Nothing Conservative About The Conservatory at Hammock Beach Resort
The Tom Watson-designed Conservatory Course and its elaborate “Crystal Palace” clubhouse — both amenities to the Hammock Beach Resort a few miles away — were built and opened at extreme expense just in time for the global economic recession and the crumbling of owner Bobby Ginn’s resort and real estate empire.
The Conservatory is located on garbage land not far from I-95, a parcel of half-swamp/half cluttered pine forest ubiquitous to Northeast Florida. The entire site had to be gutted, filled and built-up — the same old nuts and bolts story for golf construction everywhere around these parts — but this course is about as ornately and ornamentally shaped as any I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing natural looking about the design, but then again you don’t want to try “natural” on this piece of ground.
Watson and architect Robert Gibbons manufactured groundswell throughout the course with humps and hollows rippling through the fairways, large chocolate kiss dunes running parallel to holes and impressively fortified green complexes buffeted by similar conical mounding. It’s Pete Dye meets Loxahatchee Jack after a wild night with Hunter Thompson.
Marshes or stone-walled water hazards are in play on every hole and the design is continuously injected with all manner of bunkering, from sunken capes and bays to sod-faced pots and what seem to be miles of intricately edged transition hazards. Trees, flowers and decorative grasses adorn the perimeters and some of the cart paths are brick-paved.
There’s an island green too, the first hole built here to showcase the development to prospective homeowners and members. (Is anyone impressed with that anymore? Apparently not — there are still almost no homes on property. No wonder Ginn went bankrupt.)
It’s tempting to call this undisciplined or incontinent design. But you could also say the course is an abstract or neo-modern exercise, executed by an architect with supreme confidence. It’s a layout designed by a playing professional that attempts to deal with the realities of the game in the 21st century on a piece of land that offers no help. The size alone qualifies as futuristic, nearly 7,800 yards from the tips and a stunning 78.4/155 rating.
This is not intended as a defense or justification for the aesthetics — it’s so overwrought and goofy in places that it’s closer to tacky than great. But the hole structures are actually quite rational: wide, molten fairways with red-light and green-light sides, hazards that promote shot-shaping and lots of angled greens protected by bunkers and water.
The un-level lies force you to hit a variety of shots into escalated greens with severe roll offs and false edges pitching steeply into hollows and bunkers. 10 is a fun, flamboyant par-5, and the stretch of par fours from 13 through 16 brings out about all you could ever conceive in terms of shape, construction, bunkering, orientation and length.
Ultimately the greens are so bold and fortified they command respect (although pros will hate them, but then again maybe that’s a plus point), and if you’re going to build a big budget golf course in a swamp, you might as well go ahead and build it. Watson certainly didn’t leave anything in the bag on this one. (90)
The Conservatory at Hammock Beach Resort
Palm Coast/Daytona Beach
Architect: Tom Watson
Year: 2007