GolfNewsRI

I had the opportunity to play Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in mid-June. Lake Nona is a private residential golf community in southeast Orlando, Florida. 

The 600-acre community features an 18 hole championship golf course designed by Tom Fazio in 1986.

It has hosted several prominent professional and amateur golf tournaments including the inaugural Solheim Cup in 1990 and more recently the LPGA Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in 2022 and 2023.

Regular viewers of The Golf Channel may know of the Lake Nona course and its practice facility as the broadcast home of The School of Golf with regular hosts 2008 PGA of America teacher of the year Martin Hall and former LPGA player Blair O’Neal.

Lake Nona is home to prominent professional golfers such as Annika Sorenstam, Graeme McDowell, Sir Nick Faldo, Ian Poulter, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, Gary Woodland, Tyrrell Hatton, and Lydia Ko.

Lake Nona is closely aligned with its sister course, Isleworth.  Much like Kirkbrae and Alpine, both courses are available to their respective membership.

We stayed in the city of Lake Nona at the brand-new Wave hotel.  The Wave was a homerun for us but that is for another review.   When we took the 7 minute ride to the course,  our GPS took us to the wrong entrance.  We called the gate phone and they gentleman on the other line had great patience with us. I got the feeling that it happens all the time) and directed us around the actual Lake Nona and to the front gate.

At the front gate, there is serious security, but not as strict as Isleworth. Only I had to show my ID, not every passenger like Isleworth.

As we took the long drive to the clubhouse, we past many beautiful homes and deer. There are deer everywhere on the course.  They almost seem domesticated as we could get very close to them if we did not make any sudden moves.

As we checked in at the bag drop, we passed the driving range and it was completely full.  I found that surprising as I expected the reason we were able to get on the course on the day we wanted was due to scheduled limited play.   However, as I latter learned, the vast majority of golfers on the range were there only to hit balls.  Not many went out to play after practice.

After we dropped our bags, we checked in with the pro shop and were warmly greeted.  It seems everyone has an awesome British or Irish accent and they very much made us feel at home.

I went to the men’s locker room and noticed very quickly, unlike nearby course Isleworth, there are no famous names prominently labeled on the lockers.  At Isleworth, there is Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer etc. Lake Nona is much more low key.

We made time to have breakfast which was terrific.  I cannot comment on the value as one of my guests insisted on paying.

For the rest of the day, I was given a temporary member number to charge incidentals and fortunately my guests were stuck and every expense was mine as I intended it to be!

Again, another difference from Isleworth is that the driving range is very close to the clubhouse and the first tee. But like Isleworth, the range is short and certainly longer hitting professionals must be aware that a long drive can go to the other side of the range.

As we finish our range session, we went to the first tee and met our starter, Mark. Mark is from Massachusetts, and we had a great chat.

On the first tee, I felt extremely grateful to be at this world class course and I hit a great tee shot down the middle. My approach was less than perfect, and I hit an easy chip to within 6 feet.  I hit a great putt for a par. I felt this could be my round, but alas I was incorrect.

My driver had the “lefts” in it this day and I shot an 85 which should have been much better.

I really liked the course. I found it to have a little more variation in holes than Isleworth. Noteworthy, Lake Nona has no caddy program and we played without a forecaddie. 

We were required to have a forecaddie at Isleworth.  Also, at Isleworth, golf cars have no governors on them, and you can go recklessly fast if that is your intention.

The only issue at Lake Nona was the weather. We had to stop for about 10 minutes of rain, but the rest of the round was terrific.

The course was wide open for us. We let one twosome play through but no one ahead of us and no one behind us.  Allowing for stop on hole number 12 for the rain, our foursome played in under 4 hours.

Lake Nona has a world class reputation and they certainly lived up to it during our visit.  I would return to play there in a heartbeat.