Post by Richie3Jack on Apr 4, 2012 8:18:30 GMT -5
World Woods is a giant golf course and facility located on the outskirts of a small town called Brooksville, roughly 1-hour north of Tampa.
It's mainly known for the Pine Barrens course, designed by Tom Fazio with it being influenced by Pine Valley. It's the epitome of bullshit politics and favoritism in the world of Top-100 Golf Course rankings. Initially, Pine Barrens received rave reviews and made the top-100 list in GOLF Magazine for golf courses in the world. However, once that happened Pine Barrens started to receive some backlash for what I can only interpret it as not being exclusive or a historic place to play. I believe the only public course cheaper to play in the top-100 is Bethpage, but it is a historically noteworthy course, was designed by AW Tillinghast and is within close proximity to NYC. Pine Barrens doesn't have any of that, but it still, IMO worthy of being a top-100 course just as many other courses that I've played or walked that are in the top-100.
With that, it's counterpart Rolling Oaks often gets unnoticed. It was 'influenced' by Augusta National Golf Club and one can see the influence, but it's mostly off the slightlines on the tee shot, with some well placed terrain and fairway bunkers with tee-lined holes.
Condition-wise, the course was mostly in good shape, but I question how much money the course is making because it seems like one of those courses that just doesn't have quite enough resources to see the conditions to be near 5-stars. But in general, I thought the greens were in good shape, except for the 15th hole where their aerified half of hte green. Although it's obvious to see why that green would be a problem with the tree cover.
The back 9 is much more difficult than the front-9 and I think this is where Pine Barrens separates itself from Rolling Oaks. After some not-so-easy holes 10 thru 12, from the back tees we had:
238 yard par-3
460 yard par-4 uphill
480 yard par-4 uphill
235 yard par-3
Not only was that stretch extraordinarily difficult, but it wasn't a lot of fun to play. I think with Pine Barrens, when they hit a stretch of difficult holes it's stiff fun to play as they are a little more reasonable, they just require the golfer to hit the ball hard and somewhat accurately. On the 460 yard par-4 14th hole, one of my friends hit a good drive down the middle, then a nice 3-iron into the green that went well over the green because there is a big mound that slopes away and his shot hit the mound and careened well past the green. Classic case of form not following function.
All that being said, the course is filled with a lot of good-to-great holes. Some of the better ones are:
#5 (503 yard par-5)
#8 (174 yard par-3 signature hole)
#10 (458 yard par-4)
#11 (444 yard par-4)
#12 (378 yard par-4)
#16 (235 yard par-3)
There were no overly bad golf holes, but the lesser ones were:
#6 (341 yard par-4): too much luck involved off the tee shot
#14 (460 yard par-4): mound in the middle of the green
#15 (480 yard par-4): too long for an uphill approach
When all was said and done, everybody came away very happy with Rolling Oaks. Rolling Oaks is what we call a '3pm course' because that's when the rates go down dramatically. It's a good enough course for us to play, but it's something that us golfers who are a little more stingy on what we pay for golf that we all stated that it's more of a 3pm course whereas Pine Barrens is more worth the extra money to get the tee time.
I will say that I think if somebody planned a golf vacation there and didn't have a problem with being out in the middle of nowhere and purely wanted to play golf, they would come across thinking that it was one of the best deals they had ever made.
3JAC K