Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 29, 2012 21:15:38 GMT -5
Grande Pines Golf Club is located down the road from Sea World, right on International Drive in Orlando. I was pleased to see that it was a Steve Smyers design. I had never heard of Smyers until I played his fabulous Southern Dunes design in nearby Haines City.
I had been out to Grande Pines once before as my putting instructor, David Graham, took me out there to go over some new AimPoint stuff and I hit some wedge shots and practiced AimPoint on holes #1 thru #3.
Family friends of ours were in town and I was looking at a few courses in Orlando that I was interested in playing at and I found that Grande Pines offered the best deal on Golfnow.com. In fact, the deal was so good I was worried that the course was being aerified. Instead, the course was in fantastic condition and its TifEagle greens were rolling quite nicely at a 9 on the stimpmeter.
Grande Pines is owned by the Marriott, along with the Faldo Golf Institute. The area is filled with super nice time shares and a few condo complexes. My experience with Marriott has been at FGI and Metrowest and they have always treated me about as well as I have ever been treated. Today was no different as from the bag drop to the pro shop to the grille to the cart girl offered nothing but impeccable service. In fact, the cart girl made 1 extra run for us which was appreciated.
The design was a bit of a surprise. One thing I generally like about Orlando courses is that they are not overly 'resort-ish' in design, even though they are often owned by resorts. When I lived in Myrtle Beach, it was common to see the typical resort style golf course design with concepts that are now cliche like the island green par-3 and holes with moguls that are wide open. And in general, the difficult in the course lie in its length, which can be absurd. While resort style designs can be fun, they are often uninspired.
Smyers created a design that was nowhere near the typical resort style. The holes were challenging in different ways. Some were difficulty due to their length. Others required a precise tee shot. Some had super difficult greens. Others provided an advantage to the golfer who could work the ball.
I shot 75 (+3), but got off to a slow start in part because I was working on some new swing mechanics and in other part because I was getting a feel for the course. That being said, the GPS system in each cart is very helpful with understanding how to play each hole.
This design differs greatly from Smyers' Southern Dunes design. Souther Dunes is more wide open with more turns, bends and doglegs and the greens were fairly flat, but that allows for the greenkeeper to shave them down to an ultra-fast speed. Grande Pines has a lot of demanding drives and a great variety of different challents, from the tee shot or to the approach shot or to the putting and chipping around the green.
My favorite holes were #2, #3, #6, #11, #14 and #18. The only hole I didn't care much for was the par-4 #7 hole which is one of those holes where the difficulty lay mostly with convincing yourself to keep the driver in the bag.
The most difficult holes are #2, #6, #8, #9, #11, #14, #15, and #18.
In the end, everybody in our group was extremely pleased with the experience and would definitely hit up Grande Pines again. It's a well oiled machine of an operation with a course that provides a nice variety of different challenges, but is generally fair. It's certainly one of the best courses I've played in Florida.
3JACK