Tom and Nancy invited us to check out their new condo in Naples, Florida. Since everyone up here seems to punch holes in the greens in October, we decided to give Florida another chance.
On our first day out I wanted to stop at Wasioto Winds in Pineville, Kentucky since Ron and I didn’t get down there this year. It was warm enough for golf but the wind was up and I think Wasioto may be Indian talk for ‘swirling’. Although the course is mostly flat, it is surrounded by mountains so that it is very hard to figure out which way the wind will move the ball. The course is also tight and I wasn’t exactly straight off the tee. I did manage to beat the wife 1 up with a par on the very difficult 18th hole.
Wasioto Winds is ranked number 4 on the MOERON Top 10 in Kentucky and is always a challenge. It will be a prime stop in the Kentucky State Park Golf Trail that the commonwealth is building (www.kystateparks.com).
After golf, we drove to Chattanooga for dinner at the Back Inn Café. It is located in the Bluff View Arts district on the Tennessee River. The district included the Bluff View Bed and Breakfast, several galleries, sculptor garden, two restaurants and a bakery. At the restaurant you can eat indoors or outside with a nice river view. We give the Back Inn café 3 ½ stars because it wasn’t the best filet I’ve had, but we will give them another chance when we go back to see Rock City. I’m serious! How can I have lived this long without seeing seven states from Lookout Mountain? They have to include Kentucky to get seven, but I don’t know how I could see Kentucky from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
If it was a little out of our way to play Wasioto Winds, but the next day was a LOT off the direct route to Naples. But I decided that if Arthur Hills could find Colquitt, Georgia and build a course there, then I could drive 200 miles out of my way to play it.
The course opened in 1998 as Crooked Oak, but was purchased in 2001 by Jerry Grimsley who raises Clydesdale horses. He changed the name to Clydesdale Meadows which is an OK name, but the giant plastic horse in front of the clubhouse is tacky. It needs to be bronze if he really likes big horses. The plastic statue is really the only bad thing about the course. The scorecard with the picture of Clydesdales in the field is beautiful, the clubhouse is nice in a homey sort of way, and the course is an all Bermuda, very playable Art Hills design. The people of Colquitt probably don’t realize how lucky they are to play this course at $21 with cart. One of them knows now, because I told him in the parking lot after our round. I worry some that at $21 Mr. Gimsley won’t take in enough money to maintain the course to the level that the design deserves. I also can’t wait to ask Art how he was lured to such a remote site. It is over an hour north of Tallahassee, Florida and I’m not sure how many golfers they can tempt to make that drive. Maybe that's why it's $21?
After golf we went on down to Tallahassee and found a 4 star restaurant just off I-10 called Albert Provence. French and not over priced...which is a rare find indeed.
The next day we drove to World Woods Golf Club. This club, located 50 miles north of Tampa near Brooksville, FL has two championship Tom Fazio designs. The Pine Barrens course is higher rated than the Rolling Oaks course so I made my tee time on the curiously named Pine Barrens after some discussion about course maintenance that was underway. (www.worldwoods.com).
When we arrived the pro shop guy was amazed that we had signed up for Pine Barrens since they had over seeded and were not mowing fairways, rough or greens! I was willing to switch, but Rolling Oaks was full, so the guy let us play Pine Barrens (an $85 course) for $35 with strict cart path only rules. Since most golfers nowadays have an aversion to walking, we were the only golfers we saw all day! On a Friday afternoon, we owned one of the most beautiful courses I’ve ever played. The tee boxes were shaggy (who cares), and the greens were real slow (I can’t putt fast greens anyway). The fairways were so lush they made excellent cushions for the woods I had to hit all day - we loved it. I’m not sure the pictures will do it justice.
Tom reiterated the name "Pine Barrens" on every hole with vast waste areas full of scrubby pines. Joyce and I both avoided the "pine laden" areas and played well. Moe 81, Joyce 102. So the match came down to the last hole. It is a long dogleg left par 4 that I managed to par, but lost the match to her bogey with 2 shots. You may never get the deal we got, but Pine Barrens at World Woods is worth $85. Go play it. You can actually fly in to Tampa and drive up I-589, which is a new toll road directly to the course. I don’t know who knows the governor, but we drove down the road to get to Dunedin (on the coast, just north of Tampa) to stay at the Best Western right next to Bon Appetite Restaurant.
