Tarpon Woods Golf Club, Palm Harbor, FL

I'll preface my review by saying I understand that summer is "off-season" at a lot of golf courses here which means lower revenues and less money for upkeep. Our "home" course is in Englewood, FL, [Oyster Creek] and we decided to give Tarpon Woods a go while visiting in the area. My younger brother and I had played it many times decades ago and thought we would see how it was.

Having said that, this is a decent course in a fairly heavily wooded housing subdivision. The houses are not overly close to the course. We arrived early for our tee time in order to warm up on the range. My first surprise was that the greens fees were much lower than the posted prices when I booked the tee time on line. On line the price said $24.95, but our total for our threesome, with a medium bucket of balls, came to just under $55. I think it probably worked out to $14.95 a head. More on this later.

The range is roomy and close to the clubhouse and #1 & #10 tees. On a down note, the range mats do not have tees of any kind, they are made of some kind of densely woven material that I had never seen before. If you worked at it you could almost make a tee penetrate far enough to stand up, otherwise you had to tee up out in front of the mats, which appeared to be what people had done. Next we tried some putting practice and discovered the holes on the putting green were flag-less; this was about 7:30 and they hadn't put them out yet. Not a big deal. Headed for the #1 with a stop in the clubhouse; pretty standard at courses we play to have ice and water, with cups and lids, available for golfers to take out. Didn't have any; the food & drink concession is a Beef O'Brady's and they weren't set up for the ice-water routine. Okay, went on to the #1.

Course is very nicely wooded with just the right amount of water hazards, ponds, and traps; really no ultra-challenging shots, which is fine with us. Lots of doglegs right, which plays to my playing.

Tee boxes, fairways, rough, and greens: Many of the tee boxes needed mowing, the fairways have a variety of grass and vegetation growing on them as do the greens. The rough had been mowed recently and there was a large quantity of new-mown grass in clumps along the fairway edges in some places. Many of the greens were patchwork quilts of repaired areas and even the portions of the greens that weren't under repair were bumpy. In addition, there was a second variety of grass growing in clumps on the greens besides the primary type. Putting was interesting to say the least.
Got about halfway through the front nine and spotted a restroom with a drink machine and thought we would get a drink; nope, unplugged.
Otherwise the round was pretty uneventful. Overall I give the course a "3", but this is somewhat mainly because of the reduced price; had we paid $24.95 each I would have been very unhappy and would have rated it a "2". Has the potential to be a very nice course, but the greens-keeper has his work cut out.

Overall we pretty much echo the remarks of the other review dated Monday, June 01, 2009; this being over three years ago we were hoping there had been some improvement. We will probably not play again absent some proof of better conditions.

Side note: Having trouble with the ratings stars, so may not show properly.