Lose a golf course? Hooray!
This could be a “no wonder Brooklynites are moving to Florida article.” It is not. It could be an article about golf. It is not that either. It is an article that shows the seemingly endless connections between my seat in Boca Raton, and yours in Brooklyn or the Greater New York area. The story starts here when a local headline grabbed my attention. In the upper-middle-class suburb of Coral Springs, Broward County (west of Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood for locators), they are working on rolling up a golf course and building a multi-use complex in a neighborhood called Heron Bay.
What Coral Springs is doing is almost unheard of in Florida. Some would say it is unthinkable. Others would call it an actionable offense. I would say great! Hopefully, this will be the final attempt to turn the golf course into badly needed housing, shops, and usable open space.
There are a lot of golf courses in Florida. No state has more. Florida boasts over 1,100 golf courses that play host to over nearly 48 million rounds annually, with 33% by out of state visitors (that’s you), 14% by non-local Florida residents, and 54% by local residents. Even Monroe County/ Key West has four, where any errant shot seemingly would go into the Atlantic or the Gulf! The king of the golf courses is Palm Beach County. There are one hundred and sixty (160) courses in the county. Are you drooling yet?
Some of them, like PGA, are internationally renowned. Some of the courses are designed by the premier course designers in the world. One is Jack Nicklaus. The man widely acknowledged as the greatest golf course architect in the world, Pete Dye, designed courses in Florida. So has Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman, and H.S. Colt who has the distinction of having designed the most top 100 courses in the world. Any of you familiar with this area ever wondered who Donald Ross was and why there’s a road named after him? If so, here’s your answer. Ross has 400 courses to his name and is eternally linked to PGA National.