Orlando Golf - Course, Resort and Package Information

US Homes is making a major play in golf course developments, strengthening their portfolio with the November 2000 opening of Stoneybrook West Golf Club in Winter Garden to accompany the original Stoneybrook Golf Club on the east side of town. With these two clubs, the name Stoneybrook now becomes even more significant in the greater Orlando golf scene. Bracketing one of the strongest golf markets in the state, the two Stoneybrook courses offer very different styles of golf.

Winter Garden, FL - If Stoneybrook Golf Club (East) seems typically Floridian, Stoneybrook West is decidedly not. The first thing one notices driving toward the course is how level it all seems. While this is nothing unique in a state that specializes in flatness, this property seems unusually linear on the approach.

The land that was to become the championship length 7,101 yard Stoneybrook West was originally a citrus grove. The small town of Winter Garden, sits among this type of prime citrus property. Existing orchards can be seen to the west and south of the course, sometimes with the trees so overburden with fruit that oranges collect in heaps at their base. And while there are gentle hills and slopes nearby, they are basically absent on this stripped property.

Designing courses over flat terrain always ignites questions as to how the land should be treated and how the golf course can best be imbued with intrigue and variation where none exists intrinsically. Should earth be shoveled around to the point where there are at last hillocks and slope, clashing with the profile of the environment, or should the flatness be embraced and incorporated strategically into the design? Naturally there are differing schools of thought and multiple paths of execution to each.

The answer at Stoneybrook West is a type of middle ground, a blending of themes. Arthur Hills has designed here a desert-style course on the type of open, agricultural site common to the Midwest. It's evident that a tremendous amount of earth was relocated, but not to the point that the course seems overly artificial or manufactured.

Extra turf was deposited along the edges of fairways and around the greens to ostensibly create a sense of isolation on each hole, and the whole course seems "built up" above the land in this way. Yes, nothing silly or overly gimmicked has been done, just the creation of modern golf holes. In this sense Stoneybrook West is like desert golf—swaths of man-made green twisting around otherwise featureless land.

Like its brother course on the eastern side of Orlando, Stoneybrook West is owned and managed by US Home (along with a third Stoneybrook course in Estero, Florida). What homeowners and golfers alike will see here is a completely different type of golf, a course susceptible to the wind, that plays as fast and challenging as any in the area. As of now, the home construction hasn't really taken hold, so for those golfers averse to development, the best time to play the course is now through the fall.

The course opened for play in late November of 2000 and has been a critical success and a unique compliment to its immediate high-end neighbors Orange County National and The Golden Bear Club at Keene's Point. A large portion of the course's notoriety is due to the conditioning of its greens, seeded with a relatively new variety of bermudagrass called TifEagle (first used on golf greens in the South in 1996).