf, without any doubt, provides some of the smoothest Bermuda grass surfaces found anywhere.
Named Mach 1, the new grass is an ultra-fine Ultradwarf Bermuda developed by Rod Lingel. Streamsong is the first to install it on 18-hole courses.
“The leaf texture is a little bit better than anything else we’ve seen,” said Streamsong director of agronomy Rusty Mercer after a preview round Tuesday on the Blue. “The inner node length is much shorter and tighter, and when handled properly, the bar gets really high with this. There is virtually no grain associated with the grass, and the ball rolls just phenomenal.”
He wasn’t kidding about the lack of grain, and that’s practically unheard of for Bermuda grass greens, especially in Florida during the summer. Normally the grain of the grass – the direction in which the blades of grass grow, often pointing downhill but sometimes following the setting sun – is as much a factor in reading a putt as is the slope. The grain can force a ball to break more or less on a given slope, and it also effects speed and can cause a ball to bounce.
A view of 18th green on Blue with the Red course lacing throughout the background at Streamsong Resort (Golfweek/Tracy Wilcox)
At the Blue on Tuesday, the grain was zero, zip, nada. Mercer said the greens were rolling at about a 9 on the Stimpmeter for our preview round, and he expects the green speeds to increase to a PGA Tour-like 11 soon as his staff mows them lower. They can surpass even that if the weather dries out during the fall and winter.
This writer has played all his life on Bermuda greens, having grown up in Louisiana and Florida and the past 35 years or so playing golf all around the Sunshine State. It’s not hyperbole to say I have never seen a ball roll more consistently true for 18 holes on Bermuda grass than I did during Tuesday’s round. Think bentgrass smooth – the ball never skips or hops, hugging the ground the entire way.
It’s so smooth, there’s an odd sidenote for my kindred golf geeks: Frequently, if you listen carefully, you can hear a ball skittering across Bermuda grass greens, much like a faint sound of Velcro being pulled. The new Mach 1 greens at Streamsong produce a silent putting surface because the ball never grabs or bounces. It’s akin to a pool ball rolling across a perfect pool table – no sound at all.
It’s so smooth and true, Mercer had to take the resort’s caddie staff onto the course for a lesson on how to read the new surfaces. Otherwise, they might read putts from memory of the older Mini Verde Bermuda surfaces – reads that frequently included the grain. Now, when the caddie says “straight putt,” you’d be wise to believe it.
“It’s strange. We associate grain with Bermuda,” Mercer said. “Maybe that will come with time, I don’t know. But right now, I would just like for people to enjoy it.”
The project started with intentions for the Blue to be resurfaced in 2020 and the Red to come next in 2021. But then, coronavirus. The resort operators weighed options and decided to re-grass the greens on both courses at once so the resort would be fully operational in 2021 when things hopefully return to normal for travel and golf.
Mercer and his staff also tweaked a few tees on the Red and Blue, adding new boxes to create better yardages, especially for players who tee it up forward on the silver or mixed tee boxes that play between 6,100 and 6,500 yards. The intent is to provide better options for players who struggle to carry the ball past 200 yards on tee shots.
It’s not as if the old Mini Verde green surfaces were especially terrible – they were among the best surfaces in Central Florida, especially for a public-access facility. But it wasn’t good enough for Mercer and his staff.
“We were struggling to provide a good playing surface,” said Mercer, who has been in charge of the turf since before the resort opened the Red and Blue in 2012. “And one of our edicts here at Streamsong from the very beginning, it wasn’t good enough to just be a top Florida golf course, we needed to be a top international golf course.
“The greens had gotten to the point where it became necessary to look at what was next. So, resurfacing them became the answer. We went to great lengths to determine what we wanted to plant. We did a lot of testing, a lot of different plots with different options. At the end of the day, we couldn’t find anything that we felt like was going to be quite as good as this stuff.”
Streamsong Red in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Laurence Lambrecht)
Mercer and his staff had a tough summer of installing the grass. Central Florida had an especially hot and wet summer, and the Mach 1 sprigs were washed out on the Red after several intense storms. With the main season for the resort approaching in the fall and winter, he was under the gun.
There are big expectations for the new greens on the Red and Blue to wow customers. The Red is ranked No. 39 on Golfweek’s Best list for all modern courses built in or after 1960 in the United States, and the Blue is No. 57 on that elite list. The third course at the resort, the Black, came online in 2017 and is ranked No. 46 among all modern courses. The greens were not redone on the newer Black course.
