Compared to Ocean Links, Amelia Island Plantation’s other (now deceased) resort course, Oak Marsh is both more solid and less interesting. The holes follow a standard real estate development configuration, playing through wooded condos on the inland side of Highway A1A along the Amelia River and Intracoastal Waterway. Each nine starts slow, flowing in counterclockwise and clockwise rotations on either side…
Any course that claims to be Florida’s “mountain course” cannot be taken seriously. This is a state that considers a mountain anything that’s higher than the roof of your house. However. Sanctuary Ridge, located at the north end of Lake Wales Ridge near Clermont, is in fact situated on some of the state’s most vertiginous real estate. The…
Bobby Weed joins Derek Duncan on the latest edition of the Feed the Ball podcast. Join us as Bobby talks about how he learned from Pete Dye that all good golf courses are built in the field, the joy of getting back on the bulldozer, his recent work at The Medalist Club in South Florida…
Cambrian Ridge is the best and the worst of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, all in one place. It’s on an absolutely brutal site with way too many steep slopes plunging into lakes and gullies and a lineup of holes that begin on one level, play to another and finish on a third. There’s almost no…
Noted golf course architect and past winner of Golf Digest’s Architect of the Year Award Jim Engh calls in to talk to Derek Duncan about the concept of image creation, pushing the envelop in his designs, the eureka moment that led him to pursue his bold style of golf holes, chasing an endorphine rush on…
Harbour Town (part of the Sea Pines Resort) is one of the few good golf courses I know where you can find your drive in the fairway and still not have a clear shot to the green. That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun but it’s definitely integral to the challenge and originality of this course because…
Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club, the “permanent” site of the TOUR Championship, is not unlike a Marvel Comics superhero. Its been cast into a role it had no intention of playing, resurrected from a lonely downward fate by powerful outside forces, refurbished to be put to use for the greater “good” fighting encroaching evils and blights. This hero has…
It doesn’t surprise me when I hear people say their favorite course at Pinehurst is No. 8. The brilliance of No. 2 — its subtlety and contour — is a hard sell for resort golfers and can seem dramatically over-hyped next to the outrageous green fee. And as good as the other six courses are, none match…
At first glance — from the road, the clubhouse, the scorecard — The Golf Club at Fleming Island looks like most 1990’s-early 2000’s Florida real estate courses. There seems to be a lot of homes around, a lot of water and along the entrance road there are even a couple of “display” holes posed over retention lakes…
Hurricane Ivan cleared out most of the trees, and a good amount of ambiance, at Lost Key. In 2004 Hurricane Ivan ravaged Lost Key, located on Perdido Key between Pensacola and Gulf Shores, and the damage necessitated a full renovation. The old incarnation was either feared or hated by most players because it was brutally tight and unforgiving, built over murky…