Naples FL Golf Weekend
Naples, FL (south of Fort Myers on the West Coast towards the southern tip of FL)
TravelGolf.com, 1/10
Golf Digest, 12/03
Private golf courses in Naples open up to traveling golfers
By Jason Scott Deegan,
Senior Contributor
January 15, 2010
NAPLES, Fla. – Times are changing in this swanky golf mecca in southwest Florida along the Gulf of Mexico.
The gates leading to private golf clubs that once were locked are more likely than ever to swing open for anybody willing to pay a green fee. The economic meltdown of the real estate market has changed the business model for private clubs in a zip code that has more golf courses per capital than anywhere in the world.
Resort courses at Tiburon Golf Club and Naples Grande Golf Club remain the most popular spots for traveling golfers visiting Naples, but savvy players who want more could be just a phone call away from getting a tee time at a spectacular private club.
Outside play at private golf clubs? It doesn't hurt to ask
For example, Matt Russell, the director of golf at the Golf Lodge at the Quarry, said his private club will accept outside play if a hotel concierge calls to make the tee time. The Quarry, a private Michael Hurdzan-Dana Fry design that opened in 2007, will host the 2010 ACE Group Classic on the Champion's Tour Feb. 12-14. Likewise, the TPC at Treviso Bay, the former home of the event, has a "member for a day" program that allows outside play. Not every private club has relaxed its rules, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
Gary Wilcox, the general manager of Tiburon, said his club now allows some outside play, although priority goes to members and guests of the two affiliated Ritz-Carlton hotels.
"In these economically challenging times, some clubs have allowed some amount of outside play," Wilcox said. "There are a lot of courses in the area. Is the golf market oversaturated? It's close. We really focus on the quality of the facility, and despite this difficult economic time, if you have a great course and conditions and great amenities and treat the customer well, you'll win."
It's the golfer who can claim the ultimate victory. They've got more choices than ever.
Golf courses in Naples: Where to play
The 36-hole Tiburon Golf Club still sets the standard for resort golf in Naples. The lack of rough on Tiburon's Gold course and Black course defines a unique playground. The wall-to-wall short grass can be both a blessing and a curse. Stray shots always seem to find precarious lies in the hazards lining the fairway. Both tracks are certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuaries by Audubon International for their natural surroundings.
Many players come looking to tackle the Gold course, host of the Shark Shootout, a casual silly season event for PGA Tour pros. By the time they leave, they end up loving the tougher, more strategic Black course.
"The Black gives you more variety of holes and different looks," Wilcox said.
Architect Rees Jones did a bang-up job making the Naples Grande Golf Club a fun place to play. The golf course starts softly with five non-descript holes. The layout climaxes with several holes along a 30-acre lake on the back nine. The par-5 16th features a risk-reward shot off the tee, depending on the angle of the carry over the water, and on the second shot to a green perched atop rock pilings.
North of Naples in Estero, the Old Corkscrew Golf Club by Jack Nicklaus gets high marks for a tough layout that caters best to low handicappers. Water seems to be lurking at every turn.
The same principle applies at the Golf Lodge at the Quarry. The water prominent on every hole of the yardage card looks daunting, but wide fairways and big greens keep the course enjoyable. After a round, spend some time in the "golf lodge," a roomy, modern clubhouse overlooking the 18th green.
The TPC of Treviso Bay is designed by Arthur Hills, who has been called "the Mayor of Naples" for his extensive work in designing golf courses in the area. It's one of the last developments before Alligator Alley, the road that cuts through the Everglades.
Naples lodging
Naples is the only golf destination with two Ritz-Carlton properties: The 295-room, Mediterranean-themed Naples Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort within walking distance of Tiburon Golf Club and the Ritz-Carlton Beach Resort, a high-rise with 450 rooms three miles away. The beach-front property boasts a much larger pool scene and three miles of beach on the Gulf of Mexico.
