Traveling Chicago Golfer.com
January 14, 2019
I am just arriving at Lake Jovita Golf and Country Club in the Tampa, FL., area for the Golfweek Magazine Player of the Year Classic. The tournament, which is a Senior non-handicapped tourney, will be a three-day event, January 16 through 18. I decided to play in this in large part because I have played the two courses at Lake Jovita about 40 times each over the last 10 to 12 years in March, on trips with my Tuesday Nite Basketball group (TNB Golfers!!) So I figure I may have a little advantage over most of the field in that I know the course, while most other guys have not been here. However, the field has an advantage over me in that most of them are much better golfers. To play in this event, you must have a handicap index of 8.0 or less, and I currently sit at a 6.9 index, and a lot of these guys are scratch or indexes like 1, 2, or 3. So in reality, I'm just hoping to play well and not embarass my old self too much. Upon my arrival, I was talking to Ron Gaines of Golfweek who runs these events, and he commented to me that one of our contestants here formerly won the British Amateur. Not too shabby.
I played a practice round today upon arrival on the North Course, and the place looks like the conditions are pretty good. The layouts of the two courses and the greens complexes are always great. There are a lot of great holes on these two golf courses.
As an aside, our main contact at Lake Jovita, Sharon Gebhardt (who runs the Villa rental program for visitors) mentioned to me the other day that she has four or five villas (all three-bedrooms) available for February 1 thru 4, 2019, and she indicated if any readers of the TravelingChicagoGolfer.com website call in to reserve lodging and tee times, she will give some sort of a discount to anyone saying they came by way of TravelingChicagoGolfer.com. So a little perk for our readers. This place is a great winter getaway.
Lake Jovita is about 25-30 miles north of Tampa, very near Dade City, Florida. We ate dinner last night in Dade City at Kokopelli's, and it was a fine little restaurant in a cute little down. As one of the residents stated, Dade City is not really a city. (GSB)
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By the way, prior to going to Tampa, Brenda joined me in Orlando for a few days and to play a little golf. However, the course we played (36 holes) was not one which we were fond of. It kinda sucked. So, I should explain to readers that when I have an experience like that, my choice is to pretty much to say NOTHING. After all, my goal with my golf writing is to "Promote the Game of Golf," and so slamming some poor golf course does not help the game. So remember to use Yelp or other golf rating websites to find out if a course is having problems. On the other hand, when I do review a golf course, I try to not to exaggerate or engage in hyperbole in order to promote the game, so I hope you will find my positive commentaries to be quite accurate. Thanks.....GSB
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February 2019 ---------- At the ---Corica Park Golf Course - South Course, Alameda, California:
For those of you who regularly look at my website here and my published golf articles, you probably know that one of my favorite things is to find "Hidden Gems" -- golf courses around the country and the world that most people may not know about. Well, I just found one this week in California, in Alameda, CA. It's called Corica Park, a 45-hole property, but it is the recently remodeled "South Course" that is the star of the show. Alameda, by the way, is an island (I think) just southwest of Oakland, CA, on the San Francisco Bay. This course is very centrally located to the entire Bay Area. I can get there from downtown San Francisco, proper, in less than 30 minutes.
There is a lot to the backstory of Corica Park, but before I go into that, let me just summarize some of what I like about this place. The South Course was just reopened in June 2018 after a major remodel/renovation. The redesign was led by famous golf architect, Rees Jones, the "Open Doctor." It is a vey unique course in that it was designed in the "Australian Sandbelt" style, which includes features like substantial fairways, very large greens, and playing surfaces that allow the ball to run out a bit more than is typical. Let's start with the greens, always the key component of a great course for me. Rees Jones designed these greens (according to a nice video interview of him on the Corica Park website) with the intention of having very large greens (7000 to 9000 square feet), that rewarded shots close to the hole with fairly straight putts versus long putts that might face more serious, and multiple, breaks. In my view, the greens were not highly contoured, and as Rees Jones stated, he did not "overcook" the greens on this course. I am particularly sensitive this issue as I recently played Lake Jovita (see blog post above) and those greens are totally overcooked, with breaks out the wazoo. They are fun, but maddening, and one day I three-jacked it about six times!! The other key point -- the Corica Park greens are nicely conditioned and roll pretty fast.
In addition, the South Course at Corica is a great layout, lots of nice holes with great variety. Five sets of tees so you can play it really tough or pick something sensible. The conditions were quite good when I played it this month (February) and should be getting even better as the weather improves. Also, work still continues so the venue should get even more refined. The Bermuda fairways will just be coming in again in the next few months. One point I need to obtain clarification on, I obtained some information that the huge fairways were designed to be Bermuda for the most part, but to transition into fine fescue in the 20 to 40 yard approach areas to the green to enhance the ability to run the ball in. But I need to confirm that is correct. As Rees Jones explained, this is a course designed to allow the "air game" or the "ground game." Another nice feature -- the greens fees are relatively modest all things considered -- about $60 to $80 to walk, with resident rates of $40 to $50 bucks a round.
Now, let's turn to the backstory elements I alluded to above. As many of you may know, Rees Jones is the son of the very famous golf architect, Robert Trent Jones, Sr., and brother of Robert Trent Jones, Jr., another renowned architect. (What a family). Rees has become known as the "Open Doctor" as he has redesigned and reworked numerous US Open courses, PGA venues, and Ryder Cup sites, to improve and toughen them up for the greatest players in the world. As mentioned, this course was designed with the "Australian Sandbelt" style in mind, which features sand-based fairways that "run out" more than typical, and a design meant to be highly playable for the average golfer. There is a big emphasis on "fun!" The Australian example they use to compare this style is the great Royal Melbourne course Down Under. Corica Park has been around for many years, originally opening in the 1920's. But the island course was on low-lying land and had drainage issues. Wait til you hear the solution to that. As part of the renovation, Rees Jones and Greenway Golf (the operators of the place) brought in over one million cubic yards of sand and fill. And where did they get this from? From the "dig" that went on to complete a SF Bay Area BART tunnel (Bay Area Rapid Transit). In fact, the BART people PAID Corica to take the sand and dirt and gravel. This freed up funds for other improvements. The renovators placed all this stuff on top of the old golf course, raising it several feet and capping it with the sand. This really improved the course drainage, and made it playable twelve months a year.
As to the rest of Corica Park, there is the 18-hole North Course which is scheduled for full renovation in the next couple of years, and the 9-hole Par 3 course that was also already renovated. I did not play either of these, but I was told the Par 3 course is pretty cool with a lot of mounding. I will try to play that soon and report back. I am heading out of California in a few days and next stop is in March is Orlando, FL. I don't think I'll get to play in Chicago in the next few weeks unless the Polar Vortex has completely gone. When I left Chicago a couple of weeks ago, it was 20 below Zero -- Jeeeez.
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