By Erik Larsen | Founder & Owner, Larsen Golf
I had the privilege of working at the elbow of my hero, Arnold Palmer, for nearly 30 years at the Arnold Palmer Design Company. Every day, Arnold expelled some architectural wisdom which is always in the back of my head today as I plan a golf community or design a course.
“We are spending someone else’s money when we build this course. Let’s do our job with integrity. Build it well,” Arnold would say.
When there was a water feature near a green, Arnold always emphasized making it come into play: “Put the green right on the water, Erik.”
These are only a couple of “Arnoldisms” which helped formulate my tenants of building golf courses: 1. Proper function (unseen infrastructure such as drainage); 2. Interesting form (beauty, intrigue, strategy); and 3. Deliver the fun (memorable experience).
Two recent Larsen Golf projects near Jacksonville, Florida, have embodied these qualities, emphasizing keeping up your house
and adding some pizazz at a time when the National Golf Foundation estimates that 80 percent of course work nationally in the past five years has been renovations with a total investment of more than $9 billion.
The Atlantic Beach Country Club was a failing late 1950s-built private club which struggled with a water source and membership retention. The club, originally called Selva Marina Country Club, sold a portion of its property for homes to help fund rebuilding the club. The result was a “Best New Course” honor and hosting the Korn Ferry Tour Championship in 2017-18, with live Golf Channel coverage. Arnold’s grandson, Sam Saunders, christened the course with a first-round 59 in 2017. The success has carried on to today when the club is fine-tuning the course and clubhouse even further to suit its robust membership.
The latest project, the St. Johns Golf Club, is scheduled to open in late November. The St. Johns County-owned course was established in 1989 in the rural southern part of the county, operated as a 27-hole course for years despite poor conditioning and nine holes went fallow a decade ago. It was profitable but with diminishing returns. The future was murky as one of the nation’s fastest-growing counties continues to see extensive development moving closer to the course. More importantly, the land needed a drainage overhaul, both for the course and adjacent home sites.
After weighing whether to sell the land for housing, the county opted in 2021 to approve funding on an $8-million renovation to develop an 18-hole course, with the money drawn from recreation impact fees, a transportation trust fund, utility fund, bed tax and general fund, none of which affected county residents – like an investment in public recreational soccer or baseball complexes. Proper drainage will allow for better conditioning and course access, particularly during rainy Florida weather. The county is using the excess 80 acres to build much-needed new fire and sheriff’s stations and establish other to-be-determined amenities. With a history of 70,000 rounds annually a decade ago, we anticipate an increased interest in playing the course based on just the function and form being up to industry standards.
“It’s a wonderful amenity and the public has demonstrated that, with about 35 percent of the rounds coming from out of the county,” said Henry Dean, the chair of the St. Johns County Commission. “We were able to fund this not from the general ad valorem tax that affects homeowners, but to utilize the 7 million visitors per year that we see here. As a commissioner, I would be irresponsible to walk away from this golf course.”
Another element that Arnold emphasized was having a good time while working or playing hard.
At St. Johns, we truly took that to heart. Longtime General Manager Wes Tucker and I brainstormed how to bring that enjoyment to
this new course. Both of us liked historic architecture, particularly the work of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, with “coffin” bunkering and old-school green complexes such as a Biarritz, Redan and Punchbowl that invoke thoughts of courses in the UK or Northeastern U.S. We call this styling “traditional throwback,” and this work costs no more than any other architecture, probably even less. Additionally, we brought the course nearer to the revamped clubhouse, creating a social hub with a closer driving range, putting green, an expanded short-game area and holes 9, 10 and 18 reconstructed next to a back deck and restaurant/bar.
Another recent NGF newsflash this fall revealed that for the first time, the overall participant base for golf has topped 40 million Americans, with another first being that the non-traditional, off-course golfers are surpassing the green-grass total. So, there’s a tremendous demand for golf of all types.
We believe the St. Johns Golf Club marries the traditions of the game with the fun aspect in a financially prudent manner that has become such a credo for success. Arnold would approve of all these factors.