BrandonWebb

Don’t be fooled by the TrackMan driving range. Or the wood-fire pizza oven at the posh post-round Porch. The three courses at Cabot Citrus Farms are rugged. This is hardscrabble land in the middle of Florida scrub pines.

Blowout bunkers and vast waste areas scar the swaths of green that can confuse your matriculation toward the targets. The mammoth greens resemble oversized lily pads. Reaching them in regulation is not necessarily a reward.

The reason is because Cabot has unlocked and revealed here in rural Brooksville what makes its’ other properties around the globe so fun to play. Only a select few places on United States soil can mimic what is offered in Great Britain and Ireland. American golf predominantly consists of players talking to their ball while it is still in the air. Due to the sand-capped terrain at Cabot Citrus Farms, you don’t start talking to your ball until it is on the ground. That’s when it gets interesting.

Locals and national property owners will undoubtedly build a mental database of the cheat codes. A caddie, however, is probably worth the hire if you are coming in from out of town and want to tackle the course prudently and efficiently. The subtle and nearly imperceptible breaks in the greens are confounding.

Though landing areas appear claustrophobic from the tee, I found the driving corridors to be generous and forgiving. There are multiple avenues to most greens, including split fairways on several holes. You will be hard-pressed to lose a ball here on the Karoo, Wedge or Squeeze courses. I played all 39 holes without doing so.

It’s an exhausting task trying to fit all three into the same day, but starting out on the 11-hole par-3 course is a perfect way to acclimate to the property and is more fun than beating balls on the range. The 10-hole executive Squeeze course puts driver in hand and is a terrific match play track. The day builds to the crescendo of the Karoo course, which plays over the old footprint of the World Woods’ Pine Barrens course.

The second championship course, the Roost, will open later this year, and two more full-length courses are in the 10-year master plan if the necessary adjoining land can be purchased.

If the House of Mouse built a golf course in Frontierland I’m pretty sure it would look just like the Pinnacle Course at Troon North.

Better course than I remembered. Especially leading up to the final stretch. But, let’s be honest, the reason you play the Stadium course is for the fantastic four-hole finishing stretch.

There are some truly amazing golf courses in America. But, the magic happens when the club that envelopes great pieces of property matches it. From the moment you enter the gate, you sense The Estancia Club is a special place.

Well-traveled players who have logged many more rounds than myself proclaim Estancia as firmly in the conversation for best desert golf course in the United States. That is a marvel considering some knock the Faz’s work by lamenting that he is all sizzle and no steak.

The aforementioned architect’s best asset is his ability to make a course visually pop. And does it! The starkness of the lush fairways against the rugged desert is a feast for the senses. The kicker is that Estancia has strategic interest to boot.

Holes on the front nine rim the base of Pinnacle Peak, while the inward nine climbs into the higher ground, which gives way to 30-40-mile panoramic views of the valley laid out below. Surprisingly wide corridors off the tee lead to supremely interesting green complexes, which resemble billiard tables in both smoothness and speed.

The homeward nine shines, thanks in part to the opening two holes: a short par-4 playing increasingly uphill to a tiered green, and the sublime par-3 11th, which sits in a 270-degree amphitheater ringed with giant boulders.

Irrespective of the desert environment that pinches the green surrounds, surgical accuracy goes a long way here. Many pin locations can be tough to access without local knowledge of the feeder slopes and swales. Others are housed within punchbowls that seduce you to eyeball approach shots longer than normal with anticipation as your ball creeps closer and closer to the cup.

Finally, before every putt, always remember to ask yourself: which way is the valley. It matters.

Eighty-six yards. How many times can one have less than 100 yards left into a green and not just eat? C&C just tease you with short 4s and reachable 5s on the Saguaro course, then chuckle when you can’t hit wedges into 5-yard windows and wind up watching your ball feed perilously into collection areas further and further away. And that’s if you’re lucky. The alternative is winding up in a green-side bunker that is not only deep, but houses inconsistent sand, rife with pebbles. And that’s not a complaint. They are meant to be true hazards and answer the bell.

There is a payoff, however, for all of the aforementioned strife that accompanies an afternoon tee time. The inward nine offers some fun, challenging holes that play into a sunset that drapes pink hues on the surrounding mountain range that serve as a backdrop for every shot.

The aesthetics here are as good as any I can ever remember playing. The maintenance staff takes great pride and care in presenting this mountain retreat. The result is an uncommon wow factor.

Fazio took advantage of a great natural setting with immense elevation changes. The smooth, fast greens were stimping 13 and require every bit of your concentration throughout. Otherwise, you are subject to being humbled. Repeatedly.

Details are important here. The comfort stations offer up most anything you desire. And small wooden boxes containing mini tees can be found on every par 3 tee box. And there are five of them, two of which offer sideboards that can be used to kick approach shots toward the hole on the other side of the green. It is tremendous fun.

There also was a first for me in all of my travels. We spotted a small black bear crossing the 12th fairway while we were walking off the green.

My buddy likened the Cashiers/Highlands area to Hilton Head on the side of a mountain. The area is littered with courses, including some of the best mountain golf in the country. Mountaintop is a special canvas that belongs among the top of the list.

