Florida Sandbelt Golf Weekend
Central Florida: Brooksville to Lake Wales to Deland
T&L Golf, Nov/Dec '08
The Florida Sand Belt
A world apart from the state’s flat, lake-dotted courses, a series of central ridges provides the perfect canvas for quality golf
From T&L Golf November - December 2008
by Derek Duncan
I’m standing on the fourth tee of the Pine Barrens Course at World Woods Golf Club near Brooksville, Florida, and half of everything I see is sand. To the right of the fairway, a vast wasteland juts into the grass, as if the entire hole has suffered a violent rupture and begun to sink into some sort of netherworld. It’s striking to behold and clearly hazardous to play from—yet I’m aiming my drive right over the heart of it.
From centuries-old British links to modern-day masterpieces such as Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes, sand is the secret ingredient of great courses. Entire regions have become synonymous with golf simply because they possess the kind of deep, sandy soil that is ideally suited to the game. When we think of sand in Florida, we think of beaches or bleached white bunkers, not entire eighteens created on canvases of sand. But when I lived in the state I was surprised to discover that many of its most interesting courses are located in the central part of the peninsula, away from the seaside resorts and often in small towns or other out-of-the-way spots. The reason, I came to conclude, is simple: These courses are built on sand.
Central Florida is ridged by a series of dunes that two to three million years ago were islands of scrub surrounded by ocean. These spines extend for miles, from north to south, and crest at more than three hundred feet above sea level—serious elevation by Florida standards. They retain distinct local ecosystems and bottomless amounts of sand. Compared with all of the loamy, two-dimensional courses scattered across the state, these sandy layouts make for an adventurous brand of golf. Three ridges in particular—moving from west to east, the Brooksville, Lake Wales and DeLand Ridges—feature the kind of firm, fast-drying terrain that has produced some of Florida’s most exhilarating courses.
The Brooksville Ridge
Located an hour’s drive north of Tampa, Brooksville is a quiet town known for its limestone quarries and its proximity to some of the state’s best river and Gulf Coast fishing. It became a hotbed of golf in 1993, when the thirty-six-hole Tom Fazio–designed World Woods complex opened about ten miles outside town. The two eighteens, Pine Barrens and the parkland-style Rolling Oaks, lie near the southwestern end of the Brooksville Ridge, a trail of ancient sand hills that stretches for more than thirty miles. Pristine forests of longleaf pine and live oak surround the courses. The aforementioned fourth hole at Pine Barrens demonstrates how ubiquitous sand is to the area. The option from the tee of this 494-yard par five is either to play safely left of the gaping waste bunker or drive over it, setting up a shorter approach to the green. Each time I’ve played this hole, however, I’ve pulled my drive to the fat of the fairway, an almost autonomic bailout in the face of a harrowing hazard.
Pine Barrens is Fazio at his stylistic best—playing the course is an exercise in living on the edge. Here, the architect, who is sometimes criticized for creating postcardlike holes that place more emphasis on aesthetics than on strategy, slashed open the earth and created multiple angles of attack. Drives that hug the long waste area right of the fairway on the par-four eighth, for example, set up a short, clear view of a shallow green that fishhooks into the barrens; drives played more conservatively to the left yield a longer approach that must carry a deep tongue of sand protecting the front of the green. Both the par-five fourteenth and the par-four fifteenth have split fairways divided by scrub depressions, the latter offering a chance to carry the chasm and drive the partially hidden green.
Just two miles west of World Woods and possessing similar terrain is the Dunes Golf Club. Apart from the sand, the most striking thing about the routing is that it features more than fifty feet of elevation change. Arthur Hills, who designed the Dunes in 1988 and returned earlier this year to renovate it, once told me this was one of the best inland sites he’d ever worked with, and in the last two decades blessedly little about the surrounding property has changed. Plans for houses to be built around the course never materialized—this is a remote part of Florida—so it remains an isolated trek through an unspoiled landscape of longleaf pines, turkey oaks and blowout bunkers (which, despite rumors that they were caused by practice bombing missions during World War II, were created naturally and in some cases enhanced by Hills). “It’s always been one of my favorite courses,” Hills says. “I try not to have favorites, but that site is so gorgeous—the sand and the dunes. The course pretty much lies on the terrain.” Hills’s fondness for the Dunes is so strong that he even tried to purchase it in the mid-1990s. “We were thinking that we wanted to develop a kind of Pine Valley of the South,” he explains, “a place where people from all over would come and stay and play.”
