It’s not quite sixty miles from Florida’s Ponte Vedra Beach to the sleepy town of Palm Coast. The former is well-known in the golf world, in large part because of the so-called ‘Fifth Major,’ otherwise known as The Players, recently contested at TPC Sawgrass, and also due to its status as home base of the PGA Tour. The latter has a much lower profile. However there is a wonderful one-two course combination in Palm Coast at the Hammock Beach Resort. The Jack Nicklaus-designed Ocean Course and the Conservatory Course by Tom Watson are two of northern Florida’s finest public offerings. Grab a National Rental Car at Jacksonville International, and you’ll be at this lesser-known but highly desirable destination in little more than an hour. Or if Orlando’s airport makes for an easier connection, your National Rental Car will have you in Palm Coast in ninety minutes, just a shade under one hundred miles of easy highway driving.

There are more than three hundred rooms, suites and villas on site, and despite the proximity to places like Daytona or St. Augustine, the Hammock Beach Resort is entirely self-contained. There’s no need to leave the property, other than to visit the exceptional Conservatory Golf Course, about fifteen minutes away.  All the dining, imbibing, swimming, lounging and beaching options are close-at-hand, not to mention the comprehensive workout facility, spa, and meeting spaces. So is the Jack Nicklaus-designed Ocean Course, one of north Florida’s truly enjoyable resort golf experiences.

Some of the game’s most notable venues use the word ‘ocean’ in their names. These include Kiawah’s Ocean Course, Mexico’s Ocean Course at Cabo Del Sol and Bermuda’s Mid Ocean Club.

While Hammock Beach’s Ocean Course is a rung below those others, it’s still well worth a visit. It’s the only true oceanfront course to open in Florida in many decades, and this Nicklaus Signature design features six holes with views of the Atlantic, including a stellar par-4 finisher, nearly 470 yards, running parallel to the beach.

Lakes, dunes and forests pepper the layout, which tempts longer hitters with a mix of reachable, yet hazard-laden par-5s. Fairways are generous, and rightly so, as whipping winds off the nearby Atlantic can cause tee shots to drift well offline. Accolades the Ocean Course has received over time include “Top 100 Courses You Can Play” as bequeathed by Golf Magazine and a Silver Medal by Golf Magazine.

The ageless Tom Watson, a five-time British Open champion, is the architect of the resort’s second golf course. The Conservatory is located some ten miles off-site from the main resort property. This is one of the longest of the thousand-plus golf courses in the state, stretching to nearly 7,800 yards from the tips. This is an atypical Florida golf course, despite the seventy-five acres of manmade lakes, and the onsite waterfall which serves as a natural water treatment system. Befitting a player-turned-architect who found so much success on links golf courses, the Conservatory features massive and extremely undulating greens.

Capacious in scope and located on more than five hundred acres, 140 bunkers dot the landscape, an average of almost eight per hole. Millions of dollars were poured into lush landscaping, which includes nearly five hundred trees that were re-planted on the course. Live oaks, stone pines, cypress, crepe myrtle, magnolia, elm, holly, gum and maples abound, giving the course an indigenous feel, which is amplified by the dearth of housing on the property.

Appetites will be whetted after a foray to either of these golf gems, and there are excellent dining options at the resort. The Atlantic Grille’s menu has an emphasis on fresh seafood, stellar ocean views and a lively south Florida design. Delfinos specializes in rustic and regional Italian dishes done with a flair, served in an unpretentious manner. The Sushi Bar is as simple as its name, located above Delfinos, and offering mouthwatering varieties of temaki, sashimi and chirashi.

While in Palm Coast be sure to check out the European Village, an open-air dining-and-retail space with numerous lively options and a welcoming ambience. Dining highlights include Farley’s Irish Pub and the Lisbon Cafe for fine Mediterranean dining.

Arnold Palmer’s greatest hits as a course designer have come in some far-flung locales. These include Hawaii (Turtle Bay), Wyoming (Teton Pines), Minnesota (Deacon’s Lodge), and a double dip in Ireland (Tralee and the K Club).

However the course he’s most associated with is Bay Hill, in his adopted hometown of Orlando, Florida. This despite the fact that this robust test of golf was originally designed by Joe Lee.

The PGA TOUR is at Bay Hill this week, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Many of the world’s finest players will doubtlessly relish their time at Palmer’s fiefdom.

Here’s the backstory: In 1965, the same year that Walt Disney announced the purchase of over 27,000 acres of land nearby, where the Disney World Resort would soon emerge, Palmer played in (and won) a charity exhibition tournament at Bay Hill. It was love at first site; Palmer was quickly enamored with the property and told his wife that he wanted to own it. In 1970 he took a five-year lease with an option to buy, and took full ownership in 1975.

Although much has changed, expanded and improved in forty-plus years, the ethos of Bay Hill remains much the same. Despite his worldwide acclaim and celebrity, there is still plenty of western Pennsylvania in “the King,” and his homespun simplicity is present throughout this handsome property. In other words, nothing about the 70-room facility screams “resort.” The lodge is low slung, and everything is compact; the pool, tennis, gym and spa are just steps away, several fine dining establishments (and a handsome bar) are tucked just off the lobby, with the acclaimed course but a three minute walk from the front desk.

There’s nothing showy about the golf course either, it’s just a solid, challenging, championship track, and the roster of tournament winners is a fine testament to same. Tiger Woods has won about half the time he’s shown up, but Ernie Els has won at Bay Hill more than once, and Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Kenny Perry have all triumphed there in the last twenty years.

