Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 21, 2015 14:14:24 GMT -5
Streamsong Blue is part of the Streamsong family of courses located in Bowling Green, FL. The concept is popular now with many of the newly built, high end courses. Take an old mining area or a rock quarry owned by a wealthy corporation, build the land into a golf course with a resort and charge a lot for it. Streamsong was built on an old phosphate mine and is literally in the middle of nowhere. I was staying in Lakeland and it took me about 45 minutes to get there. My forecaddie lives towards the west side of Tampa and he sais it takes him about 70 minutes to get there.
You will pull up to the bag drop and drop your bags off and then you can take the complimentary valet or park your car yourself. Then you sign in to the pro shop and find your cart. The course has mandatory walking from January thru about April. May thru September allows for carts almost any time and October thru December allows for carts in the afternoon. I believe you can walk without a caddie. But, most have a caddy. If you take a cart (and it's not an easy walk), you must take a forecaddie which is what I did. You have to pay for those caddies ($80 min for caddie, $50 min for forecaddie). But, these are not Danny Noonan and DeNunzio, these are real caddies that have made this their career and have caddied for Tour players.
You will pass the resort as you go to the club and it's a very impressive looking resort from the outside. The clubhouse is excellent as well. There's a Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture at Florida Southern University in Lakeland. Florida Southern is the same school that Rocco Mediate, Lee Janzen and Marco Dawson all played at. I mention this because the Streamsong Resort and clubhouse has a Frank Lloyd Wright feel to them.
Here's an example of a FLW designed house:
And here's the resort at Streamsong:
Part of the idea of these types of course designs is to design them where they don't need much water. That saves on cost. I haven't played Bandon Dunes or Whistling Straits, but their intent seems to be to spend some money on maintaining the course so they are in immaculate condition, but at a fraction of the price. Streamsong doesn't have issues with getting rain since they are in Florida and the course was in phenomenal condition. Before the round I called up to ask when they are aerifying the greens and they told me that they have NEVER aerified the greens because the course is new and the way it is designed it doesn't need it. When I got there it appeared that they just heavily sand the greens as they were doing that to the Red course (Crenshaw and Coore design) and then clear the sand after a day or so. Either way, the greens were 'slicker that greased owl shit.'
They have 2 courses at Streamsong right now, the Red and the Blue. The Red is a Crenshaw and Coore design while the Blue is a Tom Doak design. I had never played a Tom Doak course before and I saw this video of Streamsong Blue and liked the visuals better.
The forecaddie told me he preferred the Blue course as well. He said with my distance, I would be hitting short irons and wedges into most of the greens and he felt that the reason why a lot of people prefer the Red is that the greens are flatter. Doak is a Pete Dye disciple so that concerns me. I'm not anti-Pete Dye, but he does have a propensity to make a course un-fun from time to time. There are usually a lot of blind tee shots with trouble both left and right on Dye designs. The Blue course didn't have any of that. The main issue was right on the greens as they had some pretty big slopes and were very slick.
The signature hole was the par-3 7th hole which played 202 yards into the wind for us:
I didn't find the course overly long, but with the undulated and slick greens, you need to hit greens and get it close to score. I actually hit the ball terribly, but managed to shoot 76 (+4) because I played all of the long par-4's well.
It's too bad that they don't take more photos of the course besides the 7th hole as there are just some stunning visuals out there one after another. I liked holes #3, #4, #5, #8, #13, #17 and #18 quite a bit along with #7.
I paid $100 for the round and then gave $120 to my forecaddie. I probably overtipped, but the forecaddie was a very nice guy who knew golf and was fun to have a conversation with. Figuring that he was driving there from Tampa each day, I wanted to make the trip for him worthwhile and in my belief, it's always better to over-tip than to under-tip.
So, the question will arise "is it worth it?"
That's always a tough question because what one person values in golf another person will never value. I will say that Streamsong really rolls out the red carpet for every golfer out there. The course I thought was very fun and for a lack of a better word, very 'pleasant' to play. The pace of play moved along nice and it felt great to be given the white glove treatment. Even in the Streamsong pro shop it's all about class as every single product they have in the pro shop is top quality from the MacKenzie leather headcovers, leather bags, etc. to the high quality Izod and Ralph Lauren shirts and shorts to the metal poker chip ball markers. There are no shortcuts.
