Orlando Golf Blogger

Over the weekend, I made my way out to Falcon’s Fire, for an invigorating and at the same time, exhausting round of golf. I also gained some new insight into myself, and that is, I hate golfing alone. Thinking back, I can’t recall a single time I’ve ever golfed a full 18 holes solo. There’s been many occasions when I’ve gone solo to the course, but I have always been paired up with others prior to starting the round. Last Saturday, at the last minute my golf partner had to bail and I was forced to play the first few holes solo. It was miserable. I can’t explain why exactly, but I felt rushed, unfocused, aggravated and frustrated. I mean, the course was good and there was no one behind me, but I couldn’t get my mind focused on the game.

When I golf, I don’t consciously pit myself against other golfers, so it’s not the competition with others that drives my game nor would the lack of competition kill my game. I always figured a solo round of golf would be something meditative and therapeutic, guess I was wrong, perhaps I’m harboring some abandonment issues that manifest themselves while on the links….alone.. Thankfully, the guys in front of me allowed me to joined up with them on the 3rd hole, so Alex, Keith, thanks for saving my round!

But, I digress….

Back to the course.

Driving into Falcon’s Fire made me feel like one of those regular joes you see in the movies who somehow end up in a situation that has them driving up to a rich relatives mansion trying to take in all the amazing and unbelievable sights. It was an exciting experience to drive up to the valet parking, have the fellas unload my bag and park my car.

I arrived early so I could scope the place out. I ended up forgetting my golf glove and had to purchase another, which, almost cost as much as the round… Note to self… don’t ever do that again! Check-in went smooth enough, got to the starter who was very informative and ensured I was aware of the location of the restrooms and watering holes along the course and also told me the name of the cart lady who was driving around. The 90-degree rule was in effect, not surprising really, considering the amount of rain we’d gotten the previous week. Each cart is equipped with it’s own GPS unit and it’s accurate to the pin placement and not just to the center of the green, which I thought was pretty cool, and it also showed the distance to the golfers in front of you. I started out playing the whites, but when I partnered up with Alex & Keith, I switched to the blues… What can I say? A man and his ego…

Over the years, this course has won it’s share of awards and accolades, with it’s most recent being “Best Public Course in Florida” - Florida Monthly, 2006 and in this humble bloggers opinion, it’s pretty well deserved. The course holds it’s fair share of challenges with the blues boasting a slope of 132, a course rating of 71.7 and 6473 yards.

I wish I had been able to play the course under more optimal conditions. There’s been so much rain lately that it deterred from the enjoyment that one should have playing Falcon’s Fire. Many of the holes were a bit soggy in the fairways and roughs, but thankfully the greens were in really nice shape. Now I’m not blaming the fine folks over at Falcon’s Fire for the sogginess, that’s something no man can control, well, at least no man I know about.

Above is a picture of the 5th hole, Alex was gracious enough to let me hit his cleveland driver 9.5 degree on this hole. I only bring this up because, as a left-handed golfer, it is a damned rare occurrence to actually play a round with a kindred-handed person, so whenever you do, it’s almost a requirement to sample the others clubs because, god only knows when the opportunity is going to arise again..

Falcon’s Fire has a fair amount of character, each hole has it’s own name (which I personally like) and I think my favorite, like many others is the 13th, adequately named “Bunker Hill.”

Let the record show that I had an amazing 260 yard drive that landed on the fairway in front of the 3rd bunker from the right. Let the record also show that this is one of my highest scoring holes because my short game was horrible for the remainder of the hole…, well everything except the amazing 1 putt I had..

My Falcon’s Fire arch-nemesis was the 14th “Falcon’s Lair,” it’s long, it’s strong, and it’s a ball eater… A whopping 550 yards of pure entertainment and delight… Avoid the right side of the hole and a note of caution, the water on the right side goes all the way up to within probably 10 yards of the green and if you manage to avoid the water, it’s a pretty steep uphill shot. My recommendation if your planning on avoiding the fairway (like most of us do) stay left.

Number 16 “Double Dip” is another fun hole to play, your playing against water hazards on both sides of the fairway.

Overall, it’s a really fun course and there’s a lot of coupons floating around out there, so I definitely recommend checking it out. I asked Alex and Keith if they thought the course was worth paying $90 and they both said yes. They’ve played it before when it wasn’t waterlogged. Oh, if you decide to grab a bite to eat after the round, the pulled pork sandwich with cheese is DYNOMITE!

