Orlando Golf

New Courses Keep Orlando Golfers "On the Green"

With 176 golf courses within an hour's drive, serious golfers need not look farther than Orlando to find some of the newest, most challenging and most critically acclaimed courses designed by legendary golfers and course architects.

Several courses have opened in recent years, including a championship Greg Norman-designed course, The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club Orlando, Grande Lakes. Those with early tee times will enjoy the convenience of staying at Grande Lakes Orlando, a vast resort complex that encompasses the 1,000-room JW Marriott Orlando and the 584-room The Ritz-Carlton Orlando. This 18-hole, par 72, 7,127-yard course is set at the headwaters of the Florida Everglades and incorporates the area's natural beauty of pines, live oaks, preserved wetlands and ponds into a spacious course maintained to PGA standards.

Ginn Reunion Resort, a gated community with homes, vacation villas, a luxury condo-hotel and a state-of-the-art spa and fitness center, located 25 minutes south of Orlando, features three championship courses by Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Watson's 7,257-yard The Independence course, his first Florida course, opened with nine holes in early 2004 and an additional nine later that year. Palmer's 6,930-yard 18-hole The Legacy course, which also opened in early 2004, is as aesthetically pleasing as it is challenging. Palmer incorporates bridges, grass-sloped bunkers, palm trees and rockscapes to inspire the game of a lifetime. Nicklaus' much-anticipated The Tradition course opened for play in 2006.

The Dave Harman-designed Shingle Creek Golf Club, a par 72, 7,213-yard course, opened in late 2003 just east of Orlando's Orange County Convention Center. The course serves as the centerpiece recreation amenity for the new Rosen Shingle Creek, a 230-acre resort. Nearby on International Drive, the 7,012-yard par 72 Grande Pines Golf Club at Marriott by renowned course architect Steve Smyers opened in January 2004.

ChampionsGate Golf Club features two 18-hole Greg Norman-designed courses as well as the world headquarters of the David Leadbetter Golf Academy. The 5,150-yard National Course offers traditional American-style golfing while the 5,618-yard International course offers links-style golf reminiscent of the great courses on the British Isles. Golfers can relax after a long game at the adjacent 730-room Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate which opened in fall 2004 with a 10,000-square-foot spa and 70,000 square feet of meeting space.

When it comes to honors, one Orlando course is regularly recognized as one of Florida's top courses by "Golfweek" and "Golf Digest" magazines - Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge - an 18-hole championship course with 7,207 total yardage and a third set of nine holes with wide-open fairways called The Charger.

For visitors looking to attend a PGA Tour event, Orlando hosts two regularly scheduled tournaments: the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard, formerly the Bay Hill Invitational, each March and the Walt Disney World Classic in October. The dynamic ladies of the LPGA are also hitting the links in Orlando with the annual Ginn OPEN, a new tour event, held in April. The nationally televisedDel Webb Father/Son Challenge at ChampionsGate Golf Club determines the best father-son team in golf and offers golf's stars the chance to bond with their sons on the links in late-November.

With a myriad of new and exciting courses becoming available for play in the last few years, along with luxurious new golf resorts and hotels, your dilemma won't be finding a course that's up to par with your standards, it will be finding enough time to play them all.