BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — Not each nice golf course lives without end. Even fewer of the excellent ones do.
World Woods was an excellent wager to thrive when it opened in 1993, within the thick of one of many nice golf booms in America, when the confluence of actual property improvement and suburban flight created an setting the place a brand new golf course a day opened all through the nation.
With a Japanese businessman proprietor who held deep pockets, one of many largest golf course designers of the technology engaged on two programs and a location inside an hour of a rising Tampa, World Woods bore similarities to Bandon Dunes and even had benefits over the Oregon golf resort that additionally opened within the Nineteen Nineties.
All of it labored at World Woods — till it didn’t.
World Woods had each purpose to be a smashing success within the golf trade, a bucket-list journey for future generations. Individuals anticipate hours on the cellphone to have an opportunity to e-book their Bandon journey a yr prematurely. By World Woods’ finish, you may stroll into the modest clubhouse and get a tee time.
Some three a long time later, Cabot, one in every of North America’s largest golf resort corporations — identified for constructing jaw-dropping oceanside golf programs in unique locales — has taken up possession of the property, redeveloped it completely and rechristened it Citrus Farms.
The result’s a property that places a smile in your face, centered round The Karoo, a Kyle Franz-designed course that widens your eyes at each tee field for its daring nature.
The precise golf was by no means the issue at World Woods. Tom Fazio, one of many distinguished architects of his technology, designed Pine Barrens and Rolling Woods, and did so to a lot acclaim — the positioning, an hour’s drive from Tampa, extra resembled the South Carolina Lowcountry with its sandy, tree-lined fairways than Florida’s water hazard golf. By 1995, Golf Journal declared Pine Barrens the 66th-best golf course on the earth. Golf Digest thought-about it the ninth-best public upscale golf course in america.
The Wedge is 11 par-3 holes which are lit as much as be performed effectively into the evening. (Courtesy of Carolina Pines Golf, Cabot Citrus Farms)
The issue was all the pieces else, beginning with the property being an hour from Tampa in an undeveloped a part of Florida.
“We’re out right here in the midst of the wilderness,” the pinnacle golf skilled, Stan Cooke, informed the St. Petersburg Occasions in 1993. “We’re going to have to herald folks from the surface.”
Japanese businessman Yukihisa Inoue’s plan to do this was with a golf academy, growing the following technology {of professional} golfers. And with a 120-room resort resort, perhaps even single-family properties and much more golf programs. With a membership primarily from Japan, with the remaining from america. Sounds nice, proper? Besides none of it occurred. None of it.
A downturn within the Japanese economic system is most frequently blamed for the shortage of improvement, although for locals, the nationality of its possession (on the identical time, the Tampa Bay Lightning have been additionally owned by a distinct Japanese businessman who didn’t at all times pay his payments) performed some position within the palace intrigue.
Pine Barrens and Rolling Woods remained one nice and one actually good golf course, respectively, in the midst of nowhere, a small handmade signal on the freeway the one proof they existed. For a very long time even that didn’t matter, the trade buzz sufficient to nonetheless fill the tee field with 60,000 rounds a yr at its peak.
However then the late-2000s recession occurred, and World Woods was hit as laborious as anybody within the golf world. Then Streamsong opened between Tampa and Orlando, providing two (now three) high golf programs with an on-site resort. Identical to that, World Woods turned fantastic. Nonetheless good. However simpler and simpler to get a tee time, a worth reasonably than a vacation spot. “It has nice bones” was immediately the best way it was described, golf course aficionado parlance for a course that basically needs to be higher than it’s.
Nonetheless, the course had its admirers, amongst them Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO of burgeoning golf/actual property empire Cabot, who finally satisfied Inoue to promote the two,000-plus acres to Cabot for its first U.S.-based property.
World Woods wouldn’t stay without end. But it surely had a brand new likelihood and a brand new life.
This time it’s completely different. The rumble of heavy equipment and copious quantities of lumber can inform you that a lot. There are rows of cottages below development, and Cabot says a lot of Part 1 has bought out. On-property eating can also be below improvement.