Dave

Tried to play Dubsdread over the weekend but they were booked until 5:30pm on both Saturday & Sunday! I suppose it’s for the best, I contacted SkyCaddie about the new course layout to see if they had mapped it yet and they said there’s someone scheduled to map it but it hasn’t occurred yet.

So I went to ‘ol faithful Golfnow.com on Saturday night and booked a round for $27 bucks.

The course wasn’t too bad, it’s kind of a sleeper course, it starts out pretty average and starts to develop more character as you play through the course. There’s more than a few blind holes on this course most of them being an elevated fairway where you aren’t really sure what awaits you on the other side. be wary of the 6th, it’s a blind tee shot with a strategically placed bunker on the left side of the fairway right about 245 yards out.

Like I was saying before, this course has some character, a couple named holes like #5 “Devil’s Kitchen” which features a tee shot over water with a semi narrow fairway waiting on the other side and it severely punishes you if you go anywhere left of the fairway, which of course, is exactly where I went. Also, #9 affectionately called the “Train Wreck,” a painful dogleg left where the entire left side of the hole slopes down into the “Train Wreck” of rough, swamp, and water. I managed to avoid most of the damage until the turn where an errant pitch hit a tree branch and “wrecked.” It was not a very enjoyable hole for me…

Here’s an image of the train wreck

If you manage to survive this, on the back nine, holes 12 through 16 have been labeled “Crater junction” because they all dogleg around this huge natural crater. At first I was asking myself “what crater?” That was until I hit my ball into it… Then I was asking, what ball? #12 is a pretty straight forward 175ish par three no real affect of the crater is felt here, same goes for #13, but #14 on is where you know its there, stalking, waiting to eat some ionomer..

Here’s a picture of #12

Here’s the beast! #14, ball stealer. I hit a beautiful drive right into the shade of that huge oak tree on the left.

Here’s a picture, closer to the turn.

Notice where those carts are? The hole is left of those carts. Notice the houses on the course? Not your typical golf course housing, the entire course has houses like these on it. I dunno if they’re called economy houses, but this course is smack dab in the middle of a retirement community, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all…

Hmm.. oh, this course boasts a par 3 that’s longer than any par 3 on the PGA tour, it’s the 17th and 243 yards. It also has two drivable par 4’s (264 & 266) yards. The course is in good shape, the greens are pretty fast and spongy. There wasn’t much difference in ball speed on the greens even as the day warmed up.

It was a fun course to play, especially for the price! Not to mention how cool it feels to be playing golf on the set of Cocoon…..

I look forward to your comments!

Dave

It is a very exciting day today! Dubsdread Golf Course has re-opened its doors today July, 11th 2008 after being closed for what.. two years renovating the course?

It was originally opened in 1923 was the former site for the Orlando open and has hosted golf legends like Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Claude Harmon.

I spoke to Erin Durning out there and she said that every hole has been renovated and the course layout has changed. The website doesn’t have the new layout posted up yet, but as soon as I find it, I’ll post it up.

I really hope to get out there and play this weekend so I can have a review posted up on Monday, but no promises!

Oh, you can sign up for their eClub and receive a free round on your birthday. Here’s the link.

Free birthday round

If you’ve played it let me know how it is!

Dave

I had the opportunity to head out to Ridgewood Lakes today, booked the tee-time through golfnow.com and it only cost me $20 bucks! T’was a very good deal!

Now, technically Ridgewood Lakes is located in Davenport but I still feel it’s close enough to fall under the Orlando umbrella. It has to be, it’s a part of the Orlando Golf Trail. For those of you who don’t know where Davenport is (myself included), it’s between Orlando & Tampa via SR 275.

I was also able to demo the Skycaddie SG 5 which I shall post about later, but man, what a sweet GPS!

Anyway, I digress… On to the review!

Ridgewood Lakes Golf & Country Club

Playing this course was a real pleasure (well, the course was, the weather on the other hand, was not!).

It’s voted top 30 courses in Florida, not really sure why it’s not a bit more specific, but hey, it allows you to decide where you want to rank the course, as long as you keep it in the top 30..

It’s also voted Best New Golf Course in USA by Golf Digest.

A Ted McAnlis design, built in 1994.

Here’s the course information

The course was a bit soggy (due to all the rain) but in really good shape, The only real blemish I saw was on the 5th green which had quite a few patches of what I call “wasteland” and yes, the term is patent pending. See below.