The Red – designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw – is also ranked No. 2 in Florida on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access tracks, trailing only the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. The design team of Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner laid out the Black, which is No. 3 in Florida, and Tom Doak’s Blue is No. 4 on that list.
How did it feel to tear up the old greens on some of the best tracks in the state?
“There certainly was a little bit of nerves,” Mercer said. “But we knew it was necessary.”
Feel good to be done?
“We’ll never be done out here,” he said. “If we’re ever done, it will be time to just go home, because there’s always more work to do.”
European Tour pro Sam Horsfield carded an impressive 14-under 59 at Streamsong this weekend.
Sam Horsfield made golf look really easy this weekend.
The 23-year-old European Tour pro carded an impressive 14-under 59 during a round at Streamsong Resort’s Black Course in Bowling Green, Florida. Horsfield had so much fun on the front nine, making five birdies and an eagle, that he did it again on the back nine. 10 birdies. Two eagles. Six pars.
Not a bad day at the office.
A native of Manchester, England, Horsfield turned pro in 2017 after attending the University of Florida. Before the break in play due to the coronavirus pandemic, Horsfield was top ten on tour in driving distance at 327.57 yards, almost 20 yards longer than the tour average.
Golf courses in Florida offer different levels of precaution and safety during the coronavirus pandemic
Winter Park Golf Course near Orlando has its game together. In playing a round there this week after the Monday reopening of the popular nine-hole municipal track – known far and wide as the WP9 – I didn’t have to touch a thing but my own gear.
The course set up a check-in stand outside the clubhouse. Because online payment is required, players never have to enter the clubhouse or come in contact with anything. Players are told not to arrive more than 10 minutes early for tee times, and they are told to leave immediately after the round ends. Starting May 11 the course will have four carts available for single riders who might have disabilities, but the vast majority of golfers walk. Social distancing is easy because it’s ingrained in the course’s new operational set-up.
If only every operation made it so easy, or at least gave the option of being so. Whether mandated by local or state ordinances or just operating out of a sense of safety for players and staff, many courses have made a round of golf a smooth endeavor without risking anybody’s health.
Winter Park Golf Course (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
But not all courses. It’s a game of buyer beware, at least in the six rounds I have played at daily-fee or resort courses around Central Florida over the past six weeks.
I have seen discrepancies that can boggle the mind. Simply put, in my very small sampling of public-access courses, there has been a wide range of policies – and more importantly, operational practices – intended to keep players safe. Implementation at several courses was spotty at best.
Each of these six courses had proclaimed to be enforcing social distancing and to have implemented intense cleaning regimens. Each had something blocking the bottom of the golf hole, either a foam pool noodle or an overturned golf cup.
And each round was played under loose stay-at-home orders by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – golf in the Sunshine State was declared an essential business and was allowed to remain open except in a few Southeast Florida hotspots that closed the game on a county level. Social distancing was a mandate, not a suggestion.
I’ll name the best two experiences: WP9 and Streamsong Resort. Both made it seamless to get to the first tee with zero contact. Thought had been put into small details, such as how to give a player a scorecard if wanted. Both properties not only allow walking – a great method for social distancing – they promote it. Reduced tee times prevented the courses from being too crowded. My rounds there felt as safe as a stroll to my mailbox, only with better organization.
If these rounds were indicative of the new normal, bring it on.
A staff member checks players in before rounds at Winter Park Golf Course with social distancing enforced. All payment is online, so players need only say they are ready. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Two of my rounds were at the opposite end of the spectrum. Players were crowded around tee boxes, halfway houses, practice greens or cart staging areas. Golfers had to go inside closed doors to pay. Tee times were stacked on top of each other, filling the courses to the brim and beyond. Course marshals were entirely absent except for on one particular par-3 tee box where three groups collided, waiting for the green to clear. The unmasked marshal watching from his cart said not a word.
One of these courses not far from the shuttered Disney World wouldn’t allow walking, with the starter saying it slows down the entire course – apparently pace of play was paramount. But even though each player had his own cart, my threesome preceded to wait 10-15 minutes at every tee box on the backed-up, overflowing course. Lightning mercifully cut the round in half and players stacked up on a patio, rubbing shoulders while waiting out the storm. My group didn’t linger to finish the round.
