Red + Blue = Solid Gold in Florida

Tony Dear

It’s probably enough to tell your friends you’re going to play golf in Louisiana. You really need add nothing when you tell them you’re taking a golf trip to Maine or Nebraska, New Mexico, Mississippi, or even Arizona. Mention you’re taking your sticks to any of them and whomever you tell is going to have a pretty good picture of where exactly you’re going, as well as the type of course you’ll be playing.

Not so Florida. Tell your buddies you’re playing in the Sunshine State and there’s a good chance they’re going to need you to be a little more specific. There are almost 1,500 courses after all.
To help out would-be visitors to Florida, it’s useful to cut the state up into ten, yes ten, distinct golf regions – Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Naples, Sarasota, West Palm Beach, Jacksonville, Daytona and the Space Coast, Gainesville, and the Florida Panhandle. You’ll find an awful lot of the rather mundane, water-strewn, condo-lined courses most people associate with Florida, but you’ll also discover surprising variety.

Something you definitely won’t expect to find, however, is an inland links with massive sand dunes, firm and fast-running fairways, large blowout bunkers and exposed sandy areas, some scrubland… and large lakes. You won’t expect to find this because nowhere else in the known universe does this combination of natural features exist on a golf course.

Welcome to Streamsong in the city of Bowling Green (population 2,986). And when we say ‘in’ the city of Bowling Green, we mean at least a couple of miles away as the Boat-Tailed Grackle flies.

A lot was written about Streamsong when it opened in January, but it’s worth bringing up again because the resort’s 216-bedroom Lodge currently being constructed about a mile from the clubhouse will be complete in November and ready to receive guests in early 2014. Rooms will no doubt go quickly during winter, so it can’t hurt to make an early reservation.

Whatever you’ve read about Streamsong’s Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore-designed Red Course and the Tom Doak-designed Blue Course is probably true…well, provided you’ve read that both are magnificent tests of golf and definitely worthy of a plane ride from any airport in the USA (including Honolulu and Anchorage), and indeed overseas.

It has to be said though, Streamsong is not ideally situated for a multi-course golf trip as the nearest 18-holer is probably the 5,470-yard Reservation Course in Mulberry (population 3,817) 20 miles away and the nearest top-quality venue is the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort some 75 miles away.

But that doesn’t matter at all. Because Streamsong is so good, it raises the number of golf regions in Florida to eleven by itself.

To make reservations and get more information, you can e-mail [email protected] or call 863-428-1000. streamsong.com

To read Tom Ferrell's Winter 2012 Colorado AvidGolfer article, see page page 54-55 in the digital version of that issue below.

 

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.