BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — Not all great golf courses last forever. Even fewer very good ones do it.
World Woods was a good bet to thrive when it opened in 1993, in the heart of one of America’s great golf booms, when the confluence of real estate development and suburban exodus created an environment in which a new golf course golf course opened every day across the country. country.
With a deep-pocketed Japanese businessman owner, one of the greatest golf course designers of the generation working on two courses and a location less than an hour from a growing Tampa, World Woods had similarities to Bandon Dunes and even had advantages over Oregon Golf. resort which also opened in the 1990s.
Everything worked at World Woods – until it didn’t.
World Woods had every reason to be a smash hit in the golf industry, a must-visit trip for future generations. People wait on the phone for hours to be able to book their trip to Bandon a year in advance. At the end of World Woods, you could enter the modest clubhouse and tee off.
About three decades later, Cabot, one of North America’s largest golf resort companies – known for building breathtaking oceanfront golf courses in exotic locations – became the owner of the property, completely redeveloped it and renamed it Citrus Farms.
The result is a property that makes you smile, centered around the Karoo, a Kyle Franz-designed course that makes your eyes widen with every tee for its daring nature.
Golf itself has never been a problem at World Woods. Tom Fazio, one of the preeminent architects of his generation, designed Pine Barrens and Rolling Woods, and did so with great success: the site, an hour’s drive from Tampa, looked more like the South Carolina Lowcountry with its tree-lined sandy fairways than at Florida’s Water Golf Course. In 1995, Golf Magazine declared Pine Barrens the 66th best golf course in the world. Golf Digest considered it the ninth best high-end public golf course in the United States.
The problem was everything else, starting with the fact that the property was an hour outside of Tampa, in an underdeveloped part of Florida.
“We’re out here in the middle of nature,” head golf professional Stan Cooke told the St. Petersburg Times in 1993. “We’re going to have to bring in people from outside.”
Japanese businessman Yukihisa Inoue’s plan to achieve this was to create a golf academy, developing the next generation of professional golfers. And with a 120-room resort hotel, maybe even single-family homes and even more golf courses. With a mainly Japanese composition, the rest coming from the United States. Sounds great, right? Except none of that happened. None of that.
The slowdown in the Japanese economy is most often blamed on lack of development, but for locals, it is the nationality of its owner (at the same time, the Tampa Bay Lightning was also owned by another Japanese businessman). who didn’t always pay his bills) played a certain role in the palace intrigue.
Pine Barrens and Rolling Woods remained an excellent and very good golf course, respectively, in the middle of nowhere, with a small handmade sign on the highway being the only evidence of their existence. For a long time, even that didn’t matter, the industry was bustling enough to still fill the tee box with 60,000 rounds a year at its peak.
But then the recession of the late 2000s happened and World Woods was hit as hard as anyone in the golf world. Then Streamsong opened between Tampa and Orlando, offering two (now three) premier golf courses with an on-site hotel. Just like that, World Woods was fine. Still good. But it is increasingly easier to get a departure time, a value rather than a destination. “He’s got great bones” was suddenly the way he was described, golf enthusiast lingo for a course that really should be better than it is.
Still, the course had its admirers, including Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO of the growing Cabot golf and real estate empire, who eventually convinced Inoue to sell more than 2,000 acres to Cabot for his first North American property .
World Woods would not live forever. But he had a new chance and a new life.
This time it’s different. The roar of heavy machinery and large quantities of wood can tell you a lot. There are rows of cottages under construction, and Cabot says much of Phase 1 is sold. On-site catering is also being developed.
If you squint closely, with enough photographic memory, you can see what happened. But with wide eyes, head turned towards you, you can see what’s happening now.
The infrastructure needed for golf is much greater than ever before, including the sprawl of the Tampa metropolitan area’s suburbs. But it still has to be about golf, and Cabot Citrus Farms is it.
The Wedge is an 11-hole par 3 course lit at night, inviting everything from a morning stroll to a late-night session with a beer in one hand and a 56-degree wedge in the other. The Squeeze is the companion to this experience, with nine holes ranging from 100 yards to 550 yards. The Wedge and The Squeeze were designed by Mike Nuzzo, who also worked with Franz on Roost, a second 18-hole course expected to open this summer.
Short courses and alternative experiences to conventional golf may be all the rage these days in the golf world, but they’re not worth it. You need a comprehensive course that demands attention, and Karoo delivers.
Occupying much of the land once occupied by Pine Barrens, Franz and his team first spent months eliminating pine trees from the equation. They lost count along the way, but about 6,000 trees, he estimates, were felled. The result is a wide open property. The wind blows across the country. Waste areas dot the landscape. There is very little water.
At its best, Karoo is a rollicking good time, a big, bold rock opera set on a golf course.
The first two holes get you started, but it really begins at No. 3, a par-3 with a direct carry line over the water that plays to 292 from the tips and a much more manageable 224 from the tangerine tee box. Cabot considers it the most difficult hole on the course, for good reason, but his first-hand knowledge can confirm that even the average player can land on the green and have a good birdie.
No. 4 is the first hole with two real paths to the green, a vague area that runs along the spine of the fairway. It’s a strategy Franz repeats several times along the way, culminating with his final hole, a big par 4 with a distinctive triple fairway that stretches 140 yards.
“What we started with there was a really tight left dogleg, where you have a lot of balls in the forest, you’ll be lost, and there was just a really tough finish. We created a really cool adventure that is a fun end to golf,” says Franz.
The first and sixth holes share a green so large you can forget there’s another group on it, and No. 15 provides a counterbalance to that long par-3 No. 3 – it’s a par 4 that’s 388 from the rear starts but 282 from the start. tangerine, playing downwind and giving you a chance to really get going.
It’s all distinctive and it’s a challenge to lose your ball. The latter gave Franz some freedom to really get going on the complex greens, which will be some of the hilliest most golfers have ever seen.
“I always wanted to do something that really celebrated the kind of wild, unpredictable anarchy of St. Andrews, like all the greens were rolling and flowing towards these big old ancient features, and in some cases it’s a pretty soft green and you can make a lot of putts. And you have something like the second green It’s like the craziest thing you’ve ever seen in golf, right? said Franz.
“So we tried to steal pieces of both. For example, there are certain greens where it is entirely possible to make a putt and do it from a distance. And then we also have some really cool and wacky stuff.
Resort golf tends to attract a wide range of players. Very good golfers will view Karoo and identify the optimal landing areas and targets on the green in relation to pin positions and how Franz challenges them. But double-digit handicappers won’t feel overwhelmed because it’s open enough to let them move around and try different shots.
And everyone can come together to enjoy The Wedge, which sits on a high point on the property and allows you to enjoy the seclusion of your surroundings as the sun sets. Turning a weakness into a strength and a flawed golf property into a potentially great property.
(Illustration: John Bradford / Athleticism; photos courtesy of Jeff K. Marsh, Cabot Citrus Farms)