The course has water on all 18 holes, which in retrospect, makes perfect sense, I did lose a few more balls than usual today… For the most part the water serves as nothing more than an unforgiving OB marker, but there are a few holes where it’s a factor. My worst hole of the day was one of them, lucky #13 has three different bodies of water, with the most irritating being a little stream about 78 yards from the pin (where my beautiful fairway wood shot landed, giving me my 2nd OB of the hole…)

The other most notable was #15. a nifty par 3 with an elevated tee box and a shot over the water, has kind a pseudo Sawgrass feel to it. I believe this is their signature hole, see the picture below.

Yep, this is their signature hole not to mention the most photographed hole on their course (and I thought I had discovered a diamond in the rough, now I feel like I’m touring the tower of London following one of those beefeaters). See this quote from their site.

Hole 15 Par-3 – “Signature Hole.”

Ah, I almost forgot! #9 is a crazy dogleg left which I’m going to label as a blind hole because you can’t really see the fairway from the tee box, you get an idea but nothing conclusive enough to feel comfortable taking the shot. I’m going to make it easy on you, my lovely readers, because I care about your well being and mental health, so here’s what you’ve got to do. There’s a palm tree thats taller than the rest with an extra bushy fronds and furthest on the right almost a straight line from the tee box. Your shot, should you choose to accept it, is to hit to the right of that palm tree. It will land you in the fairway and give you a great lie for your next shot. Do not, I repeat, do not hit to the left at all, it’s no mans land and not a very fun place. See the below picture (sorry I don’t have any photo editing software, but the tree thats directly below the ed in edit is the one to hit at).

I think #7 deserves the tricky hole award. Like a moron I didn’t take a picture, but it’s a very narrow tee shot and theres quite a few oaks on either side of the fairway and their branches hang over the fairway making it almost like launching your ball out of a tunnel. One of the guys I was playing with, hit it perfectly, I on the other hand, enjoy a challenge so I took the path less traveled and hit a tree…

#16 is also worthy of note, definitely keep the driver in the bag on this one, anything over 225 off the tee is going to land you either a healthy dose of H20 or Sawgrass. You know, actually, if you decide to play this course, just leave the driver at home! Looking back, 3 wood off the tee would’ve saved me probably 5-10 strokes. Here’s #16.

It’s funny, I mentioned to the guys that I was with that I felt like this grass had fingers because it kept grabbing my club head and one of them laughed and said that his boss asked him if he had ever tried playing golf in his front yard because “that’s Ridgewood!”

I don’t really know how you would combat the grabby grass, perhaps some Crisco, Spray PAM or WD40?

Overall, I really liked the course, it was pretty challenging for me, had plenty of good and bad shots, but this is definitely the course to play if you want to work on your accuracy, it’ll definitely punish you for errant shots. The staff was very friendly and accommodating and I’ll definitely be making the hour drive to play again!

With my un-official ranking system, I give this course 4 out of 5 stars.

Let me know your thoughts!
Dave

Comments

I had the opportunity to play at Celebration Golf Club yesterday. It’s the 2nd course I’ve played out of the Orlando Golf Trail courses. The Orlando Golf Trail is a group of 10 disney area golf courses located within short driving distance of Orlando, Florida.

Let me preface this post by saying sorry for the quality of the pictures. I brought the camera, brought the battery, but forgot the stupid memory card! I guess in todays world that the equivalent of bringing your camera but forgetting the film (for all of you oldies but goodies). So after about five minutes of cursing the gods, my buddy Spence suggested using my phone camera. Brilliant! Thank you technology!!!

So the pictures you see are those taken with a 1.2 mega pixel phone camera. A little funny side note, because of this experience, I learned that I can store all of my phone photos online free of charge. Whenever I take a photo it always asks “Do you want to send this to my album?” and my mental response is always “why the **** would I take a photo if I didn’t want to save it!?” What the amazing little creature was inquiring was if I wanted to post it online for everyones viewing pleasure… If your wondering, that is NOT me wearing pink stilettos about to tee off…..

On with the show!

Celebration was quite a treat!

Designed by father & son Jones. Here’s a link that discusses the design

Robert T. Jones Sr & Jr

We tee’d off at 8am, the starter Mike was very informative and gave us a solid rundown of the course. A couple of cool points about the area.

The movie “The Truman Show” was filmed in Celebration.