I’m not naming these courses, because my experiences might have been an aberration. Each had laid out policies – good intentions. But on the days I was there, nobody in particular seemed to be following the rules.
And two of my rounds were pretty solid but with a few headscratchers. At one course where I was free to walk and staff seemed truly interested in new safety measures, I still saw 16 guys sitting around a table on a patio next to a snack shop. At another, a sevensome caromed down the final fairway, each player in his own cart before congregating as a tight group on the green. Golf is played over vast spaces, but it is a social game with a 4.25-inch focal point at the hole – players tend to gather.
A consortium of golf-industry leaders has formed a new initiative, Back2Golf, to help courses lay out best practices. Representatives of the U.S. Golf Association, PGA of America, PGA Tour, LPGA and others worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop optional guidelines available for any course to follow.
Streamsong Black is open this summer while the resort’s Red and Blue course undergo regrassing of the greens. (Courtesy of Streamsong Resort/Laurence Lambrecht)
And many states have implemented specific rules for golf, such as walking only with the requirement of online payment. Massachusetts this week was the last state to reopen its courses, and officials there spelled out in great detail what it required for courses to reopen.
But it’s up to each facility to make good things happen. Golf has an opportunity as one of the first recreational activities to reopen around the country to promote safe practices and put a spotlight on all the great qualities of the game. If professional golf resumes in June as planned, that spotlight will be even greater, as golf will be the first major sport available on television or streaming.
With that kind of spotlight comes scrutiny as coronavirus infections and deaths continue to rise across the nation. It will take effort on the part of participants, staff and course operators to make the sport’s reopening run smoothly.
“Part of the operators’ responsibility, once they put those rules in place, is to make sure the players are operating by it,” said Jeff Morgan, CEO of the Club Management Association of America and a participant in the Back2Golf initiative. “It’s not only about their safety, it’s about the staff safety and everyone else that is playing. I would hope that operators are aware of the entire experience and have an obligation to make sure that everybody is abiding by the rules that that facility sets up.”
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And it’s up to the players to follow the rules.
“Were fortunate to have an opportunity to start playing again that really is dependent on our collective ability to follow social distancing guidelines and to make the right choices when we’re out on the golf courses,” USGA CEO Mike Davis said on the call that launched the Back2Golf safety initiative. “We’re all in this together, so be responsible.”
There’s no telling how long the safety guidelines will be needed. In the meantime, there’s a great opportunity for golf to not screw this up. In the end, the value of any safety guidelines is only as strong as the will of courses operators and players to engage them.
As with most courses in Florida, the Black course at Streamsong Resort is open for play but with safety precautions due to the coronavirus.
BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – I’ve had first-tee starters tell me about the opening tee shot, about the history of the course I’m about to play, about any quirks I might anticipate during the upcoming round.
Until Thursday, I never had a first-tee starter stress the importance of social distancing. Or washing hands. Or following other CDC advisories while playing 18. But that was the kickoff to my first taste of golf during the full-blown coronavirus pandemic.
As with most courses in Florida, the Black course at Streamsong Resort – southwest of Orlando, east of Tampa and not too close to anything else – is open for play. Employing several strategies to keep players away from each other while still allowing for several hours in the sun, the highly ranked golf destination is determined to keep at least 18 of its 54 holes open as long as possible.
“We’re being very careful, and social distancing is critical,” said Jim Bullock, Streamsong’s director of sales and marketing. “We take the care of our guests and our staff very seriously, so we’re going down that path but still trying to create an opportunity for people to get outside in this big ballpark and enjoy the outdoors.”
Following several weeks later than many counties and municipalities in the Sunshine State, Governor Ron DeSantis this week issued a statewide stay-at-home order that began Friday. That order didn’t mandate the closure of golf courses. But while Streamsong is doing as many as 100 rounds some days on the Black course, the resort’s 216-room lodge shut down April 2 until May 1, with most of its employees furloughed. Several of the employees of the golf operations openly expressed appreciation to still be working, even if in a limited capacity.
The resort’s Red and Blue courses are closed, both having their greens resurfaced. The regrassing plan introduced last year was for the Blue to be closed in 2020 for resurfacing, followed by the Red in 2021. But with play and travel being limited by coronavirus concerns, the resort condensed the schedule to get both courses regrassed for an October reopening.
