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

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

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Course Comparisons / Florida


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Palm Beach Gardens contains the full American golf economy inside one city limit. On one side, Sandhill Crane Golf Club: a municipal course, routed through nature preserve land, owned by the public. On the other, Old Palm Golf Club: Raymond Floyd's private design, built as his home project, with a tour-player membership base and a practice facility most clubs could not justify. Same town, same weather, same flat Florida ground. Everything about how the two places answer the question of what golf is for runs in opposite directions.

## Sandhill Crane: the public argument

Sandhill Crane is the city's own course, rebranded from an earlier identity on the site (the Eastpointe West era) into something Palm Beach Gardens could point at with pride. The course plays par 72 at 6,504 yards from the longest tees, municipal golf at municipal intent: a round a resident can book without knowing anybody. A $2.5 million redesign by Dusenberry Design in 2013 refreshed the layout, and the routing runs through nature preserve land, which gives a city course an unusually quiet middle. No rooftops crowding the fairways, no backyard fences. Just preserve, water, and the occasional crane the place is named for.

Then the city did something clever. In 2023 it opened The Nest on the same site, an 18-hole par-54 course by Nicklaus Design. A par-3 course sounds like an amenity; in practice it changed what the facility is. Sandhill Crane is now a full golf campus where a beginner can play The Nest in ninety minutes and a serious player can play the big course, in the same parking lot, under the same public ownership. In [our Palm Beach Gardens ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-palm-beach-gardens-fl/), Sandhill Crane's case is access and ambition at the municipal level, and in the [Florida state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-florida/) it is part of the argument that Florida's public golf is better than its reputation.

The honest concession: 6,504 yards, municipal conditioning budgets, and public pace are real limits. A strong player will overpower stretches of it, and a Saturday round here will not move like a private club's Saturday round.

## Old Palm: the private argument

Old Palm opened in 2005, designed by Raymond Floyd, and it is the rare course that is genuinely its architect's home project. Floyd did not lend his name; the club is his, and the membership reflects it, with a base of tour players who practice and play here. The course plays par 72 at 7,401 yards, a full championship length, nearly 900 yards longer than Sandhill Crane, and it adds a wrinkle almost nobody else has: a 19th "bye" hole, a settle-the-bet hole built into the routing.

The practice argument may be stronger than the course argument. Old Palm's Golf Studio is a 33-acre facility with three full-length practice holes, a par 3, a par 4, and a par 5, built to mirror shots on the course. That is not a driving range. That is a second, smaller golf course devoted entirely to getting better, and for the tour players who base here it is the whole point. You do not join Old Palm for a round. You join it as a training address that also has a very good golf course attached.

The concession on this side: everything Old Palm offers sits behind a private gate at private Palm Beach Gardens money, in a town full of private gates. Estimates for clubs in this tier put initiation well into six figures, and Old Palm publishes nothing, so treat any number you hear as exactly that, an estimate. The public golfer driving past cannot buy a single round of it at any price.

## The verdict

On pure golf, Old Palm wins: longer, harder, maintained to a tour standard, with a practice facility that has no public equivalent in Florida. If a member invite or a membership decision is the question, and the money is already settled, take Old Palm.

But the Palm Beach Gardens golfer who actually faces this choice week to week should pick Sandhill Crane, and it is not a consolation prize. It is public, it runs through preserve land, it added a Nicklaus par-3 course in 2023, and it will take your tee time this week. Old Palm is the better golf course. Sandhill Crane is the better answer to the question most golfers in this town are actually asking, which is where they can play.

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