Celebration, FL was designed based off Walt Disney’s original idea behind Epcot. But I suppose a creepy, cookie cutter community wouldn’t really appeal to tourists.. I guess a better term than creepy would be crazy expensive…

So the course was great. Very challenging, overall in really great shape. The only qualms i had with it were many of the greens had brown patches, they really didn’t interfere with the balls roll, it’s just an aesthetics thing. I’m not really sure if the greens keeper can prevent these blemishes, I think the combination of excessive sun and watering causes them, and many of the courses I’ve seen recently have been sporting these blights. So it might just be a seasonal thing, but one would expect more when spending $85 for a round.

The grass was very spongy and the ball had literally no roll. I struck a solid 203 yard three wood that landed on the green and by all accounts should’ve rolled off the back of the green, it bounced once and ended up about an inch behind my ball mark. It was crazy, but hey, I wasn’t complaining, I’d much rather have that than the expected result

It’s not a terribly long course, only 6257 yards from the golds, but because of the lack of roll, it plays long. There’s some pretty tough holes, for me 4, 9, 12, 18 were the toughest.

The 4th hole was a bad one for me because we had an audience. Don’t you hate when the jerks in front of you end up being courteous golfers and they let your two some play through? Well, I do, especially when it’s a par 5 over water and you totally duff your tee short and the guys watching are kind enough to count your ball skips across the water…. For the record, I had 9! Though flustered, I still managed to squeeze a bogey out of that one.

The 9th featured a slightly blind tee shot and the out of bounds stick is really really close to the right side of the green. My approach shot landed about a foot away from the green on the right and I was out of bounds… stupid red stick cost me my par!

The 12th is a totally blind tee shot that I’m going to try my best to explain and illustrate with pictures So you go under a bridge and then over a bridge and at that point, you need to stop to examine the fairway, because when you get to the tees it’s a dogleg left and you cant see the pin. The best approach is slightly left of the fairway bunker about 225 yards out.

Here’s the bridge you go under

Here’s a shot of the fairway, right after you cross the wooden bridge and turn left, stop and examine the hole, it’ll help you plan out your approach.

To the left of the Tee box about 30 feet down is an evil tree with baseball gloves for leaves, be very wary of this creature.. The perfect shots flight path would be right out of reach of these treacherous limbs and set you up for a great second shot, but my shot ended up nicking a branch and killing my shot at par.

Above is the 16th, a 211 yard par 3…

The 18th was my favorite hole, a loooooooong 566 yard Par 5, after hitting my drive and 3 wood, I was still 111 yards away….. But it was fun!

Well, if you couldn’t tell by my extra long post, this is a very memorable course and one I highly recommend.

Two disappointing notes.. The carts GPS, while very accurate when available, was very unreliable, I think at least 1/2 the holes, the GPS was down. Now, I’m not saying that one needs GPS in order for the round to be a success, but hey, if it’s there and supposed to be functioning, kind of irritating when it doesn’t.

The other disappointment was a lack of ice cold spearmint towels… A friend of mine who had played the course before was raving at how they have a guy in a cart who’s sole purpose in life is to make sure you are refreshed. So this mythical man comes to your cart, takes a fresh clean towel, dips it in a cooler filled with ice and spearmint water and hands it to you to break the sunstroke your likely to encounter playing Orlando during summer. So, finally my day came to experience this phenomenon and the only thing we encountered was an extremely pleasant cart girl who pluralized the word sweetie. Hey sweeties…. I didn’t think it was possible…

Oh! One last cool point! There’s tons of hawks on the course. Ok, I’m a Floridian by birth, and I saw two things on the course I’ve never seen before, first off, I saw a field mouse, or at least something that resembles a field mouse <hope he wasn’t related to mickey> and then I saw a hawk swoop down and snatch a field mouse! Picture yours truly cowering in terror screaming like a little girl trying to avoid the hitchcockian moment thats about to occur only to see the hawk fly overhead and take down the fabled field mouse! It was awesome!

When the round was over, the cart guy asked “you guys heading to the club house for a drink? and we responded “naah, gotta get on home.” He then produced a couple of free drink vouchers and we quickly changed our tune

So needless to say, I’m giving Celebration 4 1/2 stars.

Really need to check this one out.

Click here to book a tee time at a discounted rate

Let me know your thoughts on the course!

Dave

Comments

Sorry for the delay in posting! I know everyone was waiting with bated breath.. Happy belated Memorial Day, it’s important for us to reflect on the sacrifices others have made in pursuit of life, liberty, and freedom. To celebrate memorial day, I played golf! Well, in the morning I golfed, the afternoon, I reflected.. <with a few beers, some dogs, and some awesome company>

Here’s my take on Hunters Creek.

