On Tour, Tampa golf: Top courses abound

TAMPA—The kid behind the car rental desk at the Tampa airport was polite and mostly patient, but when he started to explain to me how the GPS worked in my car, you could almost see the cartoon balloon floating above his head: “Come on grandpa, it’s not advanced calculus, you just type in the address and punch the button!”

I couldn’t figure out which button he was talking about, but kept on nodding like a bobble head doll with the hiccups. And that’s why, within 20 minutes of pulling away from the airport, I was lost on a succession of dusty farm roads that were leading me further and further away from the ocean and the interstate.

The good news, should this happen to you, is that the Tampa area is sprinkled with dozens of good golf courses, so you’re never too far from a quality layout.

And after a woman at a roadside fruit stand agreed to go old school and use a pen and paper to draw me a map, within 10 minutes I’d found the Saddlebrook Resort, located just off I-75.

Saddlebrook is best known as a tennis resort; it’s home to 45 courts with surfaces that include grass and clay. America’s top-rated players practice here, including John Isner and the Bryan brothers. Plenty of other tennis, baseball and movie stars have stayed at Saddlebrook, because, besides the courts, the resort also sports two very good Arnold-Palmer-designed golf courses. The Saddlebrook course is a little shorter and lined with hard-nosed pine trees, while the Palmer layout is bit longer and more open, but with more rolls and water.

The place has a cosmopolitan feel. Saddlebrook runs a well known prep. school for aspiring tennis players and golfers. When I visited, there were kids from 22 different countries enrolled.

North of Tampa, the number one stop should be the World Woods Golf Club, home to the Pine Barrens and Rolling Oaks courses designed by Tom Fazio in the early 1990s. Owned by a Japanese investor, the vision for World Woods originally included accommodation, real estate and more courses, and someday it may happen, but, for now, it is one of those spectacular “if-we-buil-it-they-will-come” kind of places.

World Woods is a pure golf destination. It has two of the finest public courses in Florida and arguably green fee that is arguably the best bang for the buck in the U.S. It is the antithesis of Florida golf; it’s surprisingly hilly, has lots of elbow room off the tee, has very little water, but features a constant flow of sandy wasteland snaking through the fairways. Even better, there are no houses hemming in the edges of the courses.

On the outskirts of Tampa, the best known golf stop is Innisbrook, a Salamander Golf & Spa Resort. With four courses, Innisbrook was already one of the state’s best known golf centres. It jumped to the next level when its new owner Sheila Johnson, who made her fortune as co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, poured around $30 million into it. The number one course here is Copperhead, a tough track that hosts an annual PGA Tour event. This year, the Valspar Championships runs at Innisbrook from Mar. 10-16.

While everybody, me included, has been writing about the death of the golf boom, it continues to defy the pessimists. Just over a year ago, the prettily named Streamsong Resort made its debut with two stunning courses.

Located about an hour east of Tampa and built on shaggy, reclaimed phosphate-mining land, the Blue Course is designed by Tom Doak and the Red Course by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore. Crenshaw and Coore form the team behind the new oceanside course being built at Cabot Links in Cape Breton and scheduled to open in 2015.

Golf continues to grow no matter how much the economists shake their heads and sharpen their pencils.

The green fee, including cart, at the two championship courses at World Woods is US$99, and drops to $69 in April and just $45 in May. It also offers stay and play packages at golf villas located only 10 km away from the courses. 1 (352) 796-5500, ext. 22, worldwoods.com