Formerly World Woods, the rebranded Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida will feature two full-size renovated layouts as well as the short course.
The Cabot Collection – the rapidly expanding Canadian golf developer and operator purchasing or building courses in areas ranging from Scotland to St. Lucia – has announced plans for a new 21-hole non-traditional course at its Florida property, Cabot Citrus Farms.
Formerly known as World Woods, with two courses originally designed by Tom Fazio and opened in 1994, Citrus Farms is seeing a complete renovation and rethinking as it becomes Cabot’s first property in the United States. About an hour’s drive north of Tampa International Airport, Cabot Citrus Farms is constructing a new clubhouse, luxury accommodations, practice facilities, shopping, dining, event spaces and new homes that go on sale in February.
The two renovated 18-hole courses, which feature sandy soil and somewhat surprising elevation features for Florida, are scheduled to open in December alongside the new short course.
The planned layout for The 21, a non-traditional short course at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida (Courtesy of Cabot Collection)
The old Pine Barrens 18-hole course is being redone by architect Kyle Franz and will be renamed Cabot Barrens (pictured atop this story). Franz is partnering with Mike Nuzzo and advisor Ran Morrissett on the renovation of the old Rolling Oaks layout into the rebranded Cabot Oaks. The architecture team of Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns originally was pegged to complete the Cabot Oaks layout, but Cabot switched to Franz, Nuzzo and Morrissett in 2022.
Both Pine Barrens and Rolling Oaks appeared in various years among the top 100 on Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses list, but over the past decade the property had lost much of its premium luster before Cabot purchased it in 2022 and announced plans for a complete and overdue overhaul.
Nuzzo will be in charge of design for the property’s short course, a non-traditional layout named The 21. Nuzzo was challenged to design as many holes as would fit in the 100 acres dedicated to the project, and he came up with 21 of them, many of them half-par holes, all of them promising interesting green complexes and a variety of strategies involved. The 21 also can be played as two distinct short courses instead of as one complete layout.
“We always want to keep the game fresh and exciting,” Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO and co-founder of The Cabot Collection, said in a media release announcing The 21. “While (Bandon Dunes Golf Resort founder and early Cabot investor) Mike Keiser and I were looking at the terrain and courses we have in play, the idea was born to shape our 10-hole course and the 11-hole-course into a new 21-hole concept. The 21’s layout beckons golf aficionados who just can’t get enough of the rolling terrain in the Floridian countryside. This trifecta of courses at Cabot Citrus Farms will both challenge and delight players of all levels, with each paying homage to a handful of the most beloved places in the golf world.”
Check out several images of the redeveloping property below:
Where to play golf of any kind in Florida? Check out these Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
The No. 1 public-access course in Florida isn’t really a surprise, seeing how it has been broadcast worldwide into living rooms during each year’s Players Championship for decades. The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass ranks as one of legendary designer Pete Dye’s top five masterpieces, perplexing PGA Tour pros since it opened in 1980, and it ties for No. 15 on Golfweek’s Best list of all modern courses in the U.S.
And it isn’t the only course on the Ponte Vedra property to rank among Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play in Florida. Next door to the Players Stadium Course is Dye’s Valley, which clocks in at No. 18 among the Sunshine State’s best public layouts. Dye’s Valley doesn’t have the scale or fame of its neighbor, but it does have plenty of the features, challenges and visual tricks that made its designer and namesake famous.
Dye’s Valley at TPC Sawgrass in Florida (Courtesy of TPC Sawgrass)
Looking for even more highly ranked public-access courses all at one property? In Florida, that would be Streamsong, home to Nos. 2, 3 and 4 on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access layouts. The popular resort in Bowling Green, about an hour’s drive east of Tampa or 90 minutes southwest of Orlando, features courses by Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
Coore and Crenshaw’s Red Course tops the rankings for Streamsong’s courses, coming in at No. 2 among the state’s public-access layouts and tying for No. 37 among all modern courses in the U.S. Hanse’s Black Courses isn’t far behind, ranking No. 3 in the state and tying for 50th among modern courses. Doak’s Blue Course is right there, too, ranking No. 4 in the state and No. 53 among modern courses.
Streamsong’s Red Course (Courtesy of Streamsong/Laurence Lambrecht)
How do you choose which layout at Streamsong to play? Take our advice: Play all three, then get back to us on your favorite. Every player to visit has plenty of opinions on which course they prefer and why, and none of them are really wrong. Combined, the three layouts make Streamsong one of only a handful of resorts in the U.S. to offer so many highly ranked courses, and the resort also has started construction of a new short course, the Chain, by Coore and Crenshaw that promises even more golf.
No. 5 in the state is no stranger to PGA Tour fans either, as Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando is home each year to the Arnold Palmer Invitational. A statue of Palmer still stands guard near the first and 10th tees, reminding players of the decades in which the King lived at the resort while leaving his fingerprints on every aspect of the operation.
Florida is also home to a staggering array of private courses, many of which serve as winter retreats for well-heeled clientele and residents who chase the warmth south each year. Topping the list of private courses in the state is Seminole, a Donald Ross design in Juno Beach that is No. 12 on Golfweek’s Best list of classic courses in the U.S. and one of the most exclusive clubs in the U.S.
Can’t get a tee time at Seminole? Get in line – almost all of us are waiting on that call. In the meantime, check out the rest of the best public-access and private clubs in Florida below.
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.
