A Black Bear in Orlando’s Badlands
Black Bear is located north of Orlando in a kind of rural badlands full of scrub, sand and pockets of wetlands preserves, though the site for this course is dry and fairly rugged. I call this “country golf” because there’s not much else around this slowly rolling property with scant trees and few people.
The course has some idyllic turns, like when it ducks into a small grove of oaks surrounding the lovely 8th and 9th holes, if you can call holes on a P.B. Dye course lovely. Otherwise, Dye pushed the sand up to create the typical stylistic shapes we associate with him and his father.
The second nine is generally better with a rambling character and rather strangely shaped green complexes and bunkering, although I’m not a fan of 18th, which seems out of character with the only true water hazard on the course fronting the green.
There’s a double-plateau variant at the par three 11th green, and both 12 and 13 have long, shallow putting surfaces elevated like benches at 45-degree angles to the fairway. Sixteen is a sweeping par five that’s reachable if you cut the corner on the second shot over a chain of dunes and manage to avoid the fairway bunkers and pot bunkers near the green. (87)
Eustis/Orlando
Architect: P.B. Dye
Year: 1995
