Tiger Point Golf & Country Club near Pensacola, Florida

Tiger Point Golf & Country Club in Gulf Breeze, Fla. is an excellent design by hometown hero architect Jerry Pate that has wide, expansive views of Santa Rosa Sound.

The golf course was a 36-hole facility before it was hit fore and aft by successive hurricanes, Ivan and Dennis. Together, they knocked out the back nine of Tiger Point's West course; that was unfortunate because that nine was exceedingly scenic. There are currently four or five plans to rebuild the destroyed nine, according to course officials.

Pate also handled the redesign after the hurricanes, but that was largely fiddling here and there: The basic routing stayed the same.

Pate used his bulldozers to create movement on the flat terrain, especially around the greens. Most of the TidDwarf greens are slightly elevated and nearly all feature good slope and undulation, more so than, say, the Club at Hidden Creek, though Hidden Creek is faster. There are quite a few multi-break putts to deal with at Tiger Point, and some of the up-and-downs are challenging, to say the least.

Tiger Point Golf & Country Club is a tad more than 7,000 yards from the back tees, and there are a number of very clever and demanding holes.