The round kicked off at 0729, I played with a friend of mine and we picked up a 3rd, a nice guy named Sergio. He has some serious power in his swing and he plays it pretty well. He owns his own commercial AC company, so if you find yourself in need of his services, let me know

As you can see from the picture, the course has seen better days. Now, granted, they informed us before the round started that they were aerating the greens, but as far as I know, that doesn’t include any work on the fairways. Unlike other course I’ve played soon after an aeration, they gave us a free round to come back and play once the greens are fully regrown. Two rounds for the price of one! Not too shabby, the deal is still going on, so you might want to take advantage while you can.

Back to the fairways, it seems like every hole we played had multiple brown patches, reminds me of one of those funky Christmas green and brown candy canes.. They weren’t the type of brown patches that would affect the play of your ball (like replacing the fairway with hard packed dirt) they were an eye sore and nothing more…. (was a poet and didn’t know it)

One thing that really irked me, is that the 2nd green was under repair so they moved the green forward 50 yards and didn’t bother to inform anyone. I’ve been tracking my rounds for the golf digest challenge and I wasn’t sure if I should have counted the hole as a par 5 or a par 4, kind of irritating…

Some of the local members are from the wrong side of the track. We saw a reenactment of rocky (Yo Adrian!!!!!!!!!) on the 4th hole, there seems to have been a discrepancy over a ball being hit over the fence and whether it was still playable. We managed to snap a shot of the scuffle.

The head pro said that in his opinion, the two most difficult holes were 9 & 13. Hole 13 wasn’t that difficult, but 9 had it’s share of hazards.

They weren’t your conventional ones either… The hole is a dog leg left and it turns at about 175 yards. I <not surprising> over shot the mark by about 20 yards and my ball landed about 7 feet from somebodies property. They had a black iron fence up and behind the fence were a couple of hounds straight out of Dante’s 4th circle… They were barking, spewing fire and brimstone and basically being a real pain in the glute. I wanted to snap a picture, but the heat from their breath melted my camera… Sergio being the hero that he is, attempted to distract the demon hounds while I hit my shot, but to no avail, as soon as I finished my address, they were back to torment me. I still managed a pretty nice recovery shot, but at the expense of a camera, my lunch, and my 3 iron.. Didn’t bother me too much, I don’t hit that club anyway

The pace of play was a little slower than expected, but we had a foursome of new players in front of us.

The greens were just aerated so obviously, they were playing a bit slow and a bit rough…(”what sound does a dog make?” Ruff, just like your mother likes it Alex!) Is there any scenario where a green has just been aerated and it’s not slow and rough?

Here’s a shot of one of the par 3’s, for the record, I did not hit into the sand!

The most infuriating part of the round was the distance on the score cards was way off the distance of the gps. Sergio brought his Skycaddie and we were stunned at the variance between the two. A little variance is expected for many places, but some of the holes were off by twenty yards. One of the back 9 par 3’s, I think it was 15, card said 184, gps said 207. That’s a couple club lengths off! They need to do some remeasuring and get this fixed asap.

This course is one of the founding members of the Orlando Golf Trail. Here’s a copy & paste of the course info:

Course Designer: Lloyd Clifton
Number of Holes: 18 Holes, Par 72

Amenities & Services

• Complimentary Bag Drop Service
• 1,200 Square Foot Golf Shop
• Practice Range - Grass Hitting Tee
• Nike Rental Clubs
• PGA Golf Professional Staff
• Private/Group Golf Instruction
• Beverage Cart Service
• Restaurant and Bar

I’m giving this course 2.5 stars. It was once rated one of the top 75 courses to play by Golf Digest, but I think it’s fallen since. I will be playing it again once the greens are squared away, but to be honest, I was a bit disappointed in the over all course conditions. The staff were great, pretty knowledgeable folks.

Click here for Discount Golf Tee Times on GolfNow.com

There’s 10 courses on the Orlando Golf Trail, I plan to review them all over the next few weeks.

Let me know what you think.

Comments

I’ve played this course more times than I care to remember. It’s a good choice for those who are just starting out and who golf on a tight budget.

To be honest, it’s not a very good course, but it’s one that I remember fondly. Many of the holes are waterlogged, the greens are reminescent of a craggy dry wasteland and the patronage must be taken with a grain of salt.

