Emerald Dunes Club

Opened in 1990 as a regular pay and play golf course, the Tom Fazio-designed Emerald Dunes layout quickly found favour with local and visiting golfers alike. Fifteen years after the course was first unveiled, a consortium including Frank Chirkinian, producer of PGA Tour events for CBS Sports, purchased the club and turned it into a private facility.

Changing hands yet again a short time after, the new owners decided to ask the original designer to undertake an ambitious multi-million dollar renovation program and this involved adding new championship tees and flash-faced bunkers, widening fairways on several holes, re-shaping or re-positioning a number of greens, totally reconfiguring a couple of holes and installing a new irrigation system.

Amazingly, two thousand mature palms and other trees were also planted around the perimeter of the property, screening the outside world from golfers and adding to the feeling of seclusion inside. That mammoth landscaping task was complemented by the replacement of old cart paths with crushed native coquina shell paths and hand-set pavers, a move which adds greatly to the natural look of the golfing environment.

In Golf Magazine’s Top 100 Courses You Can Play book by Brian McCallen, the author mentions the stand-out feature that catches everyone’s attention: “This is the ‘Super Dune,’ a hulking molehill studded with three tees, three greens, large boulders, an assortment of bunkers, lots of bushes, even a few waterfalls. Everything except emeralds. The flattened top of the 54-foot high ‘dune,’ one of the highest points in West Palm Beach, provides a panoramic view of 14 holes that fan out like spokes from a wheel.”