Streamsong proclaims plans for David McLay Kidd-designed fifth course

In 2012, the golf course architect David McLay Kidd attended the grand opening of two 18-hole layouts, neither of which he designed. Streamsong Blue and Crimson — dreamed up, respectively, by Tom Doak, and Invoice Coore and Ben Crenshaw — had been the anchor sights at Streamsong Resort, a brand new vacation spot in out-of-the-way Florida, roughly equidistant from Tampa and Orlando. 

McLay Kidd was no stranger to distant golf. Because the architect of Bandon Dunes, in southern Oregon, he was an OG of the style. On the Streamsong ribbon cuttings, although, he felt a mixture of admiration and envy. He not solely liked the programs. He additionally coveted the panorama round them, an unlimited canvas of dramatic humps and hollows left behind by a mining operation.

“I simply thought, Sometime, I’ve obtained to get the chance to construct a course right here,” McLay Kidd stated. “So I then went to appreciable lengths seeing if I may interject myself at Streamsong and be a part of it.”

Time handed. In 2017, Streamsong opened a 3rd 18-holer, the Black course by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, which, just like the Blue and Crimson, debuted on GOLF’s rating of High 100 Programs within the U.S. Six years later, one other Coore/Crenshaw design at Streamsong was unveiled: a 19-hole quick course referred to as The Chain. 

All of the whereas, McLay Kidd hardly lacked for work. Amongst his many initiatives throughout this era had been Gamble Sands, in japanese Washington, and Mammoth Dunes, in central Wisconsin, each High 100 fixtures. Nonetheless, Streamsong remained excessive on his want checklist. However he can test it off now.

On Wednesday, the information grew to become official. Streamsong is constructing a fifth course, and McLay Kidd has been employed to design it. When it’s accomplished, the resort will turn into the one property on the earth with programs designed by Coore/Crenshaw, Doak, Hanse/Wagner and Kidd.

“In my profession, now spanning 30 years, I’ve all the time thought-about my peer group to be Invoice and Ben and Tom and Gil,” McLay Kidd stated. “So, for me to be a part of that group, that group would all must be in the identical spot.”

As he spoke, on an unseasonably chilly Florida afternoon early this week, McLay Kidd was main a tour of his course-in-the-making. It doesn’t have a reputation but (Grey? Yellow? White? Inexperienced?) nevertheless it does have a routing, which McLay Kidd and his staff had marked with tall stakes within the floor.

The structure will sit between the Crimson and Black programs and share a clubhouse with the Black. Arising with a configuration that might begin and end at that clubhouse was sophisticated, partially, by protected wetlands. However McLay Kidd discovered an answer that concerned cannibalizing a little-used pitch-and-putt observe facility referred to as the Roundabout, whose footprint will give approach to the course’s opening two holes.

At greater than 7,300 yards from the again tees, the brand new course would be the longest on the resort, with twists and turns that take it by means of all factors of the compass on a website with incessantly shifting winds. Although its bones are in place, its defining options, McLay Kidd stated, will take form within the discipline, as he and his staff advantageous tune the bends and folds of the fairways and the contours of the greens whereas benefiting from terrain marked by placing dunes, brows, dips and ridges. Some parts of the course will have to be constructed up and others will name for excavating, McLay Kidd stated, the higher to carry out the ground-game choices which are central to his designs.

“I’m not going to be shy about transferring dust when it’s referred to as for,” McLay Kidd stated. “It is a nice website for golf, nevertheless it was formed by mining, so it’s not as if I’ll be imposing myself on nature.”

In 2023, the mining firm that owned Streamsong offered it to Lone Windmill LLC, a stakeholder in KemperSports, which manages the resort. The brand new course marks the brand new possession’s first main funding within the property, however extra is coming, a KemperSports consultant stated, together with extra lodging that can broaden the resort’s in a single day choices past its 228-room important lodge. 

Work on the brand new course, already underway, will proceed by means of the winter and spring, and although a completion date has not been introduced, McLay Kidd stated he hopes it is going to be prepared for play by the autumn of 2026. Timeline apart, his objective, he stated, is to create a compelling playground that enhances Streamsong’s present programs, sharing DNA with its siblings however standing out by itself. If his expectations had been excessive, so was the strain, the architectural equal of first-tee jitters.

“I’m so glad to be working right here,” he stated. “However I’m additionally nervous as a result of the bar has been set so excessive.”

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