Stream of Thought
It does take time to get to Streamsong but, my word, aren’t you rewarded for your efforts. Teeing up on the first hole of the Blue Course (there are two 18-holers at Streamsong – Blue and Red – so named because of the colour of ink used to draw out the routings), there isn’t a sound. The tee is positioned on top of a tall dune that provides a jaw-dropping view of the entire site and the flatlands that stretch out beyond. Despite this huge scope, there is nothing but peace.
Which is just as well considering the tee shot that awaits. The first hole of the Blue Course is a 338-yard, par-4 which combines a mouth-watering, elevated tee shot with a heavily guarded green site. Difficult, tricky and beautiful, the Tom Doak-designed hole is one to relish and a dastardly test with which to start your round.
And so it continues – hole after hole of naturally flowing designs that echo to the world’s great links courses. For instance, Dr Alister Mackenzie’s work at Royal Melbourne could be used as a reference, but in all honesty there is nothing like it. This is, after all, an inland golf course that uses the landscape of a former phosphate mine to create elevation changes on a huge scale. And the results are jaw-dropping.
Saying that, Streamong isn’t the first Florida course to emerge from a former mine. That honour resides with a club less than 20 miles away.
The Club at Eaglebrooke is conveniently located in the suburbs of the city of Lakelandand combines a series of dramatic holes with impressive bunkering, several lakes and an island fairway. Opened for play in 1996, it was the first golf course in Polk County to emerge from a reclaimed mine and during the intervening years, all signs off heavy industry have been eradicated replaced instead by tree-lined fairways, winding cart paths and elegant homes. These days, the only sound that echoes around the lakes of Eaglebrooke is the gentle click of club meeting ball and children’s laughter from neighbouring gardens.
The same can’t be said for Streamsong. Here there is nothing but golf. The result is a course that encourages you to suspend reality. While playing the Blue Course, the idea of a fleet of excavators ripping through the soil didn’t enter my mind once. In fact I found it hard to believe I wasn’t playing a well-established seaside links – all that was missing was the sound of crashing waves.
You just don’t find sites like it, explains Doak, whose brilliant work can be found at Bandon Dunes in Oregon and Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand, two of the world's most highly rated new courses. "The contours of the ground at Streamsong have a wider variety than you are likely to find in nature because they were created by big machines in the course of mining the site," he says after the resort’s official launch. "But they were left to nature for so long afterwards that the wind and rain turned them from piles of sand into real dunes. We never would have built features on such a big scale on our own or had the luxury of time to allow them to naturalize so well."
