COURSE REVIEWS

Lost Key Golf Club is a little bit Pensacola and little bit Melbourne

By Derek Duncan,
Senior Writer

PERDIDO KEY, Fla. (Dec. 7, 2003) -- Grass. Sand-filled bunkers. Eighteen holes and 18 tees. Trees, water, wind.

There are wide variations in the presentation of these ingredients but until someone shocks the system and completely breaks away from 150 years of conformity, it seems like true originality in golf design is obsolete. It's all been done before.

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Most architects, unless staked with a $50 million budget, are better off eschewing attempts at innovation and submitting instead to the peculiarities of a given site, working with what's already there. If there's any money left over after grading, irrigation, drainage, and grassing they're free to enliven the design with some personalized shaping, but unless your name is Desmond Muirhead there's little to gain in trying to reinvent the wheel (and even Muirhead was just playing with shapes).

Perhaps great minds think alike, or perhaps classic combinations are beyond tweaking (i.e. Cabernet Sauvignon and a grilled, fatty cut of beef), but certain landforms are so suited to particular styles of design it doesn't make sense not to pair them.

At Lost Key Golf Club in Perdido Key, Fla., near the Alabama border, a forested and sandy site beckoned for something more classic than avant-garde. Arnold Palmer Golf Design responded by using the indigenous elements as keys to create an utterly appropriate course that's a little bit Pensacola and little bit Melbourne.

Pensacola

The property's 150 acres initially consisted of ambient wetlands and vegetation interspersed by swaths of powdery sand, the kind of inland terrain common throughout northwest Florida and the Gulf states.

"That's exactly what about 90 percent of the site was like," says Ed Seay, Senior Partner at Palmer Course Design referring to the tight acreage and imposing vegetation. "You have to have a compass and a chainsaw to get to it, but for the people who know that part of the Panhandle it is a very popular area because it's not that grown up yet."

Limited in their ability to alter the setting, the design team was forced to route the course around and between the restrictive wetlands. Five years later many players overlook the elegant succession of holes and cite the incessantly narrow playing corridors -- some so wiry they demand iron shots off the tee -- as Lost Key's most notorious attribute. It's a fact not lost on Seay.

"The golf course, to me, is a bit tougher than we wanted it to be," he says. "We were limited, in width, in what we could do in the fairways because of the environmental restrictions and the wetlands, [but] I think over the years the golf course will in fact subside into those wet areas and they (the holes) will become wider."

Melbourne

For others, Lost Key's character emanates from the sexy green complexes and bunkering. The low, whispy sand ridges that occur at intervals throughout sections of the second nine, similar to those near the Gulf of Mexico only a quarter mile to the south, help to give the course its coastal distinction.

"That area was just wonderful to work with because of the pure white sand. That's an old beach ridge sand dune. I wish the whole site had been that way," Seay recalls.

"When you get sand dunes like that it hands you the creative design you want. All you've got to do is nestle it in there. It's very much the ideal kind of situation you want because the bunkers take on the look of the dunes and that's what we were definitely trying to keep."

The green complexes take their cues from the appearance of the dunes even if they don't connect to them directly.

The irregular cuts, white sand, high flashed faces, and smoothly curved brows of the bunkers, along with the interjection of the cut nearly into the putting surface (such as at the par-5 first and the par-3 13th) and courageous green contours (particular the multitudinous par-3 second, par-4 third, and par-3 17th) that transitions smoothly from the fairway combine for a presentation reminiscent of the Sand Belt courses of Australia.

In fairness, other Sand Belt comparisons fall short. The dead flat land and lack of fairway width provides little option off the tee, and the prevalent wetlands and resistance to driver recovery makes Lost Key often more penal than strategic.

Seay is not particularly aware of an Australian theme in the bunkering, either. "I don't know that it's a theme as much as it is a natural look because of the dunes," he says. "If you look at the bunkers you see in Scotland and Ireland and England, particularly among the coastal areas, they don't look constructed. They're flashed up where the wind blows them up or they're blown out-the bunkers can actually change shape over a year.".

Final Thoughts

Lost Key Golf Club 625 Lost Key Drive Perdido Key, FL (850) 492-1300 Fast fact: Lost Key is a product of an environment that displays similarities to several familiar models.

Bunker inspirations aside, there's little quibbling that Lost Key is a product of an environment that displays similarities to several familiar models. For their part Seay and crew matched the signifiers with a faithful yet aggressive representational design. What was surrendered in width was compensated for in large, convulsive greens and flashed bunkering. Even the tight holes have a strong stylistic presence, witnessed in the intimate chapel-like settings of the par-4 10th and par-3 11th, prohibitively thin but lovely golf holes.

Note: WCI Communities of Southwest Florida purchased Lost Key in the fall of 2003, the company's first acquisition in the region. Tentative plans include completion of an aborted development surrounding the course and possibly a nearby high-rise resort or condominium structure.

Vitals

Opened: 1997
Architect: Arnold Palmer Course Design
Par: 36-36-72
Yardage: 4,936 to 6,810 yards, 4 sets of markers

Where To Stay and Eat

Lost Key is one of ten courses belonging to the Gulf Shores Golf Association (the only Florida venue), an organization promoting golf and leisure accommodations in the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach region of Alabama.

GSGA partners with 15,000 local resort and hotel rooms, many of which are steps away from the region's 32-miles of beachfront. The area is also home to some of the country's best fresh seafood, fishing, and outdoor activity. For information on package deals or accommodations for Lost Key and other GSGA courses such as Kiva Dunes, call (888) 815-1902 or click on www.golfgulfshores.com.

Any opinions expressed above are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the management. The information in this story was accurate at the time of publication. All contact information, directions and prices should be confirmed directly with the golf course or resort before making reservations and/or travel plans.