After my round at Streamsong I called a couple courses and ultimately found my way to the Lakewood Ranch area for another round of golf. Lakewood Ranch is a large master-planned community between Bradenton and Sarasota – both areas in Florida I still need to explore.

Legacy Golf Club was a last-minute pick but the course got my attention for a couple reasons. First, the greens were not being aerated for another couple weeks. Second, the course is an Arnold Palmer Signature Design and I usually enjoy a Palmer course! I found a 4pm tee time for $29 and got there a few minutes early, after about 45 minutes on the back roads from Streamsong.

After walking my morning round in the heat I was dragging physically and mentally by the time I got to Legacy. And unfortunately, this place needed my full attention, especially on the difficult (but memorable) back nine! Sadly, the lack of sharpness is just a byproduct of all the golfing and driving I do on my crazy adventures.

The first five holes at Legacy are what I would call typical Florida golf. The holes play through a group of houses, there is some water and overall the layout felt very average to this point. Then once I hit the 6th hole the design started to improve and became very interesting to play, with the back nine highlighting things.

The 6th and 8th holes are the best holes on the front nine. The 6th is one of the shorter par-4’s at Legacy (356 yards from where I played), however don’t be fooled by the yardage. When I played it there was a strong wind in my face. The hole is a slight dogleg left and has water to the left to catch tee shots and then you’ll have to carry more water to get to the green.

The 8th maxes out at 151 yards and has an island green. The green is large, but I still had a few nervous moments while my golf ball was in the air. Like you’ll find at other Palmer courses, there is a beach bunker where the sand just drips into the water – something that looks really good if you ask me.

The back nine continues the water theme with an island fairway on the 12th hole and the brutal par-3 13th. The 13th was 189 yards, all carry over the water and into a strong wind. Both the 12th and 13th border a large lake and are the signature holes at Legacy. All in all water comes into play on probably 14 or 15 holes, so there is a lot of lost ball trouble here. Thankfully most of the drop areas are on the “good” side of the hazard to limit the number of water balls.

I played the “2” tees which are one set of tees up from the tips. From there the course is 71.1/127/6594 and I have no idea how the rating and slope aren’t higher. There are many forced carries and with the constant 15-20 mph wind, Legacy turned out to be a beast. One thing I didn’t care for about the routing was that the entire middle section of the course played into the wind (the 6th through the 13th). Oh well.

For the price I paid ($29 to ride) Legacy was a great deal. The fairways and greens had good coverage. The ball sat up in the fairways and the greens were smooth, just slower than normal bermuda surfaces. Off the fairways and greens things were scruffy and the tee boxes were struggling. I’m not sure if many of the tee boxes never woke up from winter or what, but many were still a dead/dormant bermuda – they almost looked scalped for overseeding. Hopefully that gets sorted out.

The front nine didn’t impress me much, but the back nine saved my Legacy experience. Overall, Legacy wasn’t the destination course I thought it might be, however it has many good golf holes and is filled with those cool Palmer touches (beach bunkers, waste areas and rocky green surrounds for example). If you are in the area and don’t mind losing some golf balls then Legacy is worth a look.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):