Water provides much of the rigor, the view from the third tee is the first indication that massive ponds are in prime position to wreak havoc with the scorecard. The third, sixth, eleventh, thirteenth and most famously, the eighteenth, all pose danger for either an errant tee ball or approach shot.

The golf course was redesigned in 2009, and one of the major modifications was the addition of closely mown areas around the greens to give players more options when missing the putting surfaces. It also allows mid or high handicap players to putt or bump-and-run rather than hit lofted shots around the greens. Furthermore, bunkers were moved further down the fairways, which has little effect on the modest drives hit by most amateurs and resort guests, but can wreak havoc with the tee box bombs delivered by the world’s finest golfers.

Just fifteen minutes down the road is the yin to Bay Hill’s rustic yang: The Waldorf-Astoria Golf Course. Despite the upscale polish of the ubiquitous hotel brand, despite the pampering of their well-heeled guests, (with $600 belts for sale in the pro shop, no less!) This lovely golf course can be an absolute beast. Proof: at a 2013 US Open Qualifier not a single player managed to break par.

The course sits on just 100 acres, compared to a typical course that sits on 150 acres. But it is so well screened, surrounded on three sides by Disney properties, and on the fourth side by Interstate-4, the course really seems much more remote than it is. Unlike a typical user-friendly resort property, the Waldorf Course has plenty of constricted fairways, bunkering both big-shouldered and bottomless, and mostly smaller greens.

There are as many good restaurants in Orlando as there are blades of grass on any Bay Hill tee box. But to toss out a single suggestion, MoonFish is a hip, visually arresting Asian-Fusion bistro with consistently fine food, featuring great seafood, sushi and steak. And the bonus is it’s not too far from Bay Hill, or for that matter, the Waldorf.

It’s little more than thirty miles in a National Rental Car from Jacksonville International Airport to one of the best one-two punches in the resort golf world: The famed TPC Sawgrass in the beach town of Ponte Vedra, Florida.

Everyone knows the Stadium Course, home of the infamous island green 17th, and the Players Championship. However also on premises is Dye’s Valley, considered by many to be among Florida’s top twenty layouts itself, no faint praise in a golf-saturated state with a thousand-something courses. However it can’t help but wither in the tremendous shadow of the iconic Stadium Course.  It’s the green-grass iteration of a Billy Ripken or Jim Belushi, doomed by comparison to its Hall-of-Fame sibling.

The Pete Dye-designed Stadium Course was envisioned to be “the most democratic course in the world,” according to management, testing all aspects of one’s game.  Short and long par-3s and par-4s, reachable and unreachable par-5s, holes bending both left and right, and no two consecutive holes heading in the same direction, so that a prevailing wind would always make holes play differently.

“Democratic” might have been the idea.  “Demonic” was the end result. How tough was Dye’s initial effort? The Tournament Players Championship was first conducted on the grounds in 1982, and featured names like Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Miller, Wadkins and Sutton–35 Majors won among them.  They all missed the cut.

The course was quickly softened after a chorus of complaints by the Tour elite, and Dye returned again to make some significant changes in 2006. During an eight-month, 60-million-dollar renovation, the fairways were scalped and a six-inch layer of fresh sand, the equivalent of sixteen football fields per fairway, was installed beneath the grass, the better to percolate and dry quickly after downpours.  Now it’s a firmer, faster golf course, where off-line shots bound more quickly toward thick rough, uneven lies, encroaching water, and other unpleasantness.

The truth of the matter is that the other eighteen at TPC Sawgrass, the far-less-in-demand Dye’s Valley Course, is an outstanding test of the game.  Although there are homes throughout, several road crossings, a bit of traffic noise and some slightly tarnished sightlines due to power lines, it remains eminently worthwhile.  None of these potential distractions can alter the fact that Dye’s Valley Course is full of testing tee shots, beautifully framed fairways, and difficult pin placements.  It’s a quality course, and if it existed as a stand-alone facility elsewhere in the state, or in Alabama or Georgia, people would flock to play it.

There are no yawners on the course, but the middle of the opening nine, the third through the seventh, is the most interesting sequence.  There are two potentially drivable par-4s for bazooka-types, and a “poor man’s island green par-3,” with water to the right and long and all sorts of shaggy mounding and bunkers, waiting to the left.  Perhaps the most solid hole on the course—the no-nonsense sixth, is a long par-4 stretching more than 460 yards from the tips, four-and-a-quarter for blue tee players.  A massive lagoon dominates the right side, with an equally sizeable waste bunker in the ideal landing zone.

Management tells the story of a certain group of repeat visitors to TPC Sawgrass.  For some twenty years, this foursome insisted on going round and round the Stadium Course exclusively.  Finally one year they deigned to check out Dye’s Valley Course. They were immediately smitten with the slightly gentler layout, making it part of their rotation going forward, and moaning about the fact they’d been missing its subtle pleasures due to their myopic focus on the Stadium Course.

Good choices abound outside the 36-hole facility when it comes to gustatory pleasures. The uniquely named Palm Valley Fish Camp serves fresh seafood within sight of the intracoastal waterway.  The restaurant is petite and can be noisy, so be warned. Poppy’s Italiano offers a quaint atmosphere with sizable portions of homemade Italian food. Barb and Wally’s Down South Barbecue, as the name implies, specializes in grilled meats.