Streamsong has flipped the cups upside down in the holes, which prevents a ball from falling all the way into the hole, on its Black course. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Like so many people, I’d been holed up in a home office for weeks. A couple nightly walks with my family through my Central Florida neighborhood had provided a little exercise, but with the National Golf Foundation having reported this week that 74 percent of golf courses (season permitting) are open across the United States, I wanted to see how golf in this era of sickness and concern measures up to what we normally experience on course.
Simply put, the golf was golf, enjoyable as ever. Streamsong’s three courses rank as Nos. 2 (Red course), 3 (Black) and 4 (Blue) in the state on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access tracks, and it’s always a blast to play any of them. But much of the rest of the experience – travel to the course, walking through a clubhouse, even using a caddie – had a very different feel.
Most different was a general feeling that perhaps we shouldn’t be doing this. We all have been advised to stay home. Should I risk my health and more importantly that of others just to play golf? It’s a fair question. I was determined to take every precaution possible to make it as safe an experience as possible.
I recruited two friends who likewise had been holed up at home to join me, making the 90-minute drive to Streamsong from the Orlando area in separate cars to keep our distance. We would walk the course to avoid coming into contact with the golf carts – Streamsong is always best enjoyed on foot anyway.
The employees at Streamsong, from the greeter in the parking lot to assistant pro at the check-in desk, have been instructed to avoid physical contact and promote social distancing – no valet, no handshakes, no carrying a player’s clubs from the trunk to the bag stand. Even the caddies no longer carry a player’s bag. Instead, players can take a walking caddie who serves as a guide without carrying the sticks. The resort also has expanded options to ride, with only one player per cart to keep people farther apart.
The extent to which the staff was working to keep people from touching anything was commendable. The doors to the pro shop were propped open. Scorecards had been removed from the first-tee starter’s stand to prevent people from reaching into the box. Even a handful of tees had been scattered across the ground by a gloved employee so that a string of players didn’t need to reach into a pile of tees. I made it through arrival and check-in with nothing but the soles of my shoes coming into contact with anything.
Tees are sprinkled on the ground of the first tee at Streamsong’s Black course to keep players from reaching into a box to retrieve them. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
After teeing off, it was easy to keep our distance. Our caddie, Nicky, was mindful to stay back. The biggest congestion points are tee boxes, but even there it’s possible to maintain a 6-foot buffer if you try.
Some courses have used pool noodles to prevent players from reaching into the hole to retrieve a ball. Streamsong instead has turned its cups upside down in the hole so that a ball never falls entirely beneath ground level. Flagsticks are to be left in the cup at all times, and a player can easily retrieve a ball with two fingers, never touching the pin.
Streamsong has instituted a policy of using only every other tee time on the sheet, so groups have plenty of distance between each other. I’m sure it’s possible that at some point my friends and I broke the advised 6-foot social distancing barrier, but if so, it wasn’t by much. No high-fives, no fist bumps, no sharing gear. We weren’t each in a totally protective bubble, but we weren’t invading each other’s space.
The clubhouse at Streamsong’s Black course is open for takeout only. (Golfweek/Jason Lusk)
All in all, playing 18 seemed safer than walking through my neighborhood in the evening – I certainly came in contact with fewer people. I definitely was farther away from anyone than I would be in even the most coronavirus-conscious grocery store.
Was the choice to play golf the absolute safest option? No, probably not. Staying at home would be safer. Would I consider it a dangerous option? I’m not an epidemiologist and my opinion shouldn’t count for much, but the way we played felt pretty safe. With so much wide-open space, most of the round was a respite from coronavirus concerns.
From the planning stages, my biggest worry was the travel to and from the course. Fortunately for us, Streamsong was easily within range on a tankful of gas. I didn’t have to stop on the way there or the way home, so I was in my own little cocoon on the road. Any stops certainly would have raised the risk level.
All in all, it was a beautiful round of golf with a few concerns that were greatly alleviated by the staff at Streamsong. It was different, but in the end, it was golf. And that was all I could ask for in these troubling times.
Amid the international coronavirus pandemic, more than half the top 25 courses on Golfweek’s Best list of resorts are temporarily closed.
After weeks of trying to keep their courses open during the international coronavirus pandemic, more than half the top 25 courses on Golfweek’s Best list of resort tracks have shuttered their operations temporarily or plan to this week.
Several of these resorts, stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, have posted to their websites or sent emails that operations have been halted. At others, the courses remain open while the hotel operations have ceased or been dramatically curtailed, and some are maintaining full operations.
