Golfer’s Guide South Florida Golf Courses Stories

The much ballyhooed TPC Sawgrass, headquarters of the PGA Tour and home of the Tour's richest tournament, The Players Championship, will be one of the two courses to host this year's Florida State Golf Association's Amateur Championship, June 25-28.

Sawgrass Country Club will share hosting duties. Sawgrass CC was designed by Ed Seay of Arnold Palmer Course Design.

Recently reopened in 2007, the “New West Course” at Jacaranda is acclaimed as a genial compliment to the challenges presented by the recently restored East Course. The $10-million spent to upgrade Jacaranda’s New Jacaranda Golf Club - East Course and Jacaranda Golf Club - West Courses set an extraordinary benchmark for golf course design.

The addition of Sea-Dwarf Paspalum grass to the tees and fairways has given an entirely new look to one of South Florida’s foremost golfing experiences. Over the past two summers Jacaranda has created “living works of landscape art” while retaining the playability of championship golf. Luxurious new Tif-Dwarf putting surfaces, tightly manicured collection areas, plush emerald green fairways, and bunkering have been added, designed in such a natural way that risk/reward golf has never looked so enticing. Both the par-71 East and the par-72 West have 5 sets of tees measuring from 4,923 to 7,247 yards. The goal Scratch Golf achieved was to create course design where every level of golfer is faced with appropriate challenges that make this game so intriguing. Many who have played Jacaranda since the renovations have commented “It’s a brand new course but it still feels like home.” 

It’s true that dozens of families and individuals are relinquishing their memberships at private country clubs, even here in sunny South Florida, as the economy tightens budgets and forces everyone to honestly evaluate luxury expenditures.

But, for avid golfers and their families who’ve long considered making one of the area’s premier golf facilities a home away from home, the time to act is now as private clubs offer more versatile membership options at discounted rates while still promising the same service and resplendent settings long-time members have grown accustomed to.

Dana Garmany who serves as chairman and chief executive of Troon Golf, the country’s largest golf management company that manages dozens of private clubs in the U.S., recently told the New York Times that this is as good a time as any to get your foot in the door at a private golf facility.