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TwinEagles
With two great courses, new management, and healthy finances, this high-end club in Southwest Florida is serious about keeping dedicated golfers happy
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TWINEAGLES
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VERYBODY LOVES A COMEBACK STORY. Especially if it has a happy ending. And if it also features great golf courses, so much the better. There’s much to love about TwinEagles, the luxurious yet relaxed golf community minutes from the gulf-licked beaches of Naples, Florida. Born as the new millennium
began, TwinEagles had barely taken flight when the economic sky fell. Two years ago, the original pair of courses was receiving little play and even less maintenance. Homeowners and members
Today, TwinEagles is soaring. Under new ownership, The Ronto Group, is an experienced management team that understands golf as well as the business of golf. New houses are being built, lots are selling, and the courses aren’t just welcoming members, they are hosting both the LPGA and Champions Tours, making this the only club in the country to hold professional events annually from two different tours. The name may be TwinEagles, but the story sounds more like that of the proverbial phoenix. But rather than rising from ashes, TwinEagles spreads over 1,115 acres of wetlands and lakes, tall trees and lush landscape, scenic trails and abundant wildlife. Designated as an Audubon Signature Sanctuary, TwinEagles also earned a National Award for Excellence from the Urban Land Institute for planning and preservation.
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Preservation was job one when the new team took over. “There was only one thing here everybody loved,” says General Manager Dick McPhail. “That was the Talon Course, designed by Jack Nicklaus and his son Jackie. We rejuvenated the Talon, then developed another course—and the entire community around it—to the same high quality. We just ran with it.” The Talon didn’t require rebuilding, just tender loving care to return it to the top echelon of south Florida courses. One of the first collaborations of Nicklaus senior and junior, the Talon is as sharp as its name, stretching to nearly 7,200 yards from the Nicklaus tees and no less challenging from four other markers. A modern course in both design and temperament, the Talon offers wide fairways, but definitely plays favorites as to which areas lead to good scoring. Water threatens more
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were packing it in. The future looked bleak.
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Eagle Course: 3rd hole, 460 yards
than half the holes and there’s plenty of sand—testy greenside bunkers and expansive waste areas. Golfers should consult the GPS unit in every cart since many hazards are out of view, lurking beyond the gentle mounding of the fairways. The Talon has a rhythmic flow to its routing, mixing holes long and short and requiring precise ball-striking. One of the toughest holes on the front side is also its shortest, the par-three 5th: A long, narrow green pitches upward from front to back, is sandwiched between two deep bunkers, and is just as hard to hold coming out of greenside rough, making a miss short a smart option. The final stretch on the front is a daunting trio of par fours that plays into the prevailing wind while offering very different experiences. There’s little let-up on the back, which finishes with a fearsome foursome that has made its mark on the ACE Classic, one of the Champions Tour’s most popular events. The parfour 15th is reachable for many of the seniors, but the drive is entirely over water. Next comes a short par three over sand. Those holes are just a warm-up to 17, a big bending par five with water left of the green, and 18, a majestic par four, usually lined with fans, that tempts long hitters to shoot at a sliver of green extending into the right-side lake. While the Talon needed only a manicure, the new owners had to do some-
thing about an unloved second course. They brought in architect Steve Smyers to fix it up: $4 million later, they’d crafted an entirely new layout, called the Eagle, that’s been earning raves, including Best New U.S. Private Course of the Year honors from Golf Magazine, and a Design Excellence Award from the American Society of Golf Course Architects. The Eagle is an architectural history lesson, what McPhail calls “a traditional course built to suit modern equipment.” So there are “Smyers Tees” that boggle the mind at more than 7,600 yards: Not even the LPGA pros, who play their season-ending CME Group Titleholders event on the Eagle, dare go that far back. Yet no matter where one sticks a peg in the ground, the different angles and positioning of the five tee boxes—which change day to day—are critical to the enjoyment and challenge. Fairways are wide and in full view. As for the trouble, shots that miss the pushedup greens—homages to revered architects of the past such as Seth Raynor and Donald Ross—likely stay dry, finishing well short of the water that runs along nearly every hole. “You’ll find your ball and be happy—until you see your next shot,” says McPhail, cautioning that the follow-up could be a testy chip or pitch to an invisible putting surface that runs away toward sand, another steep incline, or the far side of a slick, sloping green.
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Talon Course: 8th hole, 463 yards
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TWINEAGLES
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The Talon has a rhythmic flow to its routing, mixing holes long and short and requiring precise ball-striking.
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Smyers likes to design “holes within holes,” offering options depending on course set-up and player skill. For example, the long par-five 2nd will play as a reachable twoshot hole one day and a hard-to-hit-and-hold three-shotter the next, the result of moving the tees and the hole position on a long, narrow green. Sometimes the smart line is away from the flag, using the slopes to funnel the ball close. Smyers has said “this course takes hundreds of rounds to understand,” another throwback to an era when golfers studied an architect’s secrets and tricks. Like at the 3rd hole, a mid-length par four that has no bunkers and ends on a triangular-shaped green that dictates where the tee shot should land by where the hole is cut. Or the par-five 5th, a “Reverse Redan” modeled after a hole Raynor built at the Country Club of Charleston, with a huge green that arcs like a windshield wiper and can be as hard to hold as a pane of glass. The Eagle is a living museum of classic design: squareedged and square greens; the “Lion’s Mouth” bunker guarding the 11th green; the Cape hole 13th; a Biarritz-style green with a deep trough; another Raynor favorite, the “thumbprint”
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hollow pressed into the 7th green; on and on, never musty or dated, always quirky and fun. It’s hard to walk off the Eagle without a smile, even if you catch one of the four big bunkers squeezing the dogleg-right 18th hole, the longest of the par fours. And even if the round finishes on a low note, start the next one on a high at the casual Chickee Bar across the water from the final green. TwinEagles has built the best around the courses, as well. There’s a huge practice area—expansive range, putting green, short-game area—and an on-site school led by one of the game’s top teachers, Dr. Jim Suttie, who has been recognized as PGA National Teacher of the Year and one of Golf Digest’s Top 25 Teachers in America. There’s also high quality in the club’s bottom line, the result of tying membership to home ownership. “If you own here, you’re a golf member here,” explains McPhail. “The home will always pay the dues so the club’s finances will always be strong.” And the best part, it’s only dues: there’s no initiation, no assessments, no fees. Great golf, smart management, and solid economics. TwinEagles is flying high. ■
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Eagle Course: 2nd hole, 605 yards
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TwinEagles is the only club in the country to hold two professional events from two different tours.
Talon Course: 1st hole, 427 yards
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LOCATION
Naples, Florida THE TALON
THE EAGLE
72 YARDAGE 7,193 YEAR FOUNDED 1999
71 7,634 YEAR FOUNDED 2012
PAR
PAR
YARDAGE
ARCHITECTS
ARCHITECTS
Jack Nicklaus Jack Nicklaus II
Steve Smyers Patrick Andrews
CONTACT
Talon Course: 16th hole, 162 yards
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