Guests at the golf resort have full access to
the AAA Five Diamond beach resort and
the wide variety of water sports it offers,
including kayaking, fishing, parasailing and
wave-running. Shuttles between the two
run every 30 minutes.
Norman’s two designs, the longer but
more forgiving Tiburón Gold (7,271 yards;
par 72) and the tighter, slightly shorter
Tiburón Black (6,949 yards; par 72) are
notable for having no rough.
“If you’re not in the fairway, you’re either
in waste areas, waste bunkers of crushed
shells or sand bunkers. There’s no rough
at all,” says Chad Nigro, Tiburón’s PGA
director of golf.
There’s water on about half of the
holes on each course. The finishing hole
of the Gold Course runs along the front
of the hotel and finishes in full view of
the pool balcony.
“Usually, when you finish that hole,
there’s quite a little gallery,” Nigro says.
The Gold is also set to host the Franklin
Templeton Shootout, a PGA Tour event,
Dec. 13-15. “They’re watching you finish
the most difficult hole on the course.”
Then again, spend enough time at The
Ritz-Carlton’s beach or spa, and you really
won’t feel the pressure.
WAUcHULA
TOP: L.C. LAMBRECHT; THE RITZ-CARLTON, NAPLES
The most eagerly awaited debut in Florida
golf in years, Streamsong (streamsongresort.
com; 813-399-9470) is situated some 50
minutes east of Sarasota and 75 minutes
from Tampa International Airport. It’s a
16,000-acre resort that some thought was
crazy to build.
“Crazy in that we’re in the middle of
Well-defined and
dramatic boundaries help
add allure to the scenic
pair of Tiburón layouts.
nowhere,” chuckles Tom Parke, the resort’s
director of marketing. “And crazy in the
sense that it’s a Florida resort that’s nowhere
near an amusement park or a beach.”
But Streamsong is perfectly sane, given
that three of the most respected architects
in the world built two beautiful, natural
courses on what was once a phosphate mine.
Tom Doak gets credit for Streamsong Blue
(7,126 yards; par 72), while the team of Bill
Coore and Ben Crenshaw sculpted the Red
(7,148; par 72).
Truth be told, the three worked together
and traded off holes to make each of the 18s
as strong as possible. They are proponents
of taking design cues from the land itself
and, at Streamsong, the results are wild
and beautiful, with holes framed by raggededged bunkers and towering sandhills.
A Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw collaboration,
Streamsong’s Red course has met rave reviews
within its first year of opening.
Some have called it the Bandon Dunes
of the East. If the goal was to create a
throwback golfing experience, Streamsong
has succeeded wonderfully. Earlier this year,
Golf Magazine selected the Red course as the
“Best New U.S. Course You Can Play.” The
publication also ranked the Red No. 52 in
its listing of the Top 100 Courses in the U.S.
The Blue course wasn’t far behind at No. 62.
“We took away everything a typical
Florida golfer has come to know,” Parke
says. “There are no cart paths, no ball
washers. We’re not selling time shares or
real estate.
“We’re hoping to bring back a style of
golf that may not exist too often, at least
in Florida. We wanted this to be a golfer’s
golf destination.”
The layouts opened in late 2012 and The
Lodge at Streamsong, with its 216 rooms
and suites, is scheduled to follow in January
2014. When the resort is fully operational,
plans call for fishing in the property’s 11
stocked lakes, horseback riding, shooting
clays and even hot-air ballooning.
And then there’s great golf, which is hard
to beat anywhere on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Author Reed Richardson is a New Jerseybased writer and a regular contributor
to Virginia Golfer.
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