Post by Richie3Jack on Apr 2, 2012 9:21:27 GMT -5
Celebration is a town located near Disney World. It used to be part of Kissimmee, but Disney took over this area which was mostly woods and swamps and turned it into one of the nicest areas in Orlando. With that, they decided to put a golf course in town and created Celebration Golf Club, a Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Jr. design.
One of the unique features of the club is that it has a mix of big-time resort qualities and smaller, cozy surroundings.
The service there is top-notch, immediately greeting you and everybody is there to help out. The clubhouse is nice, but a little on the smaller side. However, it does have a friendly feel to it. Same with the locker room, which is really well done with what looks like the lockers are made from cherry wood.
The range is a hydro range and is in excellent condition. You do have to pay for range balls, which is a bit unnerving given I just paid $110 to play there. They also have a couple of nice putting greens and a chipping green.
One of the big reasons why I booked a tee time there was I knew that the course would be in very good condition and I was right. The greens I believe are made from Championship TifDwarf. They were not exactly fast, but they just installed them last summer and were still reading a 9 on the stimp. If I had to make a complaint on the course conditions, it was that on a few areas of the course, the St. Augustine grass was creeping into the fairway. For those who don't know, St. Augustine is a super strong blade of grass that is normally reserved for lawns and is not make for golf. Here it wasn't really a problem because it was mowed down pretty well, but if I had to grade the course condition I would give it an A- and that was probably the main thing I docked it on.
Design wise, this was a pretty typical RT Jones design. Except for the greens being pretty big. From my experience, Sr. tended to favor smaller greens, so maybe this was more of Jr.'s influence.
If there was a gripe I had it was that we had a difficult time determining where the back tees were. For example, #3 we wound up playing from the wrong tees. That's because the #3 and #8 share the same tee, which I've never been a fan of. But, you often couldn't tell that because the hole's tee sign was usually located where the more up-front tees where and you would have to search for the back tees.
But design wise, RT Jones doesn't disappoint. He's not going to create the super illustrious course like the late Mike Strantz or Pete Dye would, but he's great at avoiding poorly conceived or unfair holes and Celebration was no different.
I would say that the back-9 is more difficult than the front-9 as the toughest holes on the course were #11, #16 and #18. Also, I think the best holes on the course were mostly on the back nine as I had them as #9, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15 and #16.
Nothing hurts a golf vacation with friends than starting off with playing a good amount of money for a course in poor condition, with a weak design and that doesn't treat you well. We got the opposite of that and all of us went away happy, even though we caught the storm around the 16th hole. I think there are better courses around Orlando, but if you want a safe bet on getting solid value for the money, Celebration is your pick.
3JACK