The Naples Grande Beach Resort and the Edgewater Hotel provide the only access to Naples Grande. Both properties have undergone extensive transformations in recent years. The Naples Grande Beach Resort, formerly known as the The Registry Resort & Club from 1986-2006, received a multimillion-dollar renovation during a rebranding. New are the modern lobby, Strip House steakhouse, Golden Door Spa, 474 retooled guestrooms and 50 refurbished Bungalow suites.
Several other properties, such as the renovated Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, the LaPlaya Beach & Golf Resort, and the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort & Spa, offer golf packages as well. The Lely Resort Golf & Country Club boasts two courses and on-site vacation homes and condos.
Naples dining
For such a seasonal town, Naples has an incredible array of dining choices.
The Ruth's Chris and Don Shula chains have high-end steak houses in the area. Several P.F. Chang's highlight the Asian offerings.
Cruise down the main drag, the Tamiami Trail, to find what best fits your budget and taste buds.
Golf in Naples: The verdict
Naples doesn't have that one must-play course that other Florida golf destinations have – such as the Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, the Stadium course at the TPC Sawgrass near Jacksonville and the Blue Monster at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami.
From November to April, though, there may be no better golf destination in Florida than Naples. The mostly predictable warm weather during high season is unbeatable for snowbirds seeking refuge from the cold.
The high costs that used to scare some visitors away have come down a bit, so there's no better time than now to visit.
Long Weekend
Daily-fee golf in Naples, Fla.—once severely limited—now comes in several appetizing new flavors
By Tim Rosaforte December 2003
There may be some travel destinations that have changed more in the past decade than Naples, Fla., but there can't be many. Once a sleepy little village on the Gulf of Mexico, in the late 1990s it evolved into what The New York Times called "Florida's chicest city," a place to rival Palm Beach as the place to winter. Collier County's poky little retirement villages have made way for ritzy gated communities, fine restaurants and a trendy A-list crowd that buzzes in and out of Naples Municipal Airport in private jets.
All the Platinum Coast lacked in its transformation from Crackerville to Carmel of the East was a platinum resort golf experience. For years, the only place for the traveling golfer was the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, and that 1940s design was hardly in the same league with Florida's other five-star golf destinations. If you wanted high-end golf, you had to visit a private club such as Hole in the Wall.
That is, until the late 1990s, when Greg Norman and H. Wayne Huizenga started making helicopter visits across the Everglades from their headquarters on the state's east coast. Norman came first to an old tomato field three miles east of the existing Ritz-Carlton hotel on the beach. From those 800 acres he carved out a 36-hole golf club called Tiburón, which is Spanish for shark. Huizenga, the South Florida entrepreneur, golf lover and owner of the Miami Dolphins, hired Rees Jones to design 18 holes south of Tiburón for the Registry and Edgewater Beach hotels. Soon after, courses designed by Raymond Floyd and Bob Cupp opened. Almost overnight Naples was on the map as a place to take the clubs.
TRAVEL ADVISORY
Naples used to be practically inaccessible, but that ended in the 1980s when Southwest Florida International Airport opened 30 minutes away in Fort Myers. A decade later, Interstate 75 wrapped around from Tampa/St. Pete to Fort Lauderdale, connecting East and West. Now it's a little more than an hour across Alligator Alley on a four-lane road through the heart of the Everglades. That makes South Beach doable, especially on a moonlit night.
The beauty of Naples is that it never really shuts down. The high season runs from January to April, and the average winter temperature is in the mid-70s. Price points range from steep in-season ($659 a night at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort) to remarkably affordable once the snowbirds head out. Sure, it is brutally hot in the middle of a summer afternoon, but there are worse places to be than Naples beach on a July 4 weekend, paying less than $200 a night, with your toes in the Gulf of Mexico and a frozen drink going down slow. And though staying "on property" will help your chance of getting a prime tee time, you can check in at the Courtyard Marriott on U.S. 41, and they'll take your credit card at any of the resort courses -- year-round. Naples is pretty laid back, whether you can afford it or not.
WHERE TO PLAY
Tiburón G.C., Gold Course/Black Course (239-594-2040, $60-$225).
