In the business of golf, keeping up with the Joneses in South Florida comes at a cost. A very steep one.
In the ultra-affluent South Florida climes of Martin and Palm Beach counties, one of the few areas nationwide where new course construction is setting a blistering pace, playing catch-up can be even more costly.
With 36 holes designed by Jack Nicklaus in the 1980s, Bear Lakes Country Club is just minutes from downtown West Palm Beach and wedge shot from Interstate 95. The private club boasts a sophisticated membership and claims to have one of the lowest collective handicaps anywhere. With at least a dozen new high-end courses either recently opened or still under the shovel within an hour’s drive of Bear Lakes’ maintenance facility, the club is determined to maintain its lofty status as home to more golf courses than any county across the country.
To remain competitive with the other 160 courses in golf-crazy Palm Beach County, Bear Lakes is set to embark on restoration of its Links Course by Davis Love's Love Golf Design. The course was designed by Jack Nicklaus in 1987 as a traditional links design. Although Nicklaus lives in nearby North Palm Beach, Love's firm was chosen for its vision of what the next version of the Links Course will look like. Work on the project will begin next year.
“Here at Bear Lakes, we really are a players club,” said Mike Rienzi, a superintendent of 31 years, including the past four at Bear Lakes. “I'd bet a large sum of money that if we don't have the highest concentration of single-digit handicaps in the state of Florida, we're in the top two or three.”
The renovation will come on the heels of a recently completed practice facility, a soon-to-open sparkling new maintenance facility and a new equipment package.
A graduate of the Rutgers turf program and a staunch LSU football fan, Rienzi's passion and excitement for what the Links Course will become are obvious.
“It’s going to be a non-stop complete and total facelift of everything,” Rienzi said.
“Palm Beach County is almost like a state unto itself. Boca and South Palm Beach County are different than West Palm and Palm Beach Gardens, which are very different than Jupiter. We’re very uniquely positioned centrally. We're the closest right here to West Palm, and we’re right near the airport, so it’s a very exciting time for this club.”
Among the projects under Love Golf Design, the professional golfer’s eponymous architectural firm based in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, include developing a comprehensive master plan at Hazeltine National Golf Club in suburban Minneapolis and an ongoing restoration of Harbor Town in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
With our renovation, we plan to give Bear Lakes a course that is visually appealing, fun to play for members and guests, and one of the most highly regarded in the region.
The Links Course at Bear Lakes complements the Lakes Course, a 1984 Nicklaus Signature Design.
The club’s vision for a reinvented Links Course was a true Scottish design. The Love Design team of Davis Love III, brother Mark and lead architect Scot Sherman eventually concluded creating a true Scottish-style links course in South Florida would be a tall, if not impossible, mountain to summit.
“It's so difficult to recreate Scotland in West Palm Beach,” Rienzi said. “The grasses, the climate, it's just very difficult to do that.
“If you think about all those clubs; Oakmont, Shinnecock, Merion, Oak Hill, they all have their fescues. We can't grow fescue, but everyone and their brother has been trying to recreate fescue in the South forever.”
The Love group countered with a twist on links-style course they called an American links design that embraces non-links features like water that already exist on the property.
"My brother Mark, our lead architect Scot Sherman, and I are thrilled to be working with the team at Bear Lakes," Love Design founder Davis Love III said in a news release. "As our first course in Southeast Florida, we are excited to begin work at a club with such rich history and know that reimagining the Links course will be a unique and exciting project. With our renovation, we plan to give Bear Lakes a course that is visually appealing, fun to play for members and guests, and one of the most highly regarded in the region."
Rienzi has been busy studying architectural features and grasses since the club decided to reinvent the Links Course, including visits with Bear Lakes GM Chris Hull and director of golf Jimmy Gascoigne to such places like the National Golf Links of America, the 1911 Charles Blair Macdonald classic in Southampton, New York.
The management team of Hull, Rienzi and Gascoigne is as solid as the handicap index list hanging in the men’s locker room. The trio also worked together at Grand Harbor in Vero Beach before being reunited at Bear Lakes.
“So all three of us came together. It was a very unique situation,” Rienzi said. “Immediately Chris changed the way the club was run.”
And now they are going to change the way it looks and plays.
Here at Bear Lakes, we really are a players club. I'd bet a large sum of money that if we don't have the highest concentration of single-digit handicaps in the state of Florida, we're in the top two or three.
Rienzi’s research has taken him to another course in Florida to look at a bunker-renovation project, picking out grass at Green Acres Turf Farms in Estill, South Carolina and a day at Love Designs home turf in Georgia before returning to Long Island.
“I've become so immersed in Macdonald architecture,” Rienzi said. “I've absolutely become immersed in Macdonald. I feel like I know him. We’re going to hit three or four more Macdonald courses up there.”
Love’s experience in the game is legendary. A 21-time winner on the PGA Tour, including the 1997 PGA Championship, he captained the U.S. Ryder Cup teams in 2012 and 2016, the 2022 U.S. Presidents Cup squad and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2017. Brother Mark was his longtime Tour caddie.
“You know, those two guys have walked on just about every significant golf hole in the world,” Rienzi said.
“I think you can probably tell by the excitement in my voice. Oh, yeah. I am so excited about this project. So excited.”