I don't expect to play Streamsong until next year at the earliest since it is an expensive deal, but I do plan on playing there again. To me, it's not worth spending big bucks on a place that treats you like one of the crowd or a place that does not have a very creative design. That's the exact opposite of Streamsong. But by the same token I've played courses like Kiawah and Oak Hill and I never thought of them as an overly memorable experience, it is just something I had a good time doing. That's what Streamsong is about and to me, it was well worth splurging once a year to get out there.
3JACK
You will pull up to the bag drop and drop your bags off and then you can take the complimentary valet or park your car yourself. Then you sign in to the pro shop and find your cart. The course has mandatory walking from January thru about April. May thru September allows for carts almost any time and October thru December allows for carts in the afternoon. I believe you can walk without a caddie. But, most have a caddy. If you take a cart (and it's not an easy walk), you must take a forecaddie which is what I did. You have to pay for those caddies ($80 min for caddie, $50 min for forecaddie). But, these are not Danny Noonan and DeNunzio, these are real caddies that have made this their career and have caddied for Tour players.
You will pass the resort as you go to the club and it's a very impressive looking resort from the outside. The clubhouse is excellent as well. There's a Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture at Florida Southern University in Lakeland. Florida Southern is the same school that Rocco Mediate, Lee Janzen and Marco Dawson all played at. I mention this because the Streamsong Resort and clubhouse has a Frank Lloyd Wright feel to them.
Here's an example of a FLW designed house:
And here's the resort at Streamsong:
Part of the idea of these types of course designs is to design them where they don't need much water. That saves on cost. I haven't played Bandon Dunes or Whistling Straits, but their intent seems to be to spend some money on maintaining the course so they are in immaculate condition, but at a fraction of the price. Streamsong doesn't have issues with getting rain since they are in Florida and the course was in phenomenal condition. Before the round I called up to ask when they are aerifying the greens and they told me that they have NEVER aerified the greens because the course is new and the way it is designed it doesn't need it. When I got there it appeared that they just heavily sand the greens as they were doing that to the Red course (Crenshaw and Coore design) and then clear the sand after a day or so. Either way, the greens were 'slicker that greased owl shit.'
They have 2 courses at Streamsong right now, the Red and the Blue. The Red is a Crenshaw and Coore design while the Blue is a Tom Doak design. I had never played a Tom Doak course before and I saw this video of Streamsong Blue and liked the visuals better.
The forecaddie told me he preferred the Blue course as well. He said with my distance, I would be hitting short irons and wedges into most of the greens and he felt that the reason why a lot of people prefer the Red is that the greens are flatter. Doak is a Pete Dye disciple so that concerns me. I'm not anti-Pete Dye, but he does have a propensity to make a course un-fun from time to time. There are usually a lot of blind tee shots with trouble both left and right on Dye designs. The Blue course didn't have any of that. The main issue was right on the greens as they had some pretty big slopes and were very slick.
The signature hole was the par-3 7th hole which played 202 yards into the wind for us:
I didn't find the course overly long, but with the undulated and slick greens, you need to hit greens and get it close to score. I actually hit the ball terribly, but managed to shoot 76 (+4) because I played all of the long par-4's well.
It's too bad that they don't take more photos of the course besides the 7th hole as there are just some stunning visuals out there one after another. I liked holes #3, #4, #5, #8, #13, #17 and #18 quite a bit along with #7.
I paid $100 for the round and then gave $120 to my forecaddie. I probably overtipped, but the forecaddie was a very nice guy who knew golf and was fun to have a conversation with. Figuring that he was driving there from Tampa each day, I wanted to make the trip for him worthwhile and in my belief, it's always better to over-tip than to under-tip.
So, the question will arise "is it worth it?"
That's always a tough question because what one person values in golf another person will never value. I will say that Streamsong really rolls out the red carpet for every golfer out there. The course I thought was very fun and for a lack of a better word, very 'pleasant' to play. The pace of play moved along nice and it felt great to be given the white glove treatment. Even in the Streamsong pro shop it's all about class as every single product they have in the pro shop is top quality from the MacKenzie leather headcovers, leather bags, etc. to the high quality Izod and Ralph Lauren shirts and shorts to the metal poker chip ball markers. There are no shortcuts.
I don't expect to play Streamsong until next year at the earliest since it is an expensive deal, but I do plan on playing there again. To me, it's not worth spending big bucks on a place that treats you like one of the crowd or a place that does not have a very creative design. That's the exact opposite of Streamsong. But by the same token I've played courses like Kiawah and Oak Hill and I never thought of them as an overly memorable experience, it is just something I had a good time doing. That's what Streamsong is about and to me, it was well worth splurging once a year to get out there.
3JACK