Norman got a lot of attention for his high-testosterone Great White Course at the Doral in Miami, but his resort courses aren't always more ego-busting than playable. At Tiburón, there are none of the the Pinehurst-type greens that re-route approach shots into nasty collection areas or the sharp-edged coral rock that Norman used to border water hazards at Doral. Other than a few forced carries and tight tee shots, Tiburón doesn't require you to be Greg Norman to play it.
The Gold Course, site of the Franklin Templeton Shootout, is a composite of the original North and West nines. The Black Course combines the tight South nine with nine new holes that opened last year. Norman's trademarks—fast fairways, tight lies around the greens, no rough, transition areas of coquina shells, and sod-wall bunkers—are all on display. By not moving great quantities of earth, and letting native vegetation serve as buffers, Norman has created 36 holes that you could play every day.
Tying the package together is the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort, a 295-room castle overlooking the Gold Course and the Rick Smith Golf Academy. Just a shuttle ride down Vanderbilt Avenue is the Ritz-Carlton-Naples, with a private beach, a 51,000-square-foot spa and the area's best grouper sandwich at Gumbo Limbos.
Naples Grande G.C. (239-659-3700, $75-$175).
Land in Naples is basically flat, but Rees Jones knows how to move dirt, put contours in greens and use his surroundings as well as anyone. The centerpiece of the 250-acre site is a 30-acre lake that Jones featured on his signature hole, the par-5 16th. With the green sitting 20 feet above the water, it makes for a white-knuckle approach. What's smart is that Jones designed the course to be progressively more difficult, allowing the resort golfer time to get the feel of his or her game. There shouldn't be any morale-killing big numbers on the card early.
Like Huizenga's Floridian Golf & Yacht Club, there are no homes or condos on the course—a feature almost unheard of in resort golf. The amenities include a Tom Patri Golf School and two first-rate hotels. Huizenga recently pumped $21 million into the Registry, though if you have a family or a foursome that wants to bond at night, the Edgewater Beach features 126 suites with full kitchens.
Raptor Bay G.C., not yet rated (239-390-4600, $55-$185).
The charm of Raptor Bay is its playability and the way it fits into the environment without encroaching on the wetland preserves. This Raymond Floyd design features no traditional sand bunkers, no rough and not that many forced carries. That may or may not be a reaction to the criticism Floyd took for putting too much teeth back into the Blue Monster course at Doral. Floyd placed an emphasis on the short game by building Donald Ross-type greens that spill into collection areas. In other words, leave your 60-degree wedge at home.
La Playa Golf Club, not yet rated (239-597-3123, $65-$165).
Bob Cupp took the tired Palm River course and created an environment that combines the shot values of a links and the beauty of a tropical garden. It works. When it opened for play in January 2002, Cupp had moved more than 600,000 cubic yards of dirt, landscaped with 3,000 trees, added 19 acres of water features and given the course some elevation changes by piling up the landfill used for lakes into what the club calls its Himalayas. Throw in a David Leadbetter Golf Academy, a big new clubhouse, and a 189-room resort and spa on the gulf, and LaPlaya becomes a sleeper pick in a market that suddenly has a lot of resort-golf options.
Naples Beach Hotel & G.C. (239-261-2222, $57-$120).
This is what Florida golf used to look like, right down to the thatchy Bermuda greens. The Watkins Family, which has owned the resort since 1946, wants to keep the charm of Old Naples intact. It doesn't have man-made waterfalls or some of the other New Age accouterments of its rivals, but it's still nice to go back in time to the way Naples was before the golf rush. The South Florida PGA Open is just one of many tournaments played here annually. Renovation work is continual on the hotel, which now has a spa as well as 318 rooms on the Gulf.
BY THE WAY...
One of the area's best new courses is Fiddler's Creek, a two-year-old Arthur Hills design on nearby Marco Island. Though it is private, you can play the lavishly landscaped course if you stay at the Marco Beach Ocean Resort (800-715-8517), a 100-suite hotel that opened in late 2001. In the December-April high season, a one-bedroom starts at $379 a night, and green fees at Fiddler's Creek are an additional $212. Discounted rates are available, however, if you stay more than one night.