COURSE
REVIEWS
World Woods Golf Club: Pine Barrens Course
By Derek Duncan,
Senior Writer
BROOKSVILLE, FL - Pine Barrens is generally considered among the three or four best golf courses in Florida after Seminole. Some of Tom Fazio’s best work is on display here, perhaps his very best.
Saying this is both complimentary and curious because Pine Barrens is quite unlike the vast body of his work and may represent his most extreme design. The course is aggressive and in places brilliant, certainly the work of a master architect, but its very excellence gives fuel to the anti-Fazio camp that criticizes him for too often placing emphasis on aesthetics rather than strategy. Pine Barrens is proof that Fazio can create compelling, important courses as well as anyone in the business today, so why doesn’t he do it more often?
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Part of Pine Barrens’ magnetism is its contradiction between the naturalness of the setting and an overwhelming impression of disturbance. Staring over the course it seems that the subterranean earth has suddenly collapsed beneath it. The land appears to have fallen suddenly away from the solid limestone chassis of greens and fairways, tearing at the seams to reveal cavernous scars of soil and waste. These depressed, jagged-edged netherworlds hang tensely to the course by roots and vegetative threads. If there is a constant at Pine Barrens it is this, the sand, the raw, tumbling swaths of sunken terra. The waste areas give the course a rugged, forbidding look, like this was a land gouged by god-like claws, a course built in anger.
It’s been
written in more
than one place
that Pine Barrens
is the Pine
Valley of the
South but such
a comparison
only stereotypes
the latter and
regionalizes
the former.
Pine Barrens
may harbor some
traits similar
to the vaunted
course from
Clementon, but
so do hundreds
of other courses
in the world.
This one is
strong enough
to stand on
it’s own
without gravy
training off
the popularity
of another.
Pine Barrens plays to a par of 71 and a modest 6,902 yards from the tournament tees, topping out at “only” a 73.1 rating and 140 slope. While not long overall, there is plenty of length within the layout. Nine of the eleven par fours measure over 400 yards and five stretch over 424 yards. All three par fives are potentially reachable for long hitters and the 4th and 14th are all the more appetizing because of split fairways and alternate routes that reward the risk-taker.
Three of the four par threes are 191 yards or longer. Thus, even though there are a few short holes, Pine Barrens can play long and punishing.
The 4th and 15th holes are among the most popular holes in Florida and stand out as two of the better strategic holes built anywhere in the last 60 years. These well-documented holes both offer choices off the tee that, depending on the decision, change the entire dynamic of the hole
Photographs cannot do justice to the 4th, a monumental 494-yard par five. Dozens of pictures of the hole can be viewed beforehand (it’s one of the more photographed holes in the state), but no image can match the full-fledged scope and grandeur of this hole until it is beheld in three dimensions. A famous and hellacious waste area dominates the right side all the way to the green. The fall-off into it is so steep that ladders are provided in places. The hole appears rugged and mythic, uneven and bewildering. There is fairway to the left, but the eye is drawn resolutely toward the chasm on the right, either from fear or fascination.
To take advantage of this reachable par five, this pit, and nerves, must be challenged. The carry directly across it is between 185 and 240 yards. When covered, the second must also bravely clear a portion of it that flares up violently at the green, because there is no sense in gambling with the drive only to play conservatively with the second. Man or mouse, the hole asks at the tee.
The vivid contrast
between safety
and hazard,
the depth of
field, strategic
options, and
mental intimidation
combine to make
this an idealized
golf hole. The
same arousing
elements are
in play at 15,
a short par
four that lacks
nothing. It
borders the
4th, residing
in an interior
sandy bowl ringed
by trees . The
green is located
just across
a water- and
sand-filled
crater on the
right, beckoning
from the tee,
setting up almost
like a par three.
The primary
fairway swings
far out to the
left and curls
around a series
of bunkers and
waste areas
short and to
the left of
the green, but
another tongue
of fairway is
extended short
of the green
on the dangerous
direct line.
The 15th is one in a sequence of strong holes that begins with the 12th, a brutish par four that plays to alternate greens (the right green being the more difficult and making the better hole), and ends with the marvelous par three 16th which plays over an embankment on the left to a green perched precariously at an angle on the side of a hill. In between are the cut-off-as-much-as-you-dare drive at the par four 13th, and the amusement park of features at the 547-yard 14th. Fazio and crew threw in everything but the kitchen sink on this rather imbalanced hole, and capped it off with the most undulating green of the round.
It is notable
that although
the 4th and
15th are highly
intellectual,
Pine Barrens
throughout is
only mildly
strategic. The
plethora of
dramatic hazards
affect play
in mostly conventional
ways and are
obvious, and
many of the
holes play quite
traditionally.
The greatness of Pine Barrens is its visual potency and grand aesthetics combined with moments of pure strategic engagement that occur too infrequently. This is a course that may mentally overwhelm high-handicappers while proving to be too supple a challenge for the long and strong player. Compared to the great strategic courses of the world, Pine Barrens lacks subtlety and the constant pressure of risk and reward, but it certainly rivals anything else in the Deep South.
The world of golf has endorsed Pine Barrens at the highest levels. It weighs in at #97 on Golf Digest’s current list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, after debuting at #75 on the 1999 list. The same publication ranks it the 5th best course in Florida, down from 4th two years ago (behind Seminole, TPC Sawgrass, Fazio’s own Black Diamond, and Jupiter Hills). Golf Magazine rates it as the #45 best course in the U.S. (down from #38), #68 in the world, and #9 on its Top 100 Courses You Can Play list. Finally, Golfweek rates Pine Barrens the 9th best modern course in America (course’s built post-1960).
Note: World
Woods, Pine
Barrens particularly,
has had a recent
history of poor
conditioning
based on a variety
of factors,
most of which
are beyond the
superintendent’s
control. The
worst period
was between
May and August
of 2001, but
with the alleviation
of severe drought
toward the end
of the summer
and constant
attention from
the greenskeeper,
Pine Barrens
appears to be
rounding into
shape for the
winter season.
World Woods
Golf Club
17590 Ponce
DeLeon Blvd.
Brooksville,
FL 34614
Phone: (352)796-5500
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