LAKE POWELL, Fla. — Davis Love III is doing one of his least favorite things in Northwest Florida, but talking about his most favorite.
Love has done just about everything in golf, from winning 21 times on the PGA Tour and earning a lifetime exemption to winning a major championship win to Ryder Cup success to Ryder Cup captaincies to World Golf Hall of Fame induction.
But on a sunny spring Florida morning, Love is talking about his new course in Northwest Florida as part of the WaterSound Club, named fittingly enough “The Third.”
It’s the third course on this booming hotel and golf property, which also has layouts by Tom Fazio and Greg Norman and assorted luxury lodging.
Working with and designing courses anywhere for his company is a joy. Talking to media and members about it? Not so much.
“Well, yeah, I really enjoy this, but not the grand openings or the media or the sitting down and talking to the members side of it,” Love says. “I like the actual building of the golf courses. So I like being out there and doing it and watching it and getting my hands dirty, getting my shoes dirty. I like that part of it.”
But today is lunch at the clubhouse, playing with members on the new course and talking to the media about it. That’s part of the job, but not what he is most passionate about.
“Well, I enjoy being outside, you know, anything where it’s hunting or fishing or now playing with heavy equipment and building golf courses,” Love explains.
“Being part of a team, you know, we work with some great builders, I work with some great owners and you know, like the team here at WaterSound, they’re friends of ours first, and then it was fun to join with them and build something and then have the members enjoy it.”
Love and his brother/former caddie Mark founded a design company in 1994 and have built golf courses all over the Southeast and Mexico, and while a recent heart operation held Davis back for a bit, the design business continued.
“Well, we brag that we’re on-site 100-plus days of a project,” Love said. “I learned from Ben [Crenshaw], from Pete Dye, that you have to be on-site and you can’t just slap your name on stuff. So that’s why we didn’t do a whole lot when I was playing, and now that I’m not playing as much, we’re building a lot more.”
The Third also shows his maturity as a designer. Norman and Fazio have already created well-received courses here, so the challenge for Love and his team was not to do what they did, but to do something different.
Massive property developer St. Joe Company provided a large piece of untouched land about a half-mile from the Norman course and let Love use his creative ability to the finest.
“First, the fact it was basically a ‘core’ piece of property meant you see very little real estate on the golf course, a very secluded piece of property,“ he says.
“Second, the sandy soils and native vegetation and wetland areas allowed us to create a course which fits very naturally and appears it has been there a long time from the first day.”
Indeed, the feeling from the par-4 1st tee is a sense of space and vastness to unleash your driver on many of the holes and blast your tee shot into the great emptiness.
The back tees—called the Love tees—play 7,252 yards, but few will play from that far back, instead testing themselves from up closer and therefore flirting with water which comes into play on at least half of the holes.
All around is forest, making it appear that Love and his team came along and just hacked 18 holes out of dense woodlands ... which is basically what they did. Native birds fly out from several of the holes to give you a Pelican Brief vs. Championship Golf feel.
Of course, Love the innovator had to do something to keep golfers interested and he managed to do that when you arrive on the 1st tee box.
There is a single stick in the middle of the tee box. Not a tee marker on either side, but one single stick squarely in the middle of the teeing area.
The explanation is a golfer wanting to hit a hook or fade can stand on either side of the stick to hit their favorite shot.
Also Love’s humor comes out on the Third as well. Since the nines do not come back to the clubhouse, there is a large halfway house in the middle of the course. The name? The Love Shack, of course.
There is more than enough room for another course here, but that is for down the road. For now, Love wanted this layout to be big and wide and different. Consider it mission accomplished in every way.
“I like to feel I’m part of this,” he says. “So, yeah, when I get to the point where I can be here for a week or two at a time rather than two or three days at a time, I'm even happier.”
Digging in the dirt, just like how he used to dig for playing glory.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Davis Love III’s Design Maturity Revealed in Northwest Florida Namesake Course.
