# Sandhill Crane Golf Club vs. Old Marsh Golf Club: The Palm Beach Gardens Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/sandhill-crane-golf-club-vs-old-marsh-golf-club/

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Course Comparisons / Florida


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Palm Beach Gardens gives a golfer the cleanest access argument in Florida golf. On one side, a municipal course anyone can book, routed through nature preserve land. On the other, a private Pete Dye built into a marshland preserve in 1987, behind a gate. Same town, same flat Florida ground, same water everywhere. The golf, and the day, could hardly be more different.

Start with what each course is. Sandhill Crane is the city's course, formerly the Eastpointe West era site, rebranded under its current name, with a $2.5 million redesign by Dusenberry Design in 2013. It plays par 72 at 6,504 yards from the longest tees. In 2023 the site added The Nest, an 18 hole par 54 course by Nicklaus Design, which quietly makes Sandhill Crane one of the better practice and short game propositions in the county: a full course and a proper par 3 layout on one municipal property.

Old Marsh is Pete Dye from 1987, par 72 at 7,039 yards from the Tour tees, built in marshland preserve with Dye's water and bulkhead style throughout. It hosted the 1992 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur. Bulkheads are the tell. Where Sandhill Crane's water edges are natural preserve, Old Marsh's water is framed, vertical and immediate, the Dye signature that turns a six foot miss into a lost ball and a penalty.

## The golf

Old Marsh wins on examination, and it is not especially close. Five hundred extra yards, a USGA championship on the record, and Dye's hazard framing make it the harder, more complete test. Shots at Old Marsh carry consequences that Sandhill Crane, at 6,504 yards through preserve land, does not impose as often. Good players know the difference by the third hole.

Sandhill Crane wins the argument Dye cannot enter: the golf is good enough, and you can actually play it. The 2013 Dusenberry redesign freshened a municipal course that could easily have been left to fade, and the preserve routing gives it a sense of place that many Florida munis, hemmed in by housing, never get. Add The Nest for a second loop or an evening nine that becomes eighteen short holes, and the facility serves more kinds of golf day than the private club attempts to. See how both sit in [our Palm Beach Gardens ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-palm-beach-gardens-fl/) for the full local picture.

## The day, and the money

A day at Old Marsh is the private club day in full: quiet, immaculate, unhurried, with marsh views and the particular calm of a course that never has to monetize a Tuesday. A day at Sandhill Crane is public golf done right, busier, more democratic, with beginners and good players sharing the preserve. Neither day is a lesser version of the other. They are different products, and pretending the municipal round is a budget copy of the private one undersells what the city built.

On value there is no contest, and honesty requires saying so. Municipal access against a private club whose costs sit in the highest estimate tier, unpublished and invitation driven. Our [Florida state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-florida/) scores the golf first, which favors Old Marsh, but value and access are part of the rubric too, which is why this pairing stays interesting instead of becoming a coronation.

## The verdict

Old Marsh is the better course. Take the invitation every time it comes, because Dye in a marsh, maintained privately and tested by a USGA field, is the stronger golf by every architectural measure we use. But the golfer who should pick Sandhill Crane anyway is almost every golfer, almost every week: the resident who plays twice a month, the visitor without a member in the family, the parent putting a junior on The Nest after school. A great course you cannot play is a rumor. Sandhill Crane is a tee time. In Palm Beach Gardens, the rumor wins the ranking and the tee time wins the calendar, and a healthy golf town needs both to be true at once.

One practical note for the visitor pricing this choice out. Sandhill Crane's municipal structure means the comparison can actually be tested: play the city course in the morning, walk The Nest's par 3 holes in the late light, and save the Old Marsh ambition for the day an invitation materializes. Palm Beach Gardens rewards that patience. The preserve land, the redesigned greens and the short course add up to a full golf day at a public price, a combination Florida's private coastline rarely allows.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.