For those who squint intently, with sufficient of a photographic reminiscence, you possibly can see what was. However with eyes large, head on a swivel, you possibly can see what’s now.
The infrastructure to assist the golf is far more than earlier than, together with the suburban creep from the Tampa metro space. But it surely should nonetheless be in regards to the golf, and Cabot Citrus Farms is.
The Wedge is the 11-hole, par-3 course that’s lit up at evening, inviting all the pieces from an early morning stroll to a late-night session with a beer in a single hand and a 56-degree wedge within the different. The Squeeze is the companion to that have, with 9 holes that vary from 100 yards to 550 yards. The Wedge and The Squeeze have been designed by Mike Nuzzo, who additionally labored with Franz on Roost, a second 18-hole course anticipated to open to preview play this summer time.
Karoo’s par-3 third gap performs over water, a uncommon hazard at Cabot Citrus Farms. (Courtesy of Paul Severn, Cabot Citrus Farms)
Quick programs and various experiences to standard golf could also be all the craze as of late within the {golfing} world, however they’re not going to be definitely worth the journey. You want a full-length course that calls for consideration, and Karoo does that.
Occupying a lot of the land that Pine Barrens as soon as did, Franz and his crew first spent months taking the pines out of the equation. They misplaced rely alongside the best way however one thing round 6,000 bushes, he estimates, have been eliminated. The result’s a wide-open property. Wind sweeps throughout the land. Waste areas dot the panorama. There’s little or no water.
At its best, Karoo is a rollicking good time, a giant, daring rock opera of a golf course.
The primary two holes get you going, but it surely actually begins on No. 3, a par-3 with a direct carry line over water that performs at 292 from the ideas and a way more manageable 224 from the tangerine tee field. Cabot considers it the hardest gap on the course, for good purpose, however firsthand data can affirm that even the common participant can land on the inexperienced and have an excellent birdie look.
No. 4 is the primary gap with two true paths to the inexperienced, a waste space operating down the backbone of the green. It’s a method Franz repeats a number of occasions alongside the best way, culminating in his ending gap, a beefy par 4 with a particular triple fairway that stretches 140 yards.
“What we began with there, it was a extremely, actually tight dogleg left, the place you have got numerous balls out within the forest, you can be misplaced, and there was only a actually troublesome end. We made for a extremely cool journey that may be a enjoyable ending to the golf,” Franz says.
The primary and sixth holes share a inexperienced so massive you possibly can neglect there’s one other group on it, and No. 15 supplies a counterbalance to that lengthy par-3 No. 3 — it’s a par 4 that’s 388 from the again tees however 282 from the tangerine, taking part in downwind and supplying you with an opportunity to essentially go for it.
It’s all distinctive and a problem to lose your ball. The latter gave Franz some freedom to essentially go for it with the inexperienced complexes, which shall be among the extra undulating most golfers have ever seen.
“I’ve at all times wished to do one thing that basically celebrated the kind of wild unpredictable lawlessness of St. Andrews, like all of the greens simply form of roll and movement throughout to these these nice previous historical options, and inside some instances, it’s a fairly mellow inexperienced and you may can numerous putts. And you’ve got one thing just like the second inexperienced is just like the craziest factor you’ve ever seen in golf, proper?” Franz mentioned.
“So we’ve tried to steal items of each. Like there’s some greens the place it’s eminently attainable to make a putt and make it from an extended methods. After which we even have some actually cool, zany form of stuff on the market.”
Resort golf tends to draw a large spectrum of gamers. The excellent golfers will see Karoo and establish the optimum touchdown areas and targets on the inexperienced in relation to pin positions and the way Franz is difficult them. However the double-digit handicaps won’t really feel overwhelmed as a result of it’s open sufficient to allow them to get round and permit them to strive completely different photographs.
And everybody can come collectively to get pleasure from The Wedge, which sits on a excessive level on the property and lets you take within the remoteness of your environment at sundown. Turning a weak spot right into a power and a flawed golf property right into a probably nice one.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; images courtesy of Jeff Ok. Marsh, Cabot Citrus Farms)