FORT MYERS, Fla. - This week, the 77th Florida Open Championship takes center stage in Fort Myers where two golf courses, The Golf Club at Crown Colony and Cypress Lake Golf Club, will host the best amateur and professional golfers from around the state. Each golf course is providing unique challenges to the competitors, ensuring that this year’s champion will have all facets of their game operating at the highest level.
The Golf Club at Crown Colony, which was established in 2001, is hosting its second FSGA Championship after having hosted the Super-Senior Amateur Match Play Championship in 2022. The Ron Garl design is a par-71 layout that, at its maximum yardage, plays to 6,815 yards. Despite not being overwhelmingly long, David Kent, the General Manager and COO of Crown Colony, thinks that golfers will still feel challenged.
“There are a lot of really tight corridors out there where the premium is going to be on driving it well with accuracy,” Kent said. “The greens have a lot of subtle contours, they’re very challenging to read if you haven’t played the golf course before.”
Not only is Crown Colony a premier golf course, but the property is an environmental marvel. Crown Colony utilizes state-of-the-art, environmentally sensitive, salt tolerant, hybrid paspalum grasses, the first of its kind in the United States. This allows for a reduction in water usage to maintain durable and course aesthetics. In addition, Crown Colony is also a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Course, serving as a home to a beautiful collection of native birds and other wildlife.
Cypress Lake Golf Club, which was introduced with nine holes as Fort Myers’ first private golf club in 1961 (adding nine additional holes in 1962), will be hosting their first-ever FSGA championship. Though originally designed by Dick Wilson, the par-71 course has gone through multiple renovations, most recently by Ron Forse in 2017, who sought to restore the course to original Dick Wilson design concepts.
In contrast to Crown Colony, according to Director of Golf Jon Pazdera, Cypress Lake Golf Club, which will play at just over 7,000 yards, is “fairly open off the tee, so the best skill set to have will be those with great iron play.” Pazdera placed further value on a player’s ability to hit quality approach shots.
“It is very important to hit the greens. If you don't hit the greens it is not a very easy up and down, green speeds are always fast. If you have a good iron game and hit a lot of greens, you should do well,” Pazdera said.
While both golf courses are poised to force each player competing for the title of Florida Open Champion to think differently, there is one man who had a significant influence on both properties, Ron Garl.
Garl has designed more than 250 courses with a heavy concentration in Florida including renowned courses such as Golden Ocala, where he introduced the concept of tribute holes (a.k.a replica design), and Fiddlesticks, which played host to the 2022 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship. Not only was Garl the original designer of Crown Colony in 2001, but he also conducted the first full renovation of Cypress Lake Golf Club in the same year, introducing modern design elements and addressing long-standing drainage issues.
Last September, the Fort Myers area was hit heavily by Hurricane Ian, a category-five storm that ended up being one of the costliest, deadliest, and largest storms in the state’s history. Both Crown Colony and Cypress Lake experienced damage and were forced to shut down operations for roughly two and a half weeks in the aftermath of the storm.
“It is hard to believe that it was September of last year. It still seems really fresh for the community, the club, and the people here in the area. We had never seen anything like it,” Kent said.
However, from the shock and awe of the ferocity of the storm came a new sense of community and togetherness. Kent explained that, “the challenges we faced showed the greatest parts of humanity. Everyone just rallied around each other and there was unbelievable support in so many ways to the staff in particular, going above and beyond the call of duty. … It’s a nice part of the rebuilding to be hosting a championship of this magnitude here at the club.”
At Cypress Lake, Pazdera remarked on his and his community’s feelings toward hosting this championship in such a short time span following the hurricane, stating, “It means a great deal for our club, our membership. Having the best amateurs and professionals coming to our club from around the state will give us some notoriety, some exposure, some recognition.”
How the players competing in the 77th Florida Open will tackle each of the host courses is yet to be determined, but what is for sure is that each venue is up to the task of producing another great Florida Open Champion.
