Contemporary · Est. 1993
Southern Dunes Golf and Country Club
Haines City, Florida
Designed by Steve Smyers
History
Central Florida’s citrus country gave up a good deal of its acreage to golf in the 1990s, and Southern Dunes was among the more ambitious entries in that wave. The club opened in 1993 in Haines City, built as a daily-fee destination course aimed squarely at the region’s international golf tourism trade, which by then had made Polk County a regular stop for European and Canadian visitors seeking winter golf away from the more crowded Orlando corridor.
The design belonged to Steve Smyers, who at the time was building a reputation as one of the more cerebral architects of his generation, a Florida native who had studied under Joe Lee and Robert von Hagge before striking out with his own firm. At Southern Dunes, Smyers worked with sandy, rolling terrain unusual for the flatlands south of Orlando — remnants of ancient dune ridges that gave the property its name and gave Smyers something rare in the state: genuine elevation change to route through, rather than invent. The result was a course that opened to considerable notice in golf travel circles, praised for bringing a links-inflected sensibility to a market accustomed to flatter, more conventional resort layouts.
Southern Dunes has remained in operation as a public facility since its opening, continuing to serve the villa and vacation-home trade that grew up around Haines City and the greater Orlando-Kissimmee golf corridor through the following decades.
Playing notes
At 7,192 yards with a 140 slope, Southern Dunes will test you from the first tee, and the length alone means club selection off the tee matters as much as accuracy — this isn't a course where laying up repeatedly gets you around unscathed. Elevation changes are more pronounced than most Central Florida layouts, so expect uphill and downhill approaches that mess with your normal yardages, and bring extra water because the terrain adds real walking difficulty if you skip the cart. The Champion Dwarf greens run fast and true, but they'll expose sloppy speed control on putts, especially on anything with tiered movement. Wind off the open stretches can turn a mid-iron into a completely different shot mid-round, so pay attention to ball flight on the practice green before you start. Bunkering shows up in spots where mid-handicap players tend to bail out short, so plan your misses rather than just swinging away and hoping.
Tee boxes
| Tees | Yardage | Par | Slope | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Championship | 7,192 | 72 | 140 | 75 |