Apogee Golf Club (West Course)

The Gil Hanse design at Apogee Golf Club is the first course built at the South Florida mega club founded by Stephen Ross and Michael Pascucci. Located just across Kanner Highway from the Kyle Phillips-designed North Course and the Tommy Fazio and Mike Davis collaboration at the South Course, Apogee West does not make a striking visual impression as you proceed off I-95 onto Bridge Road. Hanse and longtime partner Jim Wagner are known for their minimalist approach, and this course fits into that category. The land is flat, really flat. It is the kind of property seen at places like Talking Stick or Chechessee Creek, where architecture does the heavy lifting. Contrary to the West Course, Fazio and Davis moved millions of cubic yards of dirt at the South Course to create a rollercoaster of elevation changes and mounds on a flat Florida site. Hanse and Wagner took the opposite route with minimal earth-shifting on a relatively unremarkable piece of land.

What Apogee West lacks in breathtaking, dramatic land, it makes up for in clever design. The course thrives on a few simple yet effective themes: varied greens, angles, and a healthy dose of blindness. None of this sounds thrilling on paper but it creates compelling golf. The greens are the standout feature of the course. There are sprawling greens with bold contours, and then for variety, a handful of tiny greens. The short par-4 fourth hole, for example, can’t be more than 2,000 square feet and will invite comparisons to the fifth hole at Boston Golf Club. The variation in size is critical. The large greens often look smaller than they are from the fairway, because Hanse and Wagner created subtle illusions that keep you on your toes. There’s a sense of deception built into the design: Small rises and mounds obscure approach views, and when you crest them, you’re met with large, complex greens that offer more challenge than first shown. This deception wouldn’t work nearly as well without a handful of actual small greens that make you consider that you’re staring down another one on the smaller side. It creates a great combination of skepticism, unease, and uncertainty for the player.

Will Apogee West ever be considered one of the most stunning golf courses in the world? No. But that was never going to be the case with this land. What Hanse and Wagner created here is a course that has clever architecture and a great deal of playability, which may be an endangered species in South Florida.

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