It always seems to rain when I played Casselberry, almost as if the golf gods were testing my resolve, I’m happy to say that for the most part, I passed the test, there was one particlar day, when I was playing with my cousin and the skies opened up and unleashed their fury! So there we were, huddled up in the cart, being pelted by gale force winds and rain drops the size of golf balls chanting “it will pass, it will pass, it will pass…” After about five minutes of sitting there, lightning struck a tree about 100 yards away. Needless to say, we had to call the course the next day apologizing for leaving the cart complete with two sets of golf clubs and man sized gerbil pellets abandoned in the middle of the fairway and could we please have our clubs back…

It’s a short, easy course 5,452 yards from the blues, it has it’s share of fun holes and it’s an easy way to spend an afternoon.

I give it 2.2 out of 5 stars.

Here’s the link Casselberry Golf Course

Blue
Yardage 5452
Course Rating 66.9
Slope 124

White
Yardage 4970
Course Rating 64.7
Slope 119

Red
Yardage 4095
Course Rating 64.1
Slope 111

Anyone have a similar course they feel this way about?

I was invited to play in a scramble tournament out here on April 20th. It was hosted by a local financial software company called Fiserv. What a great day! They had about 100 people playing. Because of the volume of participants they set the hole max at Bogey. I’ll tell you, their team did a great job of coordinating everyone and the pace of play was surprisingly good considering the size of the tournament. Afterwards they had a complementary BBQ feast and door prizes. The food was great! Oh, did I forget to mention that the beer was free for the entire tournament? Anyway, my thanks goes out to the Fiserv folks for allowing me to participate in the event, you’ve got alot of great people working for you, be sure to take care of them!

On to the course…

What can I say? They’ve got some killer pictures on their website of some of the holes and I don’t think they do them justice. It’s a beautiful course, very well maintained, I’m going back to play it again early in the morning, I think playing this course when the sun is still waking up and the dew is beginning to settle would really enhance the round. There was a surprising amount of elevation changes on this course, something not typical of a florida course. I really like this course because it offers a variety of challenges and you’ll have the opportunity to utilize most of the weapons in your arsenal. They offer five sets of tees for those looking for a real challenge. I like how their scorecards shows the different pin placements, I found that to be useful. The greens were almost perfect in terms of difficulty & speed.

Course Info:
Timacuan Golf Course
550 Timacuan Boulevard
Lake Mary, FL 32746
(407) 321-0010
http://www.golftimacuan.com

Rates: From 4/8/08-5/31/08
Mon-Thu $65.00, after 2:00pm $55.00, after 4:00pm $40.00
Fri-Sun $75.00 after 2:00pm $65.00, after 4:00pm $40.00

USGA Ratings:
Yardage Course Slope
Gold 6915 73.7 135
Blue 6403 70.7 126
White 5892 68.4 117
Green 5243 64.8 109
Yellow 4576 66.8 118

Course was built in 1987 by Ron Garl and renovated in 1996 Bobby Weed.

I give this course 4 out of 5 stars. It’s a definate must play for locals and tourist alike!

Click here for tee times

I had the opportunity to play this course over the weekend. The first thing that comes to mind is that this is one of the first courses I’ve played whos name also serves as a description of the course! What I mean is that, when I hear the word dunes, I can’t help but visualize myself on the planet Arrakis, standing next to Mua’Dib, searching for Fremen Caches. I had the same feeling when I was tracking down some of my errant shots. <alas, there were more than a few…> One instance, I walked 30 feet in a fairway bunker, still within bounds mind you, to find my ball. What made things worse is that we played on probably the windiest day of the year so far. So while having to contend with an enormous amount of sand, we also had to hunker down and wait out a few sand storms…

The course was in good shape, and since it’s not the closest course, it wasn’t very busy, so the pace of play was perfect. My one qualm about the course conditions was that alot of sand was blowing out of the bunkers onto the fairways making the course “less attractive” and some of the bunkers were down to the hard packed sand which made your shots almost like hitting off concrete. Overall, the course was pretty wide open and thus a little more forgiving on the tee shots. Watch your putting, these are some pretty fast greens. They claim to have the truest putting surfaces in Orlando! I for one, hope not..

The clubhouse staff was really friendly and helpful. They’ll sell you beer and give you a cooler & ice for your cart to store it in!

I’m giving this course 3 stars. <I plan on implementing a 5 star ranking system, once i find the right plugin>

Below is some information about the course.

Eagle Dunes Golf Club
24000 Marbella Drive
Sorrento, FL. 32776
(352) 357-0123

Weekend Rates $50.00 & $40.00 after 2:00pm

USGA Ratings:
Yardage Course Slope
Black 7024 73.7 131
Gold 6527 71.6 124
White 6013 69.3 119

Designed by: Dasher Golf Design

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