BallenIsles Country Club - East Course

This is the first time I've played at Ballen Isles, and I had the opportunity to play the East Course through a SFPGA Outing. From the moment you walk on to the facilities, you can tell that this place is special. I would say it's a step well above PGA National. The driving range and putting practice area were top notch. The East Course is a beautiful Jack Nicklaus design, peppered with challenges but also with a few holes that give you a chance to score. I played from the Silver Tees, although they showed as 6,400 yards on the card, they seemed a heck of a lot longer to me, maybe it was the wet and windy conditions. There is a lot of water throughout the course with quite a few holes with difficult forced carries. The greens are super undulated and well protected by bunkers. You have to be on your A-game to get greens in regulation. The course conditions were great, except for the greens which were recently punched and in some instances there wasn't any grass on them except well rolled sand. The greens to me were pretty disappointing. I woul hate to be a member and have to pay such steep membership fees to have those kinds of greens. But, with a little TLC the greens keepers can bring them back to life. Despite the one negative mark, I thought Ballen Isles was out of this world, and I would love the chance to play here again, especially to try out the other two courses.

When I last played the East Course at BallenIsles, in 2018, I came away remembering little except for the strong par-4 18th, which runs alongside the clubhouse. Little about it stood out from any number of Florida courses set amongst houses. It was competent but not much more than that.

In the wake of Nicklaus Design’s year-long renovation, it has taken a good-sized step forward, and is an excellent example of how important greens are to the memorability of a golf course. The new greens have a great deal more variety of shapes, sizes and contouring schemes than they ever had before, making things a lot more interesting than in previous iterations. The punchbowl 10th green is a wonderful set-piece, as is the putting surface at the drivable par-4 16th, which swoops down from a high left shelf onto a sunken lower-right section. The Nicklaus folks have certainly put their stamp on the course, and club members should enjoy the challenge of figuring out how best to tackle the hole locations on each new green.

Joe Lee was one of Florida's most prolific architects, leaving dozens of designs across the state through the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He collaborated with mentor Dick Wilson at BallenIsles (originally PGA National), and the East Course exhibits the hallmarks of the postwar school of design: runway-like tee boxes, straightforward challenges and well-bunkered greens. Few holes at the East Course will etch themselves forever in your memory, but your game will be thoroughly tested, and the long par-4 18th stands out with its elevated green on the far edge of a lagoon. Other solid tests include the shortish par-4 9th and the reachable par-5 12th.

A major renovation of this private course has made this the most interesting layout of the three 18 hole Ballenisles courses. The North course winds along beautiful lakes and natural preserves. You better have a good bunker game to play this course as sand traps are strategically placed in fairways and around every green. Still generous fairways and true greens make this a somewhat challenging but fair test of golf.