By Steve Eubanks
WINTER PARK, Florida - It’s not like Florida, at least not the scene you experience on the east side of Orlando where giant Ferris wheels and water slides act as landmarks along the always clogged I-4 corridor from downtown to Disney. Just six miles northwest of Amway Arena, about a 10-minute drive from the Citrus Bowl, the enclave of Winter Park might as well be in a different world. Old homes with big porches line brick streets. The main downtown thoroughfare, Park Avenue, with its sidewalk dining and art galleries, looks more like Westchester County, New York than the tourist capital of North America.
A two-car passenger train runs from Winter Park into downtown Orlando, and there are boat tours of the lakes that made this a winter respite for industrialists from the Northeast during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As you wander down the oak-lined paths, you notice what at first appears to be a park separating the business district from the charming old homes. It takes a moment to realize that it’s a golf course, quaint and unobtrusive, in what could be described as the middle of town.
The Winter Park Golf Course, commonly referred to as the Winter Park 9 or WP9, is on the National Registry of Historic Places having first opened in 1914, making it the second-oldest course in Florida. It’s flat and short (2,470 and a par 35) and wedged between the railroad tracks and a cluster of homes that look like Main Line Philadelphia. But when you play the course, you realize why Nick Faldo refers to it as “Winter Park National” and why every major golf publication unironically refers to it as a “hidden gem.”
This isn’t an accident. In 2016, the course underwent one of the most spectacular low-budget, high-detail renovations in the game. And in the process, city leaders created a model that can be transferred to municipal golf operations throughout the country.
“This all happened because people in the golf industry saw an opportunity,” said Steve Leary, a property management executive who was mayor of Winter Park a decade ago. “Before the work, it was referred to as the old man’s course in Winter Park. There had never been a renovation since it opened in 1914.”
Those “people in the golf industry” included some executives and talent from the Golf Channel. At the time, NBC Golf studios were just down the road off Sand Lake Drive. Winter Park was the place the well-heeled either lived or went to dinner a couple of times a week. Those people recognized what WP9 could become.
“At that time, we had set aside $700,000 in the Parks and Recreation budget to do some necessary upgrades – irrigation and that sort of thing,” Leary said. “But then this ad hoc group of insiders came in and said, ‘Hey, this course can be so much more if you’ll take some advice,’ which is something elected officials often have a hard time doing.”
The advice came in the way of an advisory committee that included architects, industry executives, tour players, and media members who had played all over the world.
“Thankfully, I had the sense to get out of the way,” Leary said. “I also got other people out of the way.”
After some back and forth, the advisory panel came back with a $1.2 million plan that included work by Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns, who had worked with Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw on Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia just before coming to Winter Park.
“I took that bid to the council and said, ‘Look, we can invest $700,000 on irrigation and a couple of other things and we’re still going to need to renovate the course in a couple of years, or we can spend $1.2 million and do it now and do it right,” Leary said.
The council chose to do it right, but that required getting politicians and city officials out of the way and letting the experts do their jobs.
“We had some people wonder why we were making that kind of expenditure, but it turned out to be a very wise investment as opposed to the $700,000 that we would have had to make anyway,” Leary said. “That was just going to be lipstick. By making the investment (in the full renovation), we knew that we could generate additional revenue.
“This is the most visible park in Winter Park with thousands of people driving or walking past it daily. It had to be done right but in keeping with the original 1914 theme.”
Leary made two more critical decisions that should serve as lessons to municipal operators everywhere.
First, he raised the rate two dollars, from $14 to $16. It’s a walking course. There are no carts.
“A couple of people called and came to meetings saying they couldn’t believe we were raising rates, and they were never coming back,” Leary said, echoing a familiar theme in municipal golf. “I told them that if two dollars was going to run them off given what we’d done, they’d probably be happier somewhere else.”
The second decision, one that caused heartburn within the council, was to hire a maintenance crew dedicated solely to the golf course. “We can’t have the same guys cutting the greens that mow the parks,” he told his city council and constituents. “So, we created a team dedicated to just that course. But we had to. It’s a different skill set. Today, that team takes pride in being part of the golf course crew.”
The results of the renovation and the decisions city planners made have garnered praise from every expert in the business. Today, you can find the WP9 logo as far away as Pebble Beach, California and Royal Porthcawl in Wales.
You will also see one of the most eclectic groups of players in the game on any given day. The Rollins College Women’s Golf Team (the most successful women’s program in NCAA history with 13 national championships and three members of the World Golf Hall of Fame) practices there regularly. Several groups come out in knickers and ties and play with hickory-shafted clubs. And if you show up on the first tee without a game, you might be paired with a land developer, a garbage truck driver and a member of the Federal Reserve Board.
“It’s an amazing mix,” Leary said. “You get a diverse group of people out there and people who are members at local country clubs who want to get in a quick nine. I was out there when there was a prince from a middle eastern country there. It’s fascinating the groups of people there. But that’s because it’s low-key and cool. It’s become a destination. We have a relationship with the Alfond Inn (a high-end boutique hotel) to book tee times. And there is a draw for the citizenry.”
It's also profitable.
“Today the course charges $30 and they have both a resident and non-resident membership, both of which are sold out with waiting lists,” Leary said. “We’re making money on a 9-hole muni without a driving range. And I have mayors and managers from towns in other states calling to come see what we did here. So, yeah, it’s a model for what can be done with municipal golf if you have the right plan in place.”