Updated March 4, 2026, 4:49 p.m. ET
Mountain Lake is a historic, private golf community in Lake Wales, Florida, known for its exclusivity and traditions.The club hosts the annual Citrus Bowl, a women’s pro-member-guest tournament featuring top amateur and professional players.Designed by Seth Raynor, the highly-ranked course is scheduled for a restoration to preserve its classic architecture.The community values privacy and tradition, with many long-serving staff and multi-generational members.
LAKE WALES, Florida – The Citrus Bowl at Mountain Lake is the only tournament golf Brittany Lincicome will have played before the LPGA’s first major in April. The one-day event, held in late February, is played on one of golf’s best-kept secrets in the middle of old-school, orange grove, central Florida.
“I remember one of my first years rolling up to the range and seeing JoAnne Carner,” recalled Joanna Coe, director of instruction at Merion. “There aren’t very many women’s events like this in the country at all.”
If any.
Located in Lake Wales, Florida, about 45 miles south of Orlando and in the same county as Streamsong, the historic Seth Raynor design is such a literal hidden gem that it’s unknown to some who even live in the same zip code. Yet Mountain Lake ranks among the top 5 private golf courses in the state by Golfweek and is the 18th-best residential course in the country.
This year’s 18th annual Citrus Bowl, a women’s pro-member-guest, featured everything from major champions to an assistant Solheim Cup captain to an LPGA rookie, along with some of the best mid-amateurs in the game, teaching professionals and everyday golfers with double-digit handicaps.
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“It’s just like a microcosm of all the best parts of golf,” said Ina Kim-Schaad, who won last year’s U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur for a second time.
Alison Walshe, a former LPGA pro turned commercial insurance broker, didn’t know Mountain Lake existed when she lived in South Florida while playing the tour. It’s a common refrain, which is what leaves so many gobsmacked driving into the gates for the first time.
“You feel like you’re stepping back in time,” said Kim-Schaad. “It’s beautiful.”
Mountain Lake doesn’t have a social media presence. The hallmarks of the winter colony are tradition, privacy and space. The mystique of the club has grown organically by word of mouth.
Development of Mountain Lake began in 1914, when Frederick S. Ruth commissioned the Olmsted Brothers to design a community he hoped would flourish along the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, which serviced Lake Wales.
Titans of American industry found a quiet retreat in Mountain Lake and, even as decades passed, their treasured secret mostly remains. The seven-figure homes, all uniquely grand, are situated on spacious lots in what residents refer to as “the Park.”
It’s not that time stopped inside the walls of Mountain Lake, but more a preserving of worthwhile traditions. Tea is served at the historic Colony House at 4 p.m., which also happens to be Yappy Hour, when members take their dogs out along the second hole. There’s even a membership list of dogs (with pictures) in case any go astray.
The phones still work here, with nearly all residents keeping a house line. Handwritten invitations are still en vogue, with Ralph, the mail clerk who’s been working at the club for 50 years, keeping it all sorted.
Marion, the longtime employee for whom the halfway house is named, won the lottery three times and still came back to work after she turned in a $1 million scratch-off winner. The gingersnap cookies, peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwiches and aforementioned chicken salad (preferred by the members in a cup, no bread) are among the club’s favorites.
Ann Probert’s parents built their Mountain Lake home in 1969. A 16-time club champion, Probert, now 87, still plays three times a week and boasts 16 career holes-in-one.
“You know, half of them are luck,” she said modestly.
Probert’s guest this year at the Citrus Bowl was longtime friend Barbara Young, whose son Cameron plays on the PGA Tour. Young credits Probert for inspiring her move into the golf business decades ago after the pair played against each other at Baltusrol.
Young actually ran a women’s mini-tour in central Florida back in the late 80s.
“I wanted to train killer whales at Sea World,” Young explained. “I went to interview, and they said we’re not hiring now, come back in six months and get your scuba license.”
