Jensen Beach Golf Club

Course condition was wet but manageable. Pace was slow. Overall course conditioning improved from my visit last year.

The day before the area had 3+ inches of rain. It was cart path only. The course was soft, but otherwise in good shape. The cart paths had major puddles on them. Due to the weather, there was light play; we finished in a little over 3 hours. We all had fun. The course is challenging.

Great pace of play, super friendly staff! Course was in ok condition but a little wet in spots. Good value for the money!

Layout is challenging but too many blind shots into unknown landing areas. The greens were very slow and inconsistent

Fairways and tee boxes were in just ok condition. First time on the course so there were some hazard surprises along the way. Might be better on a second trip. Pace of play was excellent, finished in less than four hours.

Course conditions were great. Course layout was very difficult from the blue tees. Many blind tee shots where trouble abounded in the landing areas. OB and lateral hazards that you can’t see from the tees. Quite a few double cross hazards on holes. One of the most challenging courses I’ve played in my 35 years of golf.

I loved the experience. The layout is awesome. The greens are pristine. There are rough patches around the fairways but navigable.

This is a challenging layout with marshland, traps, and water on nearly every hole. Some carries are 100 yards or more, especially from the long tees. The greens were large, excellent condition, fast and consistent. The tees and fairways were fine but not as plush as some private clubs. Bring your own distance device. The traps were well maintained although a few more rakes would help. The carts were first rate. I’ve played this course over a dozen times and it never disappoints. The staff are friendly and helpful. The restaurant has a menu with specials, and the bar has beer on tap. There’s no question I’ll be back

Course requires good shot placement. Holes are not overly long but instead fairly tight which requires accurate shots. Greens held the ball well, rolled true, and were fast.

January 2nd, middle of the "season", perfect weather, a Tom Fazio design and we never saw one other group on the course. But please do keep this a secret.

I take my white-and-blue Ping hat off to Florida golf course architects who get truly solid results. Given the limitations of a very flat landscape (especially along the coastal areas), given the wide swaths of wetlands, and given the often intermittent jungle-like vegetation, course designers must overcome real obstacles to making suitable tracks for golf. Contrast this to Connecticut and New England, where I’m from, and one can readily see, just driving around the hilly landscape, how much more ‘architect-friendly’ the same task is—assuming he or she is skilled—when building on rolling farmland or in the woodlands or within almost any suitable coastal area.

Eagle Marsh Golf Club, a scant five miles from the ocean, situated in the marshlands, and without much in the way of genuine hills (there are some modest elevation changes), is exactly one of those challenges for an architect. Tommy Fazio was certainly up to the task when he created this tough—and often formidable—track in 1997. Call me a bit provincial, but I do harbor a certain bias about Florida golf courses, in that their flatness—their biggest detraction—almost always excludes them from ‘greatness,’ admittedly a hard word to pin down when it comes to golf course design. Then again, there is World Woods, outside of Tampa, boasting two superb courses which I wouldn’t hesitate to classify as ‘great,’ ranking them with anything in this country that I’ve played or seen. But much of the greatness of World Woods is underpinned by its locale: it is in Florida hill country, and so exploits sizeable elevation changes. (Side note: Tommy Fazio is the nephew of the legendary architect Tom Fazio, who designed both World Woods courses, Pine Barrens and Rolling Oaks.) I will also say that I haven’t played any of the Streamsong Courses; nonetheless, just one look at their pictures tells me about all I need to know, especially in light of the massive upheavals of sand dunes depicted—some of them seemingly exploding upwards from the otherwise more gently rolling terrain. So while a sublime golfing landscape may be found, given patience, in Florida, such ‘findings’ are great exceptions to what we typically see in sites for traditional Florida courses.

While Mr. Fazio did an impressive job with what he was given, and the course has many fine points and several outstanding holes, its relatively flat landscape does limit, if only a shade, the overall level of excitement it generates for me. In other words, it’s still a pretty intense layout. Compensating for the lack of hills, Fazio incorporates enough humps, hollows, knobs and minor upslopes (mini-hills, if you will) appearing intermittently and scattered about, adding some real vigor. There is also some genuinely irregular movement, not bulldozed, in the sculpted fairways and contoured green complexes here. Clearly, Fazio, much like Pete Dye, is an architect who doesn’t mind getting down in the dirt to shape his holes. The bunkers and slopes and ridges and little swales that surround most of the greens, many of them on slight plateaus here, are expertly—even artfully—done, lending interest to the tasks of chipping and pitching to their fast and smooth surfaces. The bunkers, shaped with variety and half-sunken, often, into sculptural mounds, have a genuine Scottish or British feel, again relieving the overall flatness of the landscape. The tilted and irregular edges of many bunkers (there are over 80 in all) manage to belie the fact that they were wholly manmade; they ‘fit’ the landscape convincingly. Scattered bushes and trees, many of them mature pines—those that encroach or even stand on the fairways, both scrubby and tall—are often part of the action, and you may have to skirt or play under one or two of them over the course of your round. Then again, there is the ever-present and beautiful marshland that weaves in and out of the course. The golf holes here, then, never look boring, not in the least, and most of them are visual treats.