Several of the top 25 are northern courses that have not started their golf seasons yet and as of now are still planning to open when their seasons begin.
The situation is fluid and likely to change for some of these resorts that do remain open. Several of the courses that have closed have posted that they plan to reopen in April or May. Following are details on each.
1. Pebble Beach Golf Links
Pebble Beach, California (pictured atop this story)
MGM has ceased all casino and entertainment options until April 16.
8. Kiawah Golf Resort (Ocean Course)
Kiawah Island, South Carolina
OPEN
The resort has modified its services and dining availability, but the courses are open. The pro shops are closed, with booking and check-in being handled remotely.
BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – First-tee jitters are real. Doesn’t matter if it’s the U.S. Open, a city championship, a high school match or even a two-day team event that’s meant to be a vacation. When most players step up to that opening drive with a …
BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – First-tee jitters are real. Doesn’t matter if it’s the U.S. Open, a city championship, a high school match or even a two-day team event that’s meant to be a vacation. When most players step up to that opening drive with a little something on the line, the internal butterflies take flight.
That’s kind of the whole point of competition, of having to add up all those numbers and post the result on a scoreboard for all to see. It brings a whole new level of interest, even for 30-handicappers who spend four hours doing a lot of math to figure out where they are getting strokes.
“Competition gives people the chance to do something they can’t do every day,” said Scott Wilson, director of golf at Streamsong in Central Florida. “Normal golf is every day, stroke play or match play depending on what you do within your foursome, and it’s fine, great. But with competition, now all the sudden you have something to play for. It suddenly matters even more.”
Streamsong, which boasts three courses among the top 20 on Golfweek’s Best 2020 list of top resort courses (see page 40), gives recreational players five great chances a year to stick their peg in the ground and experience real competition. With the resort’s Spring Classic, Summer Classic, Fall Classic, Holiday Cup and Family Cup, anybody can get their competitive juices flowing while enjoying a vacation at a top destination.
Streamsong Blue (Courtesy of Streamsong Resort/Laurence Lambrecht)
Streamsong’s events are part of a larger trend, with ever-increasing teams of players traveling long distances to premium resorts to do more than sample the links – they want to play with something on the line. It’s not a new concept, but there are more opportunities than ever. Even resorts such as Bandon Dunes in Oregon and Destination Kohler in Wisconsin, both of which offer four highly ranked courses, offer multiple opportunities throughout their golf seasons to ratchet up a buddies trip or family retreat to another level.
Basically, these events are like a classic member-guest tournament, but because they are at resorts instead of private clubs, nobody has to be a member. Check just about any top resort’s website to find such events, but try to book early, as they often fill up quickly. Wilson said most of Streamsong’s events feature 80 to 100 players.
“We started with four events and we’ve grown to five, and we probably could have several more,” Wilson said. “Most of the folks are local, and by that I’ll say Southeast U.S., but there’ve been times people have come from California or Oregon and up in the Northeast to play with their families and friends. It’s been great.”
Top-ranked golf courses surely are part of the draw – Streamsong’s events are played on a mix of the resort’s Red, Black and Blue courses, which were built by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Gil Hanse, and Tom Doak, respectively. The remote courses – about 90 miles southwest of Orlando and 50 miles west of Tampa – rank as Nos. 2, 3 and 4 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access tracks in Florida.
Overall winners of Streamsong’s events receive packages to return and defend their title, and of course there are social events, trophies, prizes and bragging rights for various flights. Wilson’s staff uses a mix of formats – scramble, shamble and four-ball, for example – for its two-day events, some of which include two rounds and others three rounds.
“Any day of the week, any of the three courses could be a person’s favorite,” Wilson said. “And that’s the beauty of doing it over two or three courses, depending on the tournament – you get to see a lot of great golf. …”
“And it’s not just stroke play. These are all just a little different, not your ordinary tournament. It just creates interest outside of normal golf. These have just been a lot of fun.”
Streamsong Black (Courtesy of Streamsong Resort/Laurence Lambrecht)
Streamsong’s 2020 events
Spring Classic: March 22-25; 54 holes of four-ball stroke play on the Blue, Black and Red; $439 single occupancy per night, $339 per person double occupancy per night
Family Cup: June
Summer Classic: August
Fall Classic: October
Holiday Cup: December
Check streamsongresort.com for exact dates and formats as they are announced.
