Pete Dye (with an assist from Alice) built it and golfers aplenty have come to take their shot at the famed island green at TPC Sawgrass. But there’s a lot more great golf to be had on Florida’s “First Coast.”
By Adam Schupak
Nearly 30 years ago, I packed my clubs and what I could fit in my Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove from my native New York to Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., the northeast tip of the Sunshine State, to begin a summer internship at PGA Tour Productions. I would’ve earned more flipping burgers, but this gig came with a more valuable perk than a 401(k) match: golf privileges at TPC Sawgrass.
I ended up staying nearly seven years, wasting much of my 20s at Pete Dye’s diabolical layout, home of The Players Championship. With a rack rate rivaling that of Pebble Beach Resort (depending on seasonality), the Stadium Course may run you a couple of car payments, but this bucket-list course is so much more than just the island-green 17th. Don’t skip town without playing Dye’s Valley, a slightly more forgiving version of its big sister at a fraction of the price. The Marriott Sawgrass is a popular place for golfers to stay, especially given that hotel guests have first crack at tee times, and if you want the best meal in town, make a reservation at Restaurant Medure, a short drive away. [Good chance you’ll find my parents dining at Pusser’s Bar & Grille in the same strip-mall complex.]
Having moved from the First Coast, I returned nearly a decade ago, just in time to bear witness to a golf renaissance in the greater Jacksonville area.
Minutes from TPC Sawgrass, the former Oak Bridge (among other names)—a tired 18-hole facility going to seed—has been reimagined as The Yards, a 12-hole layout with some outrageously fun greens ($72.50). It includes a par-three nicknamed “The Black Hole,” with a bunker filled with crushed black lava in the middle of the putting surface, an homage to Riviera’s 6th. There’s also a 6-hole short course that can be played as a 3-hole “beer loop” and is home to a weekly Friday twilight Skins Game that’s a hoot.
Local designer Bobby Weed has played an integral role in the revival. He lives off the 4th hole of Ponte Vedra Inn & Club’s Ocean Course, which hugs more than a mile of Atlantic Ocean coastline. His renovation, completed in 2020, has made the course more strategic and less penal.
It has its own island green, the par-3 ninth, which pre-dates TPC’s by nearly 40 years. Giving way to a portion of the newly expanded practice facility, the former par-4 10th hole was eliminated. In its place on a new land parcel is the par-3 13thhole, providing a pleasant break between back-to-back par 5s. All four of the par 5s on the course deliver a risk-reward element that can make you feel like a hero or a zero. The reimagined 13th is inspired by the Dell hole at Lahinch in Ireland – only this one featuring palm trees framing the low-profile green design.
Ponte Vedra Inn & Club’s Lagoon Course underwent its own nine-month modernization, which was highlighted by all the greens being restored to their original sizes. Grassed with TifEagle Bermudagrass and rebuilt to USGA standards, the green’s intricate contouring was enhanced to accommodate modern-day grass speeds.
There are two iconic beach resorts to choose from if you want to play these courses and both are in the midst of getting even better: Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, which dates to 1928, is still open and welcoming guests throughout an ongoing renovation. The guest rooms have all recently been upgraded and guests are counting the days until the opening of the new state-of-the-art Sports Club and Surf Club, which is slated for early 2027.
The Sports Club will feature an expansive gym, group fitness classes, a second-floor lap pool, a café, retail space, locker room wellness amenities and more. The Surf Club will feature family and adults-only pools, restaurants, bars, and oceanfront meetings and events spaces, and guest rooms.
My wife and I did a weekend Stay-cation at the Lodge & Club, a stately Mediterranean-style Oceanfront resort overlooking a dream stretch of golden sand. We stayed there during the heart of Spring break and came away duly impressed. We could hear the waves of the Atlantic doing laps when we opened the glass door to the terrace and watched Seagulls diving into the water in pursuit of fish from the aptly named Seaview Grille. The Lodge & Club offers reciprocal privileges with its sprawling, elegant sibling, the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, and it’s worth double dipping on amenities at both.
Weed’s fingerprints are ever-present on Florida’s First Coast. He also previously co-designed The Slammer & The Squire with Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen in St. Augustine, a resort course down I-95 in the shadow of the former World Golf Hall of Fame. While you can’t stop in to pay respects to the greats anymore, you should pay a visit to Murray Bros. Caddyshack. A few miles away is The King & The Bear, the only course that Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus co-designed.
Weed is also the brains behind Stillwater Golf Club, 30 miles south of downtown Jacksonville in St. Johns. Northeast Florida’s first new 18-hole course in almost two decades, it opened in 2022, and can be played in loops of 3, 6, 9, 12, and 18 holes. Jacksonville Beach Golf Club, about 15 minutes north on A1A from Ponte Vedra, is the best of the municipal courses close to the city after a renovation by former Palmer Design architect Harrison Minchew in 2018. It gives great bang for your buck, and Taco Lu, a favorite of the touring pros who live in the area, is around the corner.
Architect Beau Welling has completed a $7.4 million renovation of Omni Amelia Island Resort & Spa’s Oak Marsh Golf Course, which originally was designed by Pete Dye and opened in 1972. The course, sitting on a barrier island less than an hour north of Jacksonville at the expansive beach resort, reopened in May. Live oaks feature throughout its inland holes and the marsh holes – Nos. 9, 12 and 16 through 18 – is when the challenge escalates quickly. Welling also built the 10-hole, par-3 course Little Sandy, which circles a lagoon with mostly sub-100-yard holes at the Omni Resort and is rinse-and-repeat fun.
And there’s one more oldie but goodie to check out. Dating back to 1925, Hyde Park Golf Club, on the western side of Jacksonville, is the oldest continuously operating public golf course on the First Coast. Even this budget-friendly family-owned course has invested in sprucing up a beloved local treasure, with a new irrigation system and additional polish work. A debate rages whether Donald Ross or Stanley Thompson laid out this old-school test, but there’s no disputing that Ben Hogan made an 11 at the par-three 6th hole in the 1947 Jacksonville Open. And you thought the island green at Sawgrass was the local par-three to lose sleep over.