Chrysler Championship

By his design, Copperhead is a fun challenge

Larry Packard, 92, has designed more than 300 golf courses. Copperhead is his all-time joy.

By RODNEY PAGE
Published October 29, 2005

PALM HARBOR - Larry Packard watched Alex Cejka's shot trickle down the undulating 18th green at Innisbrook's Copperhead Course on Friday and laughed. It's not a mocking kind of laugh. It's more of a satisfied laugh, as if Packard had something to do with Cejka's shot getting farther and farther from the hole.

Which, of course, he did.

Packard designed the Copperhead Course, which was completed in 1974. It has been a challenge to golfers ever since. It is spectator-friendly and is praised by players.

"I think it's one of the best courses we play out here," Tom Lehman said. "You have to hit it straight and the greens are fast. It's a challenge."

That is what Packard, 92, had in mind. He has designed nearly 325 golf courses, most of them in the United States. Aside from the Copperhead, he also designed the Island Course and the Highlands North and South courses on Innisbrook's property.

The Island Course was the first at Innisbrook, but Copperhead was meant to be the jewel. The thinking was to make a tournament-caliber course that gave fans plenty of viewing angles.

"My main objective for all these years was to make a golf course that is fun to play," Packard said. "I didn't want to design a course where you lose 10 balls and go home and kick the dog. I think that this course is a fun place to play."

Packard began his course design career in 1950 after graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Landscape Architecture. He worked at various non-golf related landscape design companies before hooking up with Robert Harris in Chicago in 1950.

Packard spent eight years working under Harris, learning to design and maintain golf courses. That was just after World War II. Americans were returning to leisure activities.

"There was no golf-course design degree back then," Packard said. "You had to get hands on experience at a golf course."

He eventually broke from Harris and started his own company with Brenton Wadsworth. Their first course design was a nine-hole track in a St. Louis suburb.

"The guy who wanted the course built asked me what else I designed and I told him none," Packard said. "He had no topographic map, so we made our own map over the weekend and the guy gave us the job."

Packard started rolling after that. Wadsworth eventually bought into the real estate that now is Innisbrook. He solicited Packard to design the courses.

Packard has not slowed down much since moving to Florida permanently nearly 15 years ago. Admittedly not much of a golfer, Packard manages to play two to three times per week and says he is a 36 handicap. At his best, he was a 25.

"But I can putt as well as these pros do," he said.

He was friends with famed designer Robert Trent Jones. He admires designer Pete Dye. He likes the work of designer/players Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, although he believes Nicklaus' courses are too tough. He has consulted on courses around the world.

But Copperhead ranks as one of his favorites. He lives in Innisbrook and takes pride in the fact that the best players in the world like his course.

"When people go to Scotland they always want to play St. Andrews," Packard said. "What I wanted was when people came to Florida, one of the courses they wanted to play was Copperhead.

"I still think it's first class all the way."

[Last modified October 29, 2005, 01:46:07]