Pricing: To be determined based on event. (The price for the recent Holiday Cup was $685 per player for two night’s double occupancy in the resort’s hotel, two rounds of golf, plus a welcoming party, luncheon, putting contest and more. It was $908 for single occupancy.) Some events use carts, and others are walking only.
Streamsong Resort’s first two courses, the Blue and the Red, will have new grass installed on their greens over the next two years.
BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – Streamsong Resort’s first two courses, the Blue and the Red, will have new grass – a Bermudagrass named Mach One – installed on their greens over the next two years. The Blue will come first in 2020 and the Red will follow in 2021, with each course closed during the slower summer months for installation and other related touchups.
That will leave 36 of 54 holes open during each course’s installation at the resort, which is about 90 miles southwest of Orlando and 50 miles southeast of Tampa.
The greens on both courses appear to be in great shape currently, rolling smooth with a fair amount of speed during recent rounds, but slight mutations to the current grass surfaces have encouraged resort managers to undertake the re-grassing to maintain first-rate putting surfaces well into the future.
The resort operates three courses. The Blue was designed by Tom Doak, opened in 2012 and is No. 4 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for Florida’s public-access courses. The Red was designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and also opened in 2012, and it is No. 2 on that list of Florida courses. The newer Black course, designed by Gil Hanse and opened in 2017, is No. 3 on that list.
A group of Golfweek’s course raters at Streamsong for Golfweek’s Architecture Summit last week were treated not only to terrific golf but a series of expert seminars, and they got an early look at a Mach One putting surface. During an early-morning presentation at the Red and Blue courses’ practice putting and chipping green, Rusty Mercer, Streamsong’s director of Agronomy, announced that the Blue will be closed from May through September of 2020 to have its MiniVerde greens re-grassed with the turf underfoot.
Mach One is a state-of-the-art ultradwarf Bermuda strain developed and patented by Rod Lingle, the former superintendent at Memphis Country Club. Those who played the Blue the day before would be forgiven for being somewhat perplexed, as the greens rolled beautifully, but Mercer outlined the rationale.
“What you’ll see if you look at the greens are big, broad circles of ‘off-types,’” he said. “It’s the same grass, but it has developed multiple looks.”
No. 6 on Streamsong Red (Courtesy of Streamsong/Laurence Lambrecht)
Mercer said that a consulting scientist, Jim Brosnan of the University of Tennessee, had measured leaf widths ranging from 2 millimeters to 18 millimeters.
“That’s a huge difference,” Mercer said. “During cooler weather we can get them under control, but in the shoulder season, these greens are awful. That’s why we’re doing this. When we get into March and April, the off-types will get worse and worse, and the plant will eventually become vulnerable to soil-borne diseases.”
Mercer pointed out that like all living things, turfgrass has a lifespan.
“In this kind of [Central Florida] climate, we think it’s about eight to 10 years. I took a look farther north, around Pinehurst, and didn’t see the same rise of off-types—but they have half the number of growing days during the year.”
In making the change to Mach One, Mercer said it had less to do with the new grass’s unknowns as with what is already known about the longevity of current bermuda stalwarts such as Champion, MiniVerde and TifEagle.
Attendees were invited to chip and putt around on the oversized and boldly contoured surface. The Mach One practice green, which was planted in June after spending a year in a 12,000-square-foot nursery adjacent to the resort’s newer Black course, sported an oddly vivid hue: To this eye, it seemed almost turquoise in places but rolled very true for a new surface. Mercer said the goal was to keep the ball on top of the ultradwarf blades.
“Any time a ball rides up high, you’ll get a better roll than when it sinks down. Mach One is as good as anything I’ve seen – the ball seems to float across the green,” he said.
Given that Streamsong offers three full-length eighteens, closing the Blue for the low season of next summer shouldn’t impact the resort much. It’s in keeping with Streamsong’s goal to invest in cutting-edge technology in order to provide golfers with an experience more akin to that of an upscale private club than a typical resort.
“As a superintendent, you can do one of two things: You can either grow grass or produce playing conditions,” Mercer said.
Mercer and Red/Blue superintendent Kyle Harris have proved adept at the latter, as most who have experienced Streamsong’s bouncy fairways and firm yet receptive greens will attest. Mercer and his staff have a state goal of providing fast playing surfaces instead of trying to produce the greenest grass, and the move to the new putting surfaces should make that goal even more attainable.
