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Golf

Hernando County courses get nationwide recognition

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published May 9, 2006

Two Hernando County golf courses are getting some big-time pub this month in Golf Digest .

Ron Whitten, the national magazine's architecture editor, played five courses in five days earlier this year during a trip from Tampa to Jacksonville in which he sought the best-bang-for-the-buck courses in Florida. His stops included The Dunes Golfers Club north of Weeki Wachee and the Sherman Hills Golf Club in Brooksville.

Both courses are experiencing a boost in business from golfers from Tampa, St. Petersburg and Orlando who saw the story.

"It was a good article," Sherman Hills head pro Reggie Ridlon said. "It was good for us."

"Every little bit helps," said Jim Cocchi, the PGA professional at The Dunes, "and I know we've had some players because of it."

World Woods, the renowned club on the northern Hernando border, was honored by the magazine a couple of years ago as one of just 16 "five-star" courses in the country. The state is chock-full of some of the best golf courses anywhere, of course, but Whitten's goal on this latest trip was to play some of the lesser known courses in "the central highlands of Florida," he said, "the state's hill country of horse ranches and cattle farms. That's the real Florida ... "

"We always go for the biggest and the best," Whitten said last week via cell phone from Medinah, Ill., where he was doing some reporting for a story on this summer's PGA Championship. "But there's a lot of good, quality stuff farther down the list."

He believes the course's ratings from Golf Digest readers - three stars for The Dunes, 31/2 stars for Sherman Hills - are too low.

On the Dunes, he wrote: "The Dunes flows naturally across pine-covered sand dunes, with only teaspoons of earth moved to form knobs and bunkers. The greens emerge subtly from the landscape, several backdropped by hillside sand scars and blowouts.

"Instead of traditional rough, there's pine straw scattered over a sandy base, as you'd find in North Carolina, and it didn't take long for me to conclude that The Dunes is Florida's version of Pinehurst No.2."

On Sherman Hills: "Sherman's front nine was artfully carved from pastureland, accented by long waste areas of native sand and huge landscaped mounds that screen out I-75 along the sixth and seventh holes. The back nine plays through several oak groves, with an umbrella-shape oak in the 11th fairway and several more specimens framing the 17th green.

"Sherman Hills finishes with a flourish, a 594-yard hole that plays over a man-made hill, then down to a peninsula green surrounded by a pond."

--Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified May 9, 2006, 00:41:15]