The updated version of the Dunes is firmer and more muscular. The architect widened the fairways and dug out additional waste bunkers, pulling the sand more directly into play. He elevated and enlarged the putting surfaces, defining them with long, tilting slopes. Many of the holes are Cape-style, demanding drives over waste areas, and the new green complex at the par-three sixth rises from a sea of sand. I confess to being pleasantly mystified by the bizarre Biarritz green at the seventeenth, the first of two closing par fives. It’s set at a forty-five-degree angle and guarded by bunkers.
A third golf club in Brooksville, Southern Hills Plantation, sits on a higher part of the ridge, more than two hundred feet above sea level. “So Hilly,” as the course is called, is private, but nonmembers are welcome to play its robust two-year-old Pete Dye layout provided they stay overnight in the guest villa. The two nines loop around a wooded hillside, punctuated by scattershot pot bunkers and tall oaks strung with Spanish moss. The daring par-five seventh, 618 yards from the tips, directly assaults the highest peak. A strong drive will reach the tree-lined pinnacle, from which the fairway plunges more than eighty feet to a landing area that kicks everything toward the green. Dye did golfers few other favors at Southern Hills; more often than not he used the natural slopes and embankments as primary defenses, including designing many holes so that drives play uphill.
The Lake Wales Ridge
Roughly parallel to the Brooksville Ridge and about forty miles to the east lies the Lake Wales Ridge. A long, thin spine of sand, it runs a hundred-plus miles down the center of the state and is sometimes referred to as Florida’s rooftop. This is citrus country, arid and full of groves and pastures and uncommonly broad horizons, not to mention small-town personalities forged by the boom-and-bust cycles of fruit farming and land prospecting.
Sand-based courses populate the length of the ridge, but its literal and figurative high point can be found at Sugarloaf Mountain Golf Club, part of a private residential community near Lake Apopka, a half hour west of Orlando. The course, which debuted in February and for the time being is open to nonmembers, is the latest work by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. It consists of a series of rounded crests that rises more than three hundred feet, essentially making this the tallest pile of sand in peninsular Florida. These hilltops once held orange groves and stands of live oaks, a number of which still flourish on the property. “It was a very pleasant surprise,” says Coore, who had previously turned down opportunities to work in Florida. “I just was not aware that the site was all sand.” As for the topography, he says, “We kind of made light of the name Sugarloaf Mountain—it seemed a bit of an oxymoron. But when we got there we realized that what we had to work with was a pretty darned big hill.”
Though the course is part of a nascent real estate development, Coore and Crenshaw were able to route it exactly as they wanted, draping fairways over the land’s most interesting features. The par-four thirteenth cascades about fifteen stories from apex to green, and the subsequent holes glide gracefully up and down the hills through stands of oaks, exposed sand washes and the deep, lace-edged bunkers that are hallmarks of the architects’ minimalist, made-to-look-old style.
From Sugarloaf Mountain, it’s a forty-five-minute drive south to Haines City, home to two more excellent sand-belt courses: Southern Dunes Golf & Country Club and Diamondback Golf Club. The latter, a thirteen-year-old Joe Lee design six miles south of Southern Dunes, sits on the tapering eastern edge of the ridge. With no development in sight, the course is a serene and elegant showcase for the area’s native vegetation. The routing descends from an elevated, sandy plateau through a scrub oak forest and toward Lake Marion. Diamondback, named for the snakes that were removed from the site during the course’s construction, is more target golf than the slash-and-burn style of Southern Dunes. Narrow fairways, lower wetlands and Lee’s recognizable amoeba-shaped bunkers combine to require a tactical approach to the smallish, segmented greens.
