Great Golf Magazine Sep/Oct 2017 September October 2017 | Page 69

Florida.qxp_St Enodoc 28.09.2016 13.15 Side 4

Reunion Resort

Stadium Course 17th hole, TPC Sawgrass

120,000 balls from the lake, and during the 2005 Players
Championship, Bob Tway recorded a 12 there after hitting four
balls in the water.
PONTE VEDRA. Although we cannot play, we are given an hour’s
lesson at the PGA TOUR Academy where the tour pros polish
their techniques. No wonder those guys are good; a simple fix
transforms my golf swing in minutes.
We transfer to the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club’s venerable Ocean
Course, just behind the beach. Selected to host the 1939 Ryder Cup,
it never hosted it as the onset of World War II resulted in its
cancellation. The course has water on 14 holes, including the first
island green ever built on its par-3 9th (which I par!), but it is the
stuff that starts falling like stair rods from the sky accompanied by
lightning bolts that sends us seeking refuge under the roof of a luxury
villa being built alongside. It is a theme set to dog us repeatedly.
We tee up the following day on the King & Bear, one of two
collaborative creations by golfing legends at the World Golf

Village. A joint design by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, the
King & Bear is a tour de force that seamlessly combines the best
of both styles, with their individual influences evident throughout.
A variety of trees border the fairways and you have to negotiate
coquina waste areas, and left and right doglegs edged by lakes.
The Slammer & Squire is named after its co-consultants, multiple
major winners Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen, and is a testing
challenge through native flatwoods, hardwood hammocks and
wetland preserves.
HALL OF FAME. The World Golf Village includes the World Golf
Hall of Fame & Museum, a shrine to golf and its greats housed
in a tower resembling a Mormon temple. There is also a lake with
a replica of the TPC Stadium’s 17th, where a big cash prize
rewards anyone acing the hole. At least I make that green within
a couple of attempts.
This corner of the state is known as Florida’s First Coast of Golf
after historic St Augustine, the oldest city in the US, founded by
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