South course at Apogee Club: New scenery for second act

Amidst all the new private clubs emerging in south Florida, there are several aspects that combine to make Apogee Club unique: an absence of real estate, extensive practice facilities, a template short layout and, leading the list, a choice of three eighteen-hole courses.

The first of those, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner’s West course, was completed in 2023. Its strength is subtlety (several spectacularly bold greens aside), occupying gently contoured ground with only a few feet of elevation change. Most holes weave among a woodland of oaks, pines and palms; in places it feels quite tropical.

Apogee’s second course, the South, could not be more different. If you were dropped in to play, you could be forgiven for believing you were in another country. But all that separates it from the West is a two-lane highway.

A new bridge is in construction to give members a seamless ride from one side of the highway to the other. The highway does not seem particularly busy, and is easy to cross safely, but the bridge is an indication of the level of investment the club is willing to make to deliver the five-star experience that its target membership market is accustomed to.

On the West course side of the highway, there is also a seven-hole short course with greens based on classic template designs, including a lion’s mouth and redan. A clubhouse is in construction, plus several dozen villas that will be available for members who want to stay at the club.

Head over the bridge to the new South course and you will pass the Performance Center, which has an enormous circular driving range with teeing areas around the perimeter to allow shots to be practiced in multiple wind directions, as well as a short game area. A second clubhouse will serve the South and North courses, the latter a Kyle Phillips design that is expected to be complete by the end of 2025.

The South course is the design debut for the partnership of former USGA director Mike Davis and Tom Fazio II. At first glance they may seem an unlikely couple: the meticulous administrator who has been responsible for the tournament set-up of many of golf’s hallowed grounds, and the rock-and-roll (more of that later) earthmover with decades of experience managing major construction projects.

Their combined attributes have resulted in a course of epic scale: an abundance of width, enormous hazards and rollercoaster contour. Millions of cubic yards of earth have been moved, creating four lakes – one large enough to land a seaplane, which might not be out of the question for the club’s clientele – and a course with elevation changes that are rare in Florida, and a stark contrast to the West.

There are seven holes that interact with the water, although it can be avoided with relative ease. Davis and Fazio perhaps had Dr Alister MacKenzie’s 13 principles of good golf design to hand as they worked on the layout – it certainly delivers a near-complete absence of the annoyance and irritation caused by the necessity of looking for lost balls.

There is one MacKenzie principle that the South course does not adhere to: ‘all the artificial features should have so natural an appearance that a stranger is unable to distinguish them from nature itself’. There is no doubting the hand of man. This feels like a reasonable aesthetic choice in the circumstances, and there are countless great courses that do not in the least bit look like they were shaped by nature.

The bunkering is particularly striking – a two-tone approach that combines massive sharp-edged, white-sand razor clams, often directly in the line of play, with more rugged natural waste areas, mostly on hole borders, where the sand is a few shades darker.

It’s easy to understand the choice of more formal hazards (which are lined with Better Billy Bunker) – to give the South an identity that differentiates it from Apogee’s other layouts. But the formality would have been very impractical to achieve across the entire site, given how vast the playing areas are. The result is a hybrid of formal and natural styling.

Holes on the South course are memorable and varied. Even after a single play, all are easy to recall.

Among the standouts are two short par fours. If you tee forward on the eighth, there is temptation to take a heroic direct route over a sandy waste area to the green on higher ground. Come up short and you’ll have a difficult sand shot and to a shallow surface. Circumnavigating the waste area provides a much better angle to the green, for a short iron approach.

The sixteenth is 331 yards from the black tees (which total 7,138 yards), and 274 yards from the whites (which total 6,062 yards). It plays to a long Biarritz green, set right against the edge of a lake. There’s plenty of space to the right, and it’s worth playing that way just to experience the resulting approach shot, which will tumble down the hill but must avoid gathering too much momentum in order to stay dry. Putting might be the best option, even from as far as fifty yards away.

There is a strong quartet of par threes. Maxing out at 141 yards, the third hole is easily the shortest, but has the capability to perplex. Davis was apparently inspired by the fifteenth at LACC North, and has created a wicked green complex comprising several smaller target areas. Like at LA, a front right pin, protected by a bunker, may be the most challenging location.

The hole that will gain the most attention is the uphill par-four thirteenth. The design team kept adding, and adding, earth until they were satisfied that the green was perched high enough on the skyline. The land rises in steps, with massive bunkers – two on the left and three on the right – set into ridges and narrowing the approach area as you climb closer to the plateau green. A long and straight drive still leaves a sharp uphill approach shot. Fazio is a big Led Zeppelin fan, and the thirteenth quickly became known as ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Word has it that there’s a Zeppelin-themed scorecard, with each hole named after a track, in circulation too, but don’t expect to find it in the box on the first tee.

At many clubs with multiple courses, one emerges as the strong favourite. That can become an issue: members feel short-changed if they can’t get on it, and the club ideally would want to spread play evenly.

So far, it feels like Apogee will avoid this problem. The two completed courses may be visually worlds apart, but they do share the design elements the owners laid out in their brief – width, strategy, large greens with open entrances, no forced carries. Tastes differ. A leaning towards extroversion may drive a preference. But both courses are a pleasure to play.

The upcoming Kyle Phillips layout will provide another contrasting experience. Expect this to be more in the direction of naturalism, and to round out a very special three-course collection.

This article first appeared in the April 2025 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page. 

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