BLACKBOOK Hole no. 1 on Stream song Red, a 433m par four with a first tee shot over water. The course was once a mining site (but not the one you see above) on par THE MOST TALKED-ABOUT GOLF COURSE IN AMERICA Building golf courses is not an environmentally friendly practice. But Streamsong, outside Tampa, offers 36 uncanny holes laid over a defunct mine – and heralds the coming era of golf on reclaimed land. BY THOMAS DUNNE What would you call a luxury golf resort built in a post-industrial backwater? This was the challenge before focus groups as the Mosaic Company, the world’s largest supplier of phosphate- and potash-based crop nutrients (and one of Florida’s largest landowners), prepared to enter the golfand-hospitality business on the site of a defunct mine in the sticks 80 kilometres southeast of Tampa. They came up with the name Streamsong, which is one of those Altria-like appellations whose real-world connection between signifier and signified is tenuous at best. Mostly, it represents an effort to highlight a positive PR message – under state law, every acre Mosaic disturbs must be returned to nature, and there’s something to be said for taking an approach that adds jobs and tax revenue in rural Polk County. “Some people are concerned about mining,” said Richard Mack, the Mosaic executive who headed up the resort’s development. “We wanted to show what you can do with a piece of property if you’re creative.” Since its opening in January, Streamsong has been the most talkedabout new golf property in the United States. It may not be “the next Bandon Dunes,” [for the uninitiated, a highly regarded, David McLay Kidd-designed course in Oregon] as some have rushed to anoint it, but it’s hard to overstate the appeal of an easily reached winter destination that also offers top-shelf golf design – something that’s lacking in Florida, at least on the resort side. Architect Alberto Alfonso’s designs for the Clubhouse and 216-room Lodge (set to open this autumn) employ stone, cedar and floor-to-ceiling glass in what feels like a minimalist study in luxury – but FROM TOP: C. H. COLBY/CORBIS; LARRY LAMBRECHT 40 departures-international.com
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