Fazio deserves kudos, too, for respecting the wetlands. The course routing, according to old news reports, was made to deliberately protect them, along with various wildlife habitats. Part of the fun of playing here is getting some up-close looks at the wet ground plants, including floating leaf plants, shrubs and trees, nearby, but also the marshland wildlife. I never got a glimpse of an eagle (apparently a solitary one flew over the course—at least, at one time) but we did see plenty of other creatures.

Eagle Marsh’s holes are laid out strategically, for the most part, but also thoughtfully and with more-than-adequate variety. The first, a par-five, is a prime example: its switchback fairway creates an angular, opening drive over the wetlands (setting the tone here that you’ll be challenged immediately) but with enough width in the landing zone for fairness. A trio of bunkers hugs the fairway’s left elbow to add further menace. The next leg of this switchback will have players calculating their odds for various options, the first of which is to lay-up somewhere safely in the twisting fairway, the second one, perhaps, trying to hit the reachable green, a green that terminates the hole’s third, shortest, and final leg. It’s pretty heady stuff for a first hole!

Another brilliant, strategic par-five is number eleven. Here, a lengthy water hazard intimidates down the entire left side of the tee shot’s landing zone, while the right side is guarded by an elongated pair of bunkers, themselves fronting the marsh. Just to complicate things a bit more, the periphery of this fairway meanders in serpentine fashion, making its limits that much harder to judge. The second shot gets even a bit rougher, because it’s decision time. Perhaps the prudent choice is to play this as a three-shotter, by which most golfers will hit it leftward. But another section of the marsh traverses the entire fairway, prompting two options: first, whether to hit safely short of it, leaving a longer approach as the third shot; or second, to cover some more yardage by hitting over the marsh and onto another fairway-segment, leaving a short pitch into the green. Then again, power hitters may play this hole entirely differently as a two-shotter, in which case they’ll have to bomb the second shot directly on the tightest line to the green; that is: over the marsh, a transverse bunker, and another short strip of fairway. I’ve seen few risk-reward holes of this caliber among all of my golfing travels. Great stuff!

I really could go on describing several other great holes here, but my advice, as you may have gathered already, is to play this course for yourself and enjoy its challenges. And those are indeed stout: the course’s stroke rating from the gold (longest) tees is 73.4 against a par of 72, and it tips out at over 6,900 yards; slopes at a daunting 139. The course’s five sets of tees will fit a wide range of players; novices may find this too frustrating, however. What is it that justifies the high slope/stroke ratings, though, particularly from the deeper sets of tees? It’s not just the aforementioned par-fives—add to them a tough group of par-threes which can quickly balloon your score if your shallower-faced clubs (hybrids, long-irons, or fairway-woods) aren’t clicking, or your short game isn’t compensating. From the golds, the shortest of these is 164 yards; the longest two, 236 and 227. And you’ll need similar accuracy to negotiate a group of long par 4’s—five of them ranging from 400 to 454 yards, most on the back nine—which also happens to carry various and sundry hazards that have a way of thwarting pars.

The last hole, a very clever par-4, deserves special mention for its originality and scope. The hole presents two different paths, each leading to two widely separated, duplex greens (player’s choice). From the forward tees, players will most often opt to play the shorter route, leading to a green some 310 yards from the tee; from the longer tees, the hole morphs into something of a monster. A second green, this one 454 yards distant and situated in front of the impressive clubhouse, concludes the second leg of this dogleg-right option. Having first played Eagle Marsh some 22 years ago with my uncle (we had a great day here!), I still recall being shocked, a bit, by the ingeniousness and quality of this hole. The second option, by the way, requires a forced carry of what will typically exceed 200 yards to get home. On this final approach, Architect Fazio has provided an unobstructed opening to the green, allowing for run-ups. Still, a pair of bunkers, right and left near greenside, await to prey on imprecise strikes. It’s nothing short of sensational, and I love playing it, even when imperfectly.

Is this project, then, what Houston would call ‘mission accomplished’ for Tommy Fazio, who took on the challenge of suitably molding and shaping what had been a flat, though very scenic, landscape? For many, the answer has been and is now an emphatic “Yes.” This is not quite World Woods, but you can’t help but admire the hard work, insight, and sheer brilliance that Tommy Fazio applied to develop Eagle Marsh into playable and inspiring golf holes. Yes, there are a few holes here verging on ordinary, but almost every course has such types. All of those are easily overshadowed by that which is outstanding. Eagle Marsh is an ideal test for straight hitters, and best for handicap levels ranging from higher-intermediate down to below scratch. As I played it in December, the overall conditions fell a bit short of great, but were still quite good enough. The greens putted smoothly and true, as well. There will always be finicky better players looking for ideal conditioning. For my money, though, this is a shoo-in, five-star golf course.

The course is fun and changing with wildlife and marshes for an enjoyable view. The staff could be friendlier, the staff i encountered seemed to not.enjoy thier job and realize they are in the customer service industry. A smile and "how is your day?" Is not that difficult. I do recommend this course.

Nice round of golf. Challenging but not too difficult course. Very few players on the course so it took less than 3,5 hours. We paid only 20$ per person which is a very good priice. Really enjoyed the round and the course. Will come back for sure!