Course Comparisons / Florida

Shingle Creek Golf Club vs. Country Club of Orlando: The Orlando Choice

Orlando has two golf centuries living inside one city. Shingle Creek, at the Rosen resort on the convention corridor, opened in 2003 and was redesigned by the Arnold Palmer Design Company in 2016. The Country Club of Orlando was founded in 1911, counts Donald Ross among the hands that shaped it in the 1920s, and sits in town near downtown. One course sells a resort day to visitors. The other is a private club that has belonged to Orlando families since before there was a convention corridor. Choosing between them is choosing which Orlando you came for.

Shingle Creek's facts first. David Harman built the original in 2003. The 2016 redesign, led by Thad Layton of the Palmer company, added three entirely new holes and leaned into what the record calls Palmer style risk and reward par 5s and large greens. The course plays par 72 at 7,213 yards from the black tees. It is flat, water heavy Orlando parkland throughout, with water in play on 15 holes along the headwaters of the Everglades. It hosts collegiate and charity events, and access is resort and public: if you can book a room or a tee time, you can play it.

The 1911 club

The Country Club of Orlando's argument is age and authorship. Founded in 1911, among the city's oldest clubs, it began with Tom Bendelow and took design work from Donald Ross in the 1920s era. Ron Forse led restoration work completed in the late 2010s, which puts its recent history in the familiar pattern of classic clubs recovering their Golden Age bones. It is classic in town parkland near downtown, it has hosted Florida State Golf Association championships, and it is private. Costs sit in the mid to high estimate tier, and that phrasing comes from the record itself: the club does not publish figures, so an estimate tier is all anyone honest can give you.

On the golf, we give the classic the edge for the player who values shot making over scale. Ross era parkland in town, restored by a specialist, asks more questions per yard than a 7,213 yard resort course with water on 15 holes, where the question is usually the same one: do not hit it in the lake. Shingle Creek counters with the day. A resort round there is frictionless, the greens are large, the par 5s invite a hero shot, and a visiting golfer can actually get on. The Country Club of Orlando wins Tuesdays for its members and is invisible to everyone else. Both sit in our Orlando ranking and in the full Florida state ranking, separated less by quality than by who is allowed through the gate.

The verdict

For the visiting golfer, Shingle Creek, because a course you can play beats a course you can admire, and its redesigned par 5s will give you three genuine decisions a round. For the golfer with a member's invitation, the Country Club of Orlando, every time, because Ross and Bendelow bones in town, freshly restored, are the rarest thing in Florida golf. Orlando built its modern fame on welcoming everybody. Its best old golf still runs the other way, and this pairing is where those two Orlandos meet.

The redesign history deserves one more look, because it explains the courses' different relationships with time. Shingle Creek was redesigned thirteen years after it opened, with three new holes, because a resort course has to keep giving its operator something fresh to sell. The Country Club of Orlando was restored after a century, with Ron Forse recovering what Bendelow and Ross had put there, because a classic club's asset is the opposite of novelty: it is continuity, verified. One course changes to stay current. The other excavates to stay itself. Both strategies worked, which is why this comparison is closer than the founding dates suggest.

The setting splits the same way. Shingle Creek sits on the convention corridor, flat and water heavy, golf as part of a larger resort machine that runs on schedules and group bookings. The Country Club of Orlando sits near downtown, in town parkland, golf as part of a neighborhood. Play the resort course when Orlando is a trip. Join the argument about the club when Orlando is home.