16 TEE BOX Construction is expected to begin in early 2027 on a new 18-hole golf course designed by Tom Doak and Blake Conant at The Hill Club. The destination is being developed on the Gold Dust Farms property near Brooksville, Florida. “The site is very unusual for Florida; the top of The Hill in the southwest corner of the site is 208 feet above sea level, and the fourth green at the northeast corner is at 100 feet above sea level,” said Doak. “Most of the site is open, except for some big oaks near the clubhouse and some oaks and pines in the northwest part of the property. This gives us a wide variety of uphill and downhill holes, and also several holes with five-to-six per cent tilt to the fairways. “We don’t have to do a lot of earthmoving to build green sites, but we do have to do a fair amount to comply with the state’s stormwater detention laws, which weren’t designed for hilly terrain like this!” Doak and Conant have been working on plans for the past two years, with the aim of transforming the site into a course well suited to matchplay and a home for The Hill Golf Society. “Our client has emphasised building a course that’s fun to play and a bit quirky by American standards; he has given us carte blanche to build wild features,” said Doak. “As a result, we are making a short study trip to England in October to see what he thinks of some of our favourite places over there: our itinerary includes Woking, Rye, Royal Ashdown Forest and Royal Worlington & Newmarket. If that’s not too much for the client, and if we manage to capture some of the spirit of those clubs and courses at The Hill, I think it will be a home run.” A primary challenge for Doak and Conant’s design, which as usual has been beautifully drawn up by their colleague Don Placek, was quite how they would negotiate the property’s elevation change. “We had to decide first whether the clubhouse would be on the hill or down below; we decided that the grove of oak trees on top of the hill would make for such a family-friendly area that we should put the clubhouse up there,” said Doak. “So, that means we are going to have two sharply uphill holes and two sharply downhill holes in the round. “Our client had mentioned at the beginning that he’d prefer unequal loops of six and 12 holes as alternatives for a late-day addition, so that’s what we have given him. Our long par-four first plays downhill to a fallaway green, which we imagine will be something like Oakmont; the thirteenth will be a long four or a short five playing down the steepest part of the hill to the north, with the descent a bit reminiscent of the tenth at Augusta. An old water tower near the clubhouse site will be refurbished as an aiming point for the finishing hole.” The Hill is expected to open for play in October 2028. COURSE BLUEPRINT The Hill Club
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