Getting near the pin at the short par 3 16th is complicatd by wind, lack of depth and multiple green levels.
You could say Ponte Vedra Inn & Club’s Ocean Course had been remolded, mended and re-mended so many times over the years—by Trent Jones, Robert Walker, possibly Joe Lee, grounds crews and who knows who else—that it ended up an utterly broken mess.
The course’s popularity peaked in the 1930’s when it was selected for the 1939 Ryder Cup (which was never played) while considered one of the toughest and best courses in America. For the next 60 years, however, the resort would do all it could to soften and modernize the design. Paradoxically, the changes actually narrowed the course, shrunk the greens and removed a lot of the golf course that could actually aid the high handicap player while entertaining better ones. (A second, shorter Lagoon Course was built in stages beginning in 1961).
Bobby Weed’s 1998 renovation–some of his best restorative work–returned to the Ocean Course much of what was lost. The course looks and plays like, if not exactly 1935, at least cut from Golden Era cloth. Weed pushed the fairways back out to the sides of the broad hole corridors, then pulled the bunkers inward to create left-right shot strategies and alternate avenues of play. The greens are angled beautifully against hazards and the surfaces dynamically contoured–almost as if designed for 1938 green speeds. The par three 16th, for instance, is just 131 yards long but protected by a canal, ocean winds and a shallow green with about five different interior levels.
The holes runs north-south on both sides of the aforementioned canal (called Lake Vedra now) that Herbert Strong created. The routing loses momentum on the first side after it crosses over the water away from Highway A1A and the coastal breezes, but the entire second nine is a winner, especially when it turns from 12 through 15 into an isolated patch of nature at the north side of the property.
The incredibly wide third and 17th holes—each southward running and featuring centerline bunkers staggered from tee to big, elevated putting surfaces—are two of the most strategic holes on the First Coast, and the tempting little 308-yard 10th (from the back tees), bending ever so gradually along a cove of the canal and reachable with driver in season, is not far behind. (92)
Ponte Vedra Inn & Club—Ocean Course
Ponte Vedra/Jacksonville
Architect: Herbert Strong; renovated by Robert Trent Jones in 1947, and Bobby Weed in 1998
Year: 1928
