New 36-hole golf resort coming to central Florida with Doak, Coore & Crenshaw designs

It seems any new golf course construction announcement is worthy of headlines these days, but a new project announced today is especially intriguing. The Streamsong Resort is a new 36-hole golf facility now under construction in Polk County, between Tampa and Orlando.

Tom Doak is designing 18 holes and the team of Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw is designing the other 18. Construction broke ground earlier this year and is expected to be completed by the fall of 2013, with a soft opening before then possibly. 140 on-site guest rooms are planned with restaurants and meeting space as well.

If there is a common knock on golf in Florida, it’s that too many courses are flat, water-heavy and have too much real estate around the course. That certainly won’t be the case at Streamsong, which set in a 16,000-acre phosphate mine that is owned by the Mosaic Company, one of the world’s largest fertilizer and nutrients companies.

“The variety of contours created by the mining process is unique for a project in Florida,” said Doak in a release. “Or anywhere in the Southeast.

Said Bill Coore: “At Streamsong, we have the opportunity to work with a site that contains some of the most unusual, interesting and dramatic land forms we have ever encountered.”

This will be Doak’s first golf course design in Florida, a state he didn’t sound too fond of in his cult classic, A Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. Coore/Crenshaw’s only other Florida design is Sugarloaf Mountain in Apopka, which opened in 2006.

Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design and the team of Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw have similar design philosophies that fit well together - though I would argue Coore-Crenshaw courses tend to be more straightforward the first time around. Neither ever say their intention is to built a tournament-worthy golf course with an absurd amount of length, but rather something that fits the landscape and will be tough and enjoyable for everyone.

This won’t be the first time the two firms will share space. Each have designs at Bandon Dunes Resort, and Coore/Crenshaw’s Lost Farm will be a new golf course in Tasmania near Doak’s acclaimed Barnbougle Dunes.