David McLay Kidd to design new golf course at Streamsong Resort in Florida

Posted by author January 22, 2025 Golf

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BOWLING GREEN, Fla. — Golf architect David McLay Kidd has been itching for more than a decade to design a course at Streamsong Resort in Florida. Starting in February, he’ll get that chance.

Kidd has routed what will become the fourth full-size course at the popular resort that opened in 2012 in a remote area southeast of Tampa and southwest of Orlando. Streamsong already is home to the Red course designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, the Blue designed by Tom Doak and the Black designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. When Kidd’s course opens at a date to be determined, Streamsong will be the only destination with courses designed by all these popular architects.

“In 2012 when all this opened, I got a phone call from Tom Doak, and he said, ‘We’re opening this thing in Florida, and I’d like to invite you to the opening,’” Kidd said before starting a tour of his new routing Monday. “So I came here for the opening of both courses. I mean, I think everybody who was in the golf business at that time was probably here. It was one of the biggest events in golf in a decade, maybe since Bandon Dunes, and of course I played both courses a couple of times. I just thought, oh my goodness, I have got to get the opportunity at some point to build a course here.”

Kidd rose to notoriety in 1999 with the opening of the original course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort on the southwest coast of Oregon. He has built dozens of courses since, among the most popular being Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin, Gamble Sands (and it’s new sister course, Scarecrow, which opens in 2025) in Washington and the new GrayBull in Nebraska as part of the Dormie Network.

Kidd’s track record has evolved to include a devotion to playability and the ground game that should fit well with Streamsong. If all goes to plan, Kidd said, the new course should look like a natural extension of the resort while displaying its own artistry and personality. Construction is planned to begin in February, and Kidd said he will spend considerable time at Streamsong during construction.

“Building a course is a puzzle with dozens, with hundreds, of pieces,” Kidd said. “How do I find a solution to every single one of these pieces that works in a manner that looks like I didn’t have to work that hard, that actually sequences everything together in a way where, when you play it, you go, ‘This guy earns his money for nothing,’ because that’s the perfect scenario.”

The plan started last summer with site selection at the sprawling resort that encompasses thousands of acres. Streamsong has two clubhouses, one that currently serves the Red and Blue courses and another that serves the Black. Kidd’s layout will begin at the Black clubhouse, with two holes of the yet-to-be-named new course replacing the short course/practice area known as the Roundabout that was introduced when the Black course opened in 2017.

The third hole of the new course will then pass behind the eighth green and ninth tee of the Black before spreading westward into vacant land. It will then loop back to finish with a par-5 18^th closer between the third hole of Streamsong Red and a pond near the Black’s clubhouse. From many spots on the routing of the new course, players will be able to see much of the Red, Blue and Black courses. At several points the resort’s distant lodge, the Red/Blue clubhouse and the Black clubhouse are all in view.

Streamsong’s three existing courses are ranked highly, creating big expectations for the fourth layout. The Red is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as the No. 2 public-access course in Florida, No. 15 among all U.S. resort courses and tied for No. 37 among all modern courses in the U.S. The Blue is No. 3 among Florida’s public-access courses, No. 22 among U.S. resort courses and tied for No. 53 among modern courses in the U.S. The Black is No. 4 among Florida’s public-access courses, No. 26 among U.S. resort courses and tied for No. 67 among modern courses in the U.S. The resort is also home since 2023 to The Chain, a 19-hole short course designed by Coore and Crenshaw.

Kidd said he definitely will peek across the dunes at the other courses as he attempts to match or surpass them.

“I think it would be foolish not to look at the three courses and figure out the things that work really well and the things that don’t work so well,” the Scottish-born architect said. “So I think we will be respectfully plagiarizing some things. … But I think we will inevitably bring our own flavor to it. That’s why Kemper hired us, you know.”

Some of the land for the new course’s front nine includes areas that were mined for sand by Hanse during construction of the Black course. Kidd plans to import fresh sand to the site, shaping everything along the way across a sometimes rolling landscape that was created by mining operations of former resort owner Mosaic Company. After years of running the resort on Mosaic’s behalf, KemperSports bought Streamsong in 2023.

The site for the new course doesn’t feature many of the most dramatic hills and ridges seen especially on Red and Blue, those hills having created by Mosaic piling up sand for decades. Kidd said he and project manager Chip Caswell are likely to introduce such features wherever they fit, all while keeping their focus on the ground game. That can be a difficult proposition in Florida and on Bermuda grass, which typically doesn’t allow the ball to roll as far as some northern grasses in other regions of the country. Kidd was unfazed by such a task, explaining that slopes will be introduced to help players feed the ball toward the hole.

“I would argue that our devotion to the ground game exceeds many others – I think these three (existing) courses do a good job at that, but i think we can do an even better one and make the ground game hardwired into the DNA of the course,” Kidd said during the tour of the routing. “Creating feeder slopes and kicker slopes and backstops, all that kind of thing is in our DNA, in my DNA, and we will definitely be doing that.”