5 0f 70 : Palm Cove Golf & Yacht Club, Palm City, Florida

Condos on Palm Cove Golf and Yacht Club

We have played some beautiful golf courses over the last two weeks, some quite wild, like Eagle Marsh and The Champions Club. Palm Cove is beautiful in a very different way, it is routed through a rich and unique development complex, quite well manicured, yet, they have managed to preserve the bird habitat such as marshes and ponds. Palm Cove was originally designed by Gary Player but the developper had issues with Player's original course and commissioned Chi Chi Roriguez and Richard Robbins to redesign the course as it stands today. Rodriguez owns a condo on the property and,  according to the attendant, he was playing at Palm Cove around Thansgiving time. He has since returned to Puerto Rico.

Tee shot over the marsh on #8

The course is short but by no means easy to play. It is what can be called a shotmaker's course which would be well suited to Chi Chi's game. Water comes into play on 16 of the 18 holes, at times so severely that drop zones have been provided such as on holes 1, 2 and 8. Well, on 8 it is due to a marsh over which we both managed to drive safely to post a par (for myself) and a bogey for Brenda, which was a good result on the longest par 3 on the course. We both finished the short front nine with  good scores which led to some expectations of doing well on that day. The longer back nine proved to be less forgiving.

Tee shot on the par 3 17th

That being said, it was still my best game so far as I am slowly seeing some improvement. I had played very little this last year, being too busy with renovations and a major move back to Edmonton. My swing is coming back and with it, more consistency. Some of my drives proved to be too long for this course and ended up in water that was not visible from the tee box. I still managed an 89 in spite of two water balls. Thanks to a neighbour who recommended  Sport Authority, we were able to purchase 6 dozen good balls for the price of one dozen  Titleist ProV1's. Hopefully this will last us for the next five weeks. Our customary match play ended up in my favour this time as I won the 16th hole to finish 4 up with 2 to play. Perhaps we shall consider a skins game for the next round. The last word goes again to Brenda with another picture from Palm Cove.