Meanwhile, a friend needed help resurrecting a tour, and Young felt there were others who could probably teach the whales. She ran that tour for more than a decade, until Cameron was 3.
Coe, a former Division II juggernaut at nearby Rollins in Winter Park, brought several Merion members with her to the Citrus Bowl, including Loraine Jones, the first junior woman member in Merion’s storied history.
“It started a nice precedent,” said Jones, who met her husband at the club and has a picture from 24 years ago when she played a round of golf on her daughter’s due date – carrying her bag!
Natalie Grainger came to the Citrus Bowl fresh off her third consecutive club championship victory at Seminole. The former top-ranked squash player started playing tournament golf four years ago and got down to a 0.5 handicap.
“Now I’m a full addict,” she admitted.
Two years ago, Leta Lindley clinched the Citrus Bowl’s senior division before heading to Fox Chapel Golf Club outside Pittsburgh, another Seth Raynor design, where she won the U.S. Senior Women’s Open.
This year, Lindley was clipped by another former LPGA veteran, Jean Bartholomew. Lincicome once again won the “junior professional” division, finishing four points ahead of LPGA rookie Riley Smyth in the Stableford format. There were 21 teams of four in this year’s competition and a purse of $25,000.
Mountain Lake visitors stay at the Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.- designed Colony House, a private inn constructed in 1916 that’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
In April, the club will undergo a restoration led by architect Tyler Rae. The 18 holes at Mountain Lake are as unique and memorable as the estates. The Biarritz (No. 5), Redan (No. 11) and Punch Bowl (No. 15) offer a history lesson in the game. Coe credits Mountain Lake for first sparking her interest in golf course architecture.
The upcoming renovation will address the course’s aging infrastructure, bunkers and greens in particular, and restore parts of Raynor’s original design.
With just 100 members inside the gates, Mountain Lake averages 75 rounds per day in the high season, and Nico, in the Pool House, knows the members’ drinks before they sit down. People tend to come to Mountain Lake and never leave. Dickie, a server in the dining room, like Ralph, has been on the staff for more than 50 years. There’s even a fourth-generation member.
Former LPGA player Val Skinner likened Mountain Lake to a Pebble Beach without the ocean. Certainly without the traffic.
Jonathan Powell, the club’s longtime director of golf and athletics, is quick to praise the club’s acclaimed croquet lawns, which recently hosted Egypt in a duel match against the U.S. The club’s director of tennis and croquet, Kyle Maloof, is an elite national croquet player who has followed in the footsteps of his father, David, who oversaw the club’s pristine lawns for more than 40 years.
Mountain Lake remains a 1,100-acre oasis – almost a town within a town – perched on some of the highest ground in the state. The historic Bok Tower Gardens, a National Landmark with its 60-bell carillon, anchors the area. The garden and bird sanctuary, created by former Mountain Lake resident Edward Bok, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and publisher of the Ladies’ Home Journal, sits on the perimeter of the Mountain Lake property. President Calvin Coolidge dedicated Bok Tower in 1929, the final major address of his term.
The club’s archives include a black-and-white photo of Glenna Collette Vare, the “Queen of American Golf,” teeing off on the first hole in front of a gallery of supporters at the 1924 Florida Championship at Mountain Lake. These days, before the Citrus Bowl kicks off, members are sent a participant list with bios so they can follow along. Assistant pro Emily Motta played in the Citrus Bowl before she began working at the club full-time and knows first-hand how invested the membership becomes in the women who play there each year.
Mountain Lake has hosted the Women’s Florida Cup, a biennial Ryder Cup-style event run by the Florida State Golf Association, for the past two editions and has extended an invitation to host for the next 10 years.
Lincicome, a two-time major champion who grew up 90 minutes from Mountain Lake, was unaware of the club until she was invited to play in the Citrus Bowl.
“I love every second of it,” said Lincicome of the luxurious Florida hideaway, whose secret is slowly getting out.