Southern Dunes, designed by Steve Smyers, opened a decade and a half ago on the site of an orange grove that was killed by frost in the mid-1980s. The soil was pure sand, of a distinctive orangish color. The land, says Smyers, “had some nice elevation change to it, and I thought we could do something pretty good there because it was going to be easy material to move around. We were able to stick the bulldozers off to the side and push and push and push to create mounds and hollows and ridges.”
Consequently, Southern Dunes bears a sculpted look. Sections of the course lie below the surrounding land, and there’s a marvelous internal flow to the wide fairways that screams for golfers to play bump-and-run shots. Smyers carved some 180 bunkers—including ten at the par-three eleventh alone—to form a molten, bubbling surface that demands thoughtful navigation. A cluster of seven flashed-face bunkers bisects the fifth hole, creating a split fairway with high and low routes to the green. Professional poker player Dewey Tomko was a founding owner of the club, and the action that’s gone down at Southern Dunes is legendary. As I flail away at the longish par-four eighth, going from bunker to bunker, it’s easy to imagine how serious cheese could be won or lost here.
“The thing that’s interesting about these places on the ridge,” notes Smyers, “is that during the prime season you’ve got a pretty nice breeze. And with the wind and the nice firm ground—which we utilized at Southern Dunes, and Sugarloaf’s done it as well—you want to play the ball along the ground.” Try doing that in Jacksonville or Miami.
The Deland Ridge
Well removed from the Remote rural landscapes of the Brooksville and Lake Wales Ridges, the DeLand Ridge runs through the densely settled communities of Deltona and DeLand, on the northern outskirts of greater Orlando. This ridge is actually two smaller pockets of dunes that extend on either side of Interstate 4. Don’t let all the development fool you: Two of Florida’s best sand-belt courses—the Deltona Club and Victoria Hills Golf Club—are enclaves within these urban areas, much as Australia’s sand-belt masterpieces, Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath, are engulfed by the city of Melbourne.
The Deltona Club sports abundant sand and heaving turf— a stark contrast to the plain 1960s-era neighborhood that borders it. Bobby Weed overhauled what had been a lackluster layout by digging out nearly all of the dated areas of rough to build canals of natural sand that twist through the property. The course reopened to raves in January 2008.
Weed devised an ingenious routing in which no consecutive holes have the same par except for the first two and the closing two. Although the layout’s appearance can be daunting, there’s more fairway than there appears to be and the real trouble doesn’t begin on most holes until about 280 yards off the tee. The 244-yard eleventh, with its wavy green benched into a hill, begins a stretch of six showstoppers, including the par-five thirteenth, which climbs thirty feet through husky fields of sand, and the short, uphill par-four fifteenth, with a delicate, semiblind approach over a bunker.
A similar if slightly less exuberant experience awaits twenty minutes north at Victoria Hills in DeLand (which has a historic downtown that includes the campus of Stetson University). The course, designed by Ron Garl, doesn’t make use of the sand underfoot to the same effect as the Deltona Club does. The setting reminds me more of an old club in the Northeast than just about anything I’ve seen in Florida. There are long, natural hills outlined by towering sections of oak and pine. Holes flow up narrow ridges, around wetlands and over cresting hills, the scenery always changing. The fairways sweep around deep-set bunkers that bleed into slopes and wispy border grasses. Drives must be shaped accordingly. In some spots Garl used the soil to build up features and mold voluptuously crowned greens.
All of the above serve to make the short third and seventeenth holes two of my favorite par fours in the state. Each is framed by pines and bends left around a bunker complex that requires players either to lay up short of the corner or to try to blast their drives over it. Both approach shots play uphill to pedestal greens that are cut into hillsides and defended by billowy bunkers set below the putting surfaces.
As I replay all of these holes in my mind, I’m reminded of one of Bill Coore’s observations about the Florida sand belt. “It’s fascinating,” he told me, “how integral sand is to all of our concepts, not just about golf architecture but also about playing the game itself.” It seems like an understatement.
