Streamsong Resort

Two design teams took this property on at the same time, working the same ground. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw routed the Red, Tom Doak the Blue, and the Mosaic Company opened both in 2012 on a 16,000-acre site with a 228-room hotel. Golfweek called it the best new golf course that year, and in 2013 placed its courses among the top 40 public courses in the world. Gil Hanse added the Black in 2017, and Coore and Crenshaw came back for a fourth course, the Chain, in 2023. KemperSports bought the resort in January 2023 for $160 million.

Phosphate strip mining left this stretch of Polk County, Florida under sand hills and flooded pits. The Black is the longest of the three eighteen-hole courses, a par 73 of 7,320 yards with a slope of 135. Its ninth is the hole people describe first: a par four of 450 yards to a punchbowl green whose raised sides gather a ball and feed it toward the middle. The approach is blind. The green sits far enough below its rim that the flag is invisible from the fairway, so the line comes off a marker and the day's pin sheet. Carts run for most of the year, though a caddie has to go with them, and between Christmas and 28 February some tee times are walking only.