“It doesn’t feel like Florida.”
Some version of this statement has been used to entice golfers to several of the Sunshine State’s highest-profile golf courses in recent years. But I never know quite what to make of it. It’s simultaneously a compliment and a slight to a state that, as I’ve learned in nearly a dozen years of residency, is so full of contradictions that it defies generalization.
One of the best things travel does is challenge and complicate one’s baked-in views of a place. It is not so much that High Grove Golf Club, Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner’s newest design in the Sunshine state, doesn’t feel like Florida. Rather, for those who are fortunate enough to visit it, it will challenge notions of what Florida – and specifically Florida golf – can be, in a form that may come to be known as one of its very best courses.
With an address tied to the unincorporated community of Venus, High Grove sits about half an hour south of Sebring, smack in the middle of peninsular Florida. The private, upscale destination-style retreat (48 rooms will open soon, serving members and their guests) is well-situated to serve as a second club for golfer-snowbirds based on either of the state’s coasts, or as a winter respite for folks up north. Fort Myers is 65 miles away; Jupiter, 85; Naples, 100; Orlando, 140.
If the course’s location is advantageous, its site is downright spectacular, and not just by Florida standards. It sits at the southern tip of the Lake Wales Ridge, an ancient 100-mile sand spine that runs north-south through the middle of the state. It is a remnant of small islands that poked above the waves millions of years ago when the ocean covered most of the region.
High Grove’s gift to golfers is a 50-foot, pure-sand ridge-within-the-Ridge that runs the axis of the course’s kinked figure-eight routing, giving rise to generous corridors that accentuate its influence. Wagner, who took the lead on the design, made the most of it by fashioning a brilliant sequence of front-nine holes that play along, up, down and around it. The par-5 6th is a brilliant diagonal encounter with the ridge and the 120-yard par-3 9th is a direct uphill confrontation with it. The ridge receives such a stirring early showcase because the land on which the opening nine sits had to be completely stripped of its expiring orange trees, with thousands of new ones recently planted. This gives the interior landscape a quasi-desert aesthetic at this early stage.
The par-5 6th at High Grove uses the course’s central sand ridge to brilliant effect. Tim Gavrich/GolfPass
High Grove’s front nine closes on a dramatic note: a 120-yard par 3 playing straight up-ridge to a blind green. Tim Gavrich/GolfPass
The back nine has a more lived-in look as it winds clockwise through existing mature orange groves. The jump is not jarring, though, because the corridors remain generous. The juxtaposition of the groves’ formal rows with Wagner’s intricately curved bunker and green forms is fascinating to experience. Even though each hole feels swaddled in citrus trees, the hilly tract provides plenty of peeks both at where the golfer has been and what’s to come. Because the orange trees along High Grove’s back nine are approaching the end of their natural lifespans, this part of the property will eventually trade aesthetics with the front as the replanted citrus along the opening stretch matures. Cycles of change are seldom as noticeable as they will be as the course matures. But over years and numerous visits, High Grove’s members will get a uniquely strong sense of their golf course as an evolving organism.
The superior nature of the property makes High Grove’s course greater than the sum of its parts, but its individual holes and shots are compelling as well. Three short par 4s add variety. At the 350-yard 7th, the golfer drives off the edge of the big ridge to a broad landing area with strategically staggered bunkers. Any club from driver to long-iron might be right, depending on wind direction and cortisol levels. The fairway tapers to an exquisitely low-profile green that reminds of Wagner’s compact, close-to-the-ground work on dead-flat Naples ground at Kinsale Club. It is a well-earned quiet moment after the round’s freewheeling first third.
I admire how Wagner manages to give the golfer both quiet moments like the 7th and low-slung par-4 8th as well as more visually striking looks on the same golf course without it feeling disjointed or pandering. The approach to the rightward-drifting par-4 14th is a stunning set-piece. There, the golfer finds some of the most extensive bunker forms on the entire course, their edges studded by stands of centipede grass before dissolving into the naturally sandy grovelands. Centipede’s maroon winter hue looks like America’s warm-climate answer to British heather.
Though it plays into the flattest part of the property, High Grove’s par-4 7th is a superb short par 4. Tim Gavrich/GolfPass
The bunkering at High Grove’s par-4 14th is some of the most intricate on the course. Tim Gavrich/GolfPass
Hanse & Wagner’s keen green-craft is on full display at High Grove, mixing concave and convex external features with relatively high-relief systems of internal ridges, humps and tiers. Semi-blind or otherwise perilous approaches are typically given some grace in the form of helpful punchbowl-like backstops like at the par-3 17th, where I watched with delight as one of my playing partners hit an ingenious recovery from apparent doom behind the green. His ball navigated one of these features at the perfect angle and pace, settling back within a few feet of the cup. Opportunities for thrilling recoveries like this add immeasurably to a golfer’s desire to play a course over and over.
Overall, the course reminds at times of The Park West Palm, whose sandy site is a canvas that shows off the considerable shaping skills of Hanse & Wagner’s team of “Cavemen.” It also reminds at times of their Fields Ranch East course at PGA Frisco, whose interior ridges provide routing catnip and visual drama. But High Grove Golf Club’s elite topography, granting rare miles-long views of interior Florida, gives it a unique sense of place that will inevitably create loyal members and grateful guests. Time will tell how magazine panels assess it, but over time it should have top-10 upside in a state whose upper tiers of courses are more competitive than ever.
Aerial views of High Grove show off its exquisite topography and Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner’s design. Courtesy of High Grove Golf Club