Esplanade Golf & Country Club at Lakewood Ranch

Nice overall course with a pretty easy layout. Pace of play was a bit slow though and there are a few back nine greens that need some maintenance. A pretty forgiving course with a few water challenges. You can get some deep drives in with nice mix of distance from the tees. Very friendly and helpful staff. Good course to work on some mechanics too, will return :)

NIce layout - great condition - pace of play was 4:15 - good for that course.

A nice "easy warmup" course - short for women - you may want to jump back to the Copper tees.

Great burger at the Bahama Bar afterwards

This was first time at this Lakewood course, extremely friendly staff, great facility to practice before the round, and course was in great shape.

Will look for future hot deals, since this course is almost twice the price of other deals in the area, but it is the winter season.

Probably the most playable course in the area and they must have sold a lot of memberships to the houses because it's always crowded and you really cant get on until much later in the day and the pace of play is slow. But it's a great course for a lousy golfers like myself

From the time I arrived everyone was exceptionally friendly and helpful. Course was in excellent shape and very playable.

Course was in excellent condition! Starter was very organized friendly!

Was super surprised to be told that I had to share a cart with a stranger during check in. And the shared cart seems to be applied to golfnow booking only. Most people had that their cart. The last time I played, I had my own cart. Won’t return until the pandemic is over. There are plenty other courses in the area that don’t force you to share cart wit stranger.

Very enjoyable. Greens in great condition .. smooth and fast. Very fair layout with lots of room to recover from missed shots

well maintained course with some interesting and picturesque holes. only negative is poor signage between holes and lots of distance from one to the next.

Extremely disappointed with Esplanade. From the start this was very poor