BOWLING GREEN, FLORIDA | For all the attention on distance in the modern game, a design trend has targeted those of us who don’t launch it 300 yards.
The short course.
Streamsong Resort, which established itself in the past decade as a must-play destination featuring three of the best public-access courses in America, has given golfers another reason to find this remote setting in central Florida: The Chain.
Architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who helped open Streamsong to great acclaim in 2012 with the Red course, one of three rolling, walkable links-style layouts on this moonscape of a reclaimed phosphate mining site, added to their list of worldwide design hits with the 19-hole Chain.
“The demand for the short course is a great thing for golf,” said Kevin Kennedy, Streamsong’s general manager. “It brings a lot more people into playing golf. Playing on championship-level courses for new people is very difficult. We built it because during our season, which is the winter months, November through April, it’s shorter days, and a lot of people want to play more than 18 holes, but they can’t. In building this course, it definitely satisfies people’s appetite for more golf.”
The Chain is no pitch-and-putt pushover. A short walk out the front door of Streamsong’s modernistic glass-and-steel S-shaped lodge, the course unfolds with a breezy six-hole opening loop of short-iron shots and birdie chances amid stands of moss-draped oaks. Any sense of complacency quickly vanishes for the second loop, a 13-hole series that ratchets up the shot-making demands.
Coore-Crenshaw’s creative genius at The Chain, a course built for the camaraderie and gamesmanship of match play, lies in the teeing areas. They’re mere suggestions for where to peg it. Want to test your opponent’s ability to finesse a gap wedge after he or she chunked the past two attempts? If you’ve got the honor, make your rival play from an uncomfortable distance. The teeing grounds, marked by industrial-size chain links (get it?) used to hold a dragline bucket from resort founder Mosaic Company’s shuttered mining operation, flex 50 yards or more on most holes. Some tee shots can be as short as 50 yards; others stretch to nearly 300. The scorecard lengths range from 1,576 from the front to 2,916 from the back. A few forced carries add to the challenge. You could use just about every club in the bag, from wedge to driver, if choosing the longer teeing options.
How’s that for variety?
And to boost the fun meter, just about anything goes.
“It was built for match play,” said Craig Falanga, Streamsong’s director of sales and marketing and a veteran with KemperSports, which managed the resort from day one before buying the 7,000-acre property from Mosaic for $160 million in early 2023. He noted a casualness befitting golf’s modern vibe. “If you want to play music, play music. If you want to play barefoot, play barefoot.”
Since the Chain’s opening this spring, Streamsong has seen an uptick in guests’ length of stay: from 2.3 nights on average to 2.8, Falanga said. The short course is the reason.
“Customers have embraced it. The biggest thing that I get from the customers is, ‘It’s not what I expected.’ They’re like, ‘This is a tremendous course.’” – Craig Falanga
The Chain won’t be supplanting the highly acclaimed Red, Blue and Black – Nos. 2, 3 and 4, respectively, among public-access courses in Florida, according to Golfweek, and among the top 30 in the U.S. – on anybody’s list of great courses. Then again, it wasn’t meant to do so. It was built to complement an already potent lineup.
“Customers have embraced it,” Falanga said. “The biggest thing that I get from the customers is, ‘It’s not what I expected.’ They’re like, ‘This is a tremendous course.’”
To that end, Brad Boyd, the resort’s director of agronomy, spoke about “trying to gain consistency” at The Chain with the more established playing surfaces across the property. Streamsong’s greens feature varieties of Bermudagrass: Champion Mach 1 Ultradwarf on Red and Blue, MiniVerde on Black and TifEagle on The Chain. “That’s a bit of a challenge with such an immature turf,” he said of the new short course. “We’re getting very close to similar green speeds.”
The Bucket, a 2½-acre putting course set between the two loops of The Chain, offers the ideal spot for a one-club match, with the focus on lag speed. The mining motif is writ large with a massive 22,000-pound dragline bucket plopped midcourse that stands as the most immovable of obstructions. With humps and falloffs throughout the course, The Bucket delivers a fun diversion with the Texas wedge.
For the first-time visitor, be advised: Streamsong will change your view of Florida golf, and in a good way. In a state notorious for condo-lined architectural monotony designed primarily to sell real estate, this resort is an outlier. It’s more British Isles than subtropics in appearance, and the putter is a reliable default play at a site that rewards a good ground game. The six months of blast-furnace weather and lack of ocean breezes leave no doubt about the inland location. (There’s a reason for those discounted summer rates.) Visitors come to Streamsong for the golf, though the resort has added guided bass fishing, shooting, tennis and archery in recent years, and the AcquaPietra spa has been a big hit.
Streamsong also has developed another attraction: dining.
Like a good caddie, of which Streamsong offers up to 150 or so in season, Michael Ford understands his place as the resort’s executive chef. Foodies don’t flock here, though the cuisine is exceptional. The menu ranges at the five eateries from the American fare at Pub 59, Fin & Feather and Bone Valley Tavern to the Italian-themed SottoTerra and upscale dining at Canyon Lake Steakhouse. Even the halfway houses on the three big courses offer a taste of the restaurant cuisine.
“Folks that come out to this property aren’t coming here for the food and beverage,” Ford said in acknowledging his supporting role in an all-star lineup. “It’s about golf, and then it’s about everything that can complement the experience that goes along with the golf. The majority of our customers are alpha male golfers, and that’s what we cater to.”
Two North Carolinians, Gary Werkman of Mooresville and Tom Dillard of Cornelius, were heading back to the lodge after having wrapped up their first visit to Streamsong with afternoon golf with their wives at The Chain. It proved to be the ideal getaway round before their trip home.
“For a last day, where we just needed to kill some time and not take the game seriously, it was just a lot of fun,” Werkman said.
Dillard noted the warmup nature of the first six holes, “and then it gets more challenging,” he said of the Chain’s 13-hole closing loop.
They didn’t get a chance to play the Black course on their four-day, three-night visit, but they quickly targeted it for “next time.”
“We’ve already got a guys trip on our mind to come back and play the Black,” Werkman said.
And likely a match with the boys at The Chain.