Naples Golfers Guide Featured Course Stories

The much ballyhooed TPC Sawgrass, headquarters of the PGA Tour and home of the Tour's richest tournament, The Players Championship, will be one of the two courses to host this year's Florida State Golf Association's Amateur Championship, June 25-28.

Sawgrass Country Club will share hosting duties. Sawgrass CC was designed by Ed Seay of Arnold Palmer Course Design.

Founded in 1979, a full 20 years before the Southwest Florida city of Bonita Springs officially became a city, Spanish Wells Golf and Country Club is one of Lee County’s finest and most established private golf clubs.

Entering its 30th year of operation, Spanish Wells Golf and Country Club, a member-owned and operated club, is situated within the 600-acre gated community of Spanish Wells. The club has 27 holes of championship golf, a new 32,000-squarefoot clubhouse with several fine and casual dining venues, an excellent tennis program, occe courts, swimming pool and a technologically sophisticated fitness center.

Spanish Wells is tucked away in the consistently expanding city of Bonita Springs, which is conveniently located between two metropolitan areas, Naples and Fort Myers, and equidistant from Tampa to the north and Miami to the east.

Other than his 1997 PGA Championship win at Winged Foot in upstate New York, the greatest victories of Davis Love III’s golfing life have come in the state of Florida. Love III twice won the PLAYERS Championship, one of the richest and most prestigious tournaments in all of golf, at The Players Stadium Course in Ponte Vedra Beach.

Love III has parlayed his successful playing career into a booming golf design business and after design efforts in the Carolinas and Georgia, the 19-time PGA Tour winner has finally made his way to Florida.

Love III himself took a break from his PGA Tour schedule and was present as River Hall Country Club and its stunning clubhouse celebrated official grand openings Feb. 25. But the course has been open since fall 2007, when members and residents were first able to play. Quickly approaching its one-year anniversary River Hall is a testament to the passion and pride Love III has for the game of golf.