From the moment that you turn off of U.S. Highway 89 and cross the little red bridge that signals you have entered the Snake River Sporting Club, you know that the 36-hole day that awaits is going to be as soulful and deliberate as the namesake body of water that borders the course.

Weiskopf created two distinct nines here about 20 minutes south of Jackson. The outward nine weaves through the canyon ridge and corridors of Teton pines and Aspen trees and features two exhilarating opening holes. The inward nine is far more spacious and plays down to the riverbed.

What struck me about the golf here is that despite a 66-degree clear blue October sky day, there weren’t many people on the course. The serene quiet was only interrupted by the sound of crisp divot-taking and babbling water.

Remember to take one less club due to elevation.

This is an excellent public option about 45 minutes west of Louisville. I found it to be very scoreable. The back nine has the more interesting holes. Greens were a solid 11 and is the main defense of the course in my opinion.

There are certain clubs in the United States that exude championship DNA. How many there are is debatable. What’s not is that Inverness is in that number.

As host to four U.S. Opens and two PGA Championships among numerous other important championships, Inverness goes to great lengths to insure not a single blade of grass is out of place, and not a single group is off the pace.

This original Donald Ross has been brought back to life by Andrew Green, who unlocked the vintage presentation of the course that was muddled by the Fazios in the 1970s.

The routing is interesting in that the front nine plays around the outer ring of the property, before the back nine marches back and forth in parkland fashion. It makes great use of a glacially-carved ravine that players must traverse throughout.

Classic bunkering creates raised profiles around greens, resulting in depth perception miscalculations.

I thought the course was very fair off the tee. You could take advantage of strategic slots if you wanted to take on a little extra risk. Make no mistake, however, this is a second shot golf course. Finding the green, and sometimes the correct side, goes a long way toward a clean card. The miss here is always short because there is usually an open Avenue to the green. Pitching or putting up into pins are incredibly easier to navigate than trying to chip and pitch from the sides or from behind.

Just make sure you keep pace - and not with the group in front of you. That is irrelevant. Club policy mandates a four-hour round. You are on the clock from the first tee and the staff will not hesitate to drive out and give you a warning. The only negative of the day is that I have never felt so conscious about pace, and I’m not slow. As a result, I couldn’t ever really get comfortable over the ball. So while I didn’t play terrific, the experience was amazing, and I’m grateful to have had it.

I suspect more major championships are in line for Inverness. It would be a shame if that’s not the case.

Staring out over this expansive property, the South course doesn’t appear to be too hard of a riddle to solve. Then you arrive at the first tee and you see cross bunker here, another there. And you can honestly overthink it.

The scale is massive and width is abundant, meaning you can shotgun-blast driver all day and it would be hard to lose a ball (there is not a single water hazard on the course and the fescue is cut down to nearly nothing).

But I likened my round here to turning the crank of one of those vintage jack-in-the-boxes. Two straightforward pars to begin the trek on the opening holes. Then, on the par-5 third, despite navigating the minefield of bunkers littering the fairway, I short-sided myself when my approach missed on the incorrect side. That’s when the mesmerizing music stopped and a double bogey leapt out of the box.

It proved hard to keep them pushed back in there, too. Never hit a ball OB. Never got trapped in one of those coffin bunkers benched into greens. Yet, still four doubles marred the card.

Fry and Straka lull players into focusing on all the things they should avoid instead of what they should be focused on. The amalgam of hillocks, hummocks and bunkers distract from what one really should be doing: hitting to the center of greens and putting toward the corners.

That strategy proved effective and rewarded me with five straight pars to open the inward half. That strategy, however, relies heavily on three-putt avoidance. Best be comfortable negotiating 40-60 footers. Balls find slight breaks that aren’t readily apparent to the naked eye and just keep rolling until gathered into swales. Many greens have square corners as well, which cause the edges to droop toward closely-mown areas or bunkers (think tablecloth hanging off the table0. I putted a 60-footer off the green en route to one of those aforementioned doubles.

The South is a newcomer this year to the Top 100 public rankings. It is vastly different from the sister course a mile or so down the road, and surprisingly a caddie told me he thinks it’s much harder than the Bluffs course.

For years I have wanted to play here. Why? Because there are four holes in the infield of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

And if that isn’t bizarre enough, there used to be nine!

It’s also why this Pete Dye redux is unfairly labeled a novelty golf course. In 1929, 20 years after IMs opened, the Speedway GC opened as a 27-hole course. A major reconstruction took place in 1993 when Dye waved his wand and shrunk the footprint to merely 18 holes.

I found the course to be underrated. After two mundane opening holes, Pete starts punching with a short par 4. I think the collection of short 4s here are among his best. The downside is that the par 5s are rather pedestrian save for the 15th, which requires a heroic shot if one is to reach the green in two.

Dye forces you to make a decision. No blindly pulling driver and sending it. If you don’t execute you can be severely penalized for being on the incorrect side of a fairway or green. The bunkering here is treacherous around the putting surfaces.

The price tag is steep, and obviously is geared toward players curious to enter the four-hole gauntlet within the fabled racetrack. Yet, I think it’s worth it. If I had one public round in the greater Indianapolis area it would be here.