Brooksville Ridge
Where to Play
World Woods Golf Club, Pine Barrens (5 stars)
Huge waste areas promote do-or-die shotmaking. Part of a thirty-six-hole complex that also includes the parkland Rolling Oaks.
Architect
Tom Fazio, 1993.
Yardage
6,955.
Par
71.
Slope
138.
Green Fees
$40–$145.
Contact
352-796-5500, www.worldwoods.com.
The Dunes Golf Club (4 stars)
Newly renovated, with strategic use of the site’s sandy base.
Architect
Arthur Hills, 1988, 2008.
Yardage
7,139.
Par
72.
Slope
132.
Green Fees
$38–$60.
Contact
800-232-1363, www.dunesgolfclub.com.
Southern Hills Plantation (4 stars)
The holes roam over several of the region’s tallest points.
Architect
Pete Dye, 2006.
Yardage
7,557.
Par
72.
Slope
138.
Green Fee
$99 (includes lodging).
Contact
352-277-5000, www.sohilly.com.
Where to Stay
Chassahowitzka Hotel, Homosassa
A small fishing lodge perfect for groups of eight to sixteen.
Rooms
$40–$80.
Contact
352-382-2075, www.chazhotel.com.
Where To Eat
Bayport Inn, Weeki Wachee
Popular outdoor dining spot with seafood fresh from the Gulf of Mexico. 352-596-1088. $$
Mallie Kyla’s Café, Brooksville
Go with the Southern specialties at this casual restaurant in a historic downtown house. 352-796-7174, www.malliekylas.com. $
DeLand Ridge
Where to Play
The Deltona Club (4 stars)
This once sleepy, dated course is now a meditation on sand.
Architect
Bobby Weed, 2007.
Yardage
7,016.
Par
72.
Slope
127.
Green Fees
$55–$65.
Contact
386-789-4911, www.thedeltonaclub.com.
Victoria Hills Golf Club (4 stars)
Deep bunkers, hardwood trees and graceful elevation changes evocative of the Northeast.
Architect
Ron Garl, 2001.
Yardage
7,113.
Par
72.
Slope
142.
Green Fees
$45–$79.
Contact
386-738-6000, www.victoriahillsgolf.com.
Where to Stay
DeLand Artisan Inn, DeLand An eclectic inn located in an old building downtown.
Rooms
$95–$125.
Contact
386-736-3484, www.delandartisaninn.com.
Where To Eat
Abbey, DeLand
Paninis and Belgian beers are the specialties. 386-734-4545, www.abbeydeland.com. $$
Cress Restaurant, DeLand
A stylish new restaurant whose menu is based on produce from its own organic farm. 386-734-3740, cressrestaurant.com. $$$
Lake Wales Ridge
Where to Play
Sugarloaf Mountain Golf Club (4 1/2 stars)
Minimalist beauty, draped over hills and designed for the ground game.
Architects
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, 2008.
Yardage
7,076.
Par
72.
Slope
133.
Green Fees
$40–$100.
Contact
407-544-1100, www.themountain.cc.
Southern Dunes Golf & Country Club (4 stars)
Sculpted bunkers and sweeping fairway contours.
Architect
Steve Smyers, 1993.
Yardage
7,227.
Par
72.
Slope
138.
Green Fees
$60–$125.
Contact
863-421-4653, www.southerndunes.com.
Diamondback Golf Club (3 1/2 stars)
A shotmaker’s course carved out of a scrub oak forest.
Architect
Joe Lee, 1995.
Yardage
6,893.
Par
72.
Slope
131.
Green Fees
$27–$69.
Contact
863-421-0437, www.diamondbackgc.net.
Where to Stay
Lakeside Inn, Mount Dora
A quaint inn, opened in 1883.
Rooms
$95–$195.
Contact
352-383-4101, www.lakeside-inn.com.
Where To Eat
Chalet Suzanne, Lake Wales
Romantic lakeside restaurant with gourmet flair. 863-676-6011, www.chaletsuzanne.com. $$$$
Goblin Market Restaurant, Mount Dora
Eclectic, creative fare served in cozy, book-lined spaces. 352-735-0059, www.goblinmarketrestaurant.com. $$$$