Bon Appetite is where Moe learned his newest rule for fine dining. If they use the word ‘cream’ when describing the menu item, get it. I had veal with some kind of cream over it . And for dessert...you guessed it, berries in vanilla bean cream. Both courses were sensational. I know it’s not health food, but I’ll work it off when I get home. Joyce didn’t pick as well and it was a little noisy for old folks so we only give them 3 ½ stars but we will return if ever in the area. It’s right on the Gulf so we also had a nice view of the sunset.
Saturday we got to Naples in time for me to watch (and lose) every Breeders Cup race. We did get a much needed weekend of rest. Then we learned some things about Naples. They say that Naples now has more millionaires than Palm Beach. The season is January-March when the prices and population double. We were there in late October for semi-bargain golf and even had one bargain meal. There are more restaurants and golf courses in the Naples-Ft. Myers area than Myrtle Beach. In Naples most of the best golf courses are very private or very expensive. Tiburon golf is probably the best public course and would have been $120 in October. It’s over $200 in season. We didn’t play it.
We did play the Mustang Course at Lely Resort (www.lely-resort.com). It is a 1997 Lee Trevino design. It is mostly flat and open with sand and water to menace. It was $80 and barely worth it. If I had another chance I would pick the other Lely Resort course called The Flamingo. It’s by Robert Trent Jones, Sr.
The best course we played in Naples is called The Rookery @ Marco. The Rookery is so new I have very little information. It is very open and we played it in a 25 knot wind, so I played very well to shoot 83. The course is beautiful and in great condition. It has 3 cape holes and is mostly wind, sand and water. It is located south of Naples down 951 just before you get to Marco Island. We paid $90 in the off season, but it is a great course.
The other Naples course I must mention is Stoneybrook (www.stoneybrookgolffm.com) which is $37 off season and flat and a nice place without any great holes. I mention it because Joyce shot a 90 which is her best round by 7 shots! She was in the zone and won so many skins that we made her buy dinner.
Naples is full of Arthur Hills designed courses, but they are all very private. On the trip home I managed to find two we could get on...I found two good ones.
First, we stopped in North Point to play Heron Creek (www.Heron-Creek.com). This is a 27 hole club in a development just off I-75. The original 2 nines called Oaks and Marsh opened in 2000 and the third nine called Creek just opened this year. We played Creek-Oaks with members Norm and Pat Harrigon. They were nice and Pat’s sister is in Toledo and knows Art Hills too! It’s a small world.
I played the courses under 6,000 yards to join Norm but messed up a great round by finishing with a pair of 8’s. The course was excellent in design and condition. They had a blue reflector on the cart path at 200 yards, white reflector at 150 yards and a red reflector at 100 yards. They also had vertical poles of those colors at those distances in the center of fairways and every sprinkler head was marked. I consider that the perfect distance marking for a course. They also get high marks for several other reasons:
1. We could drive our carts to our car.
2. They had excellent practice facilities with free range balls.
3. The logo ball was $1.
4. A subdivision course with houses not in play.
5. $50 w/cart.
The only negative was the 5 hour round, but it was Sunday morning and we had a nice couple to play the round with.
On Monday we drove 350 miles from Gainesville, Florida then to Woodstock, Georgia which is 20 miles north of Atlanta; to play the Art Hills designed Towne Lake Hills. I had low expectations for this course because I know Atlanta golf is not cheap and it was only $40 with cart and because it only got 3 stars from Golf Digest. This is not the first time Golf Digest has erred.
I thought the ‘Hills’ in the course name was a tip of the hat to Art, but it turns out they have real hills and lots of them. The course actually reminded me of the Hills designed Southpointe Country Club we played south of Pittsburgh earlier this year. The same rolling hills and grading to turn your ball back to the fairway if you stay on the high side. The layout had many great hole designs and the bentgrass greens had recovered from fall maintenance and rolled fast and true. The houses on the course were well back in the trees that lined almost every hole. We caught the two big hitters in front of us on the #18 tee and one admitted to hating the hole (after he drove it 300 yards into the trees on the left). As I played the 530 yard par 5, I came to understand why he hated it. It had a simplistic layout on the scorecard and I watched the guys in front of us play the hole, but I still never saw the green until I was on it. I had to carry water, stay straight to avoid trees on both sides, and then hit my third shot over “the Alps” to an undulating hidden green. I was very proud of my bogey there and of my 83 for the day from the blue tees at 6300 yards.
We didn’t look hard enough o find a restaurant to recommend on the trip home, but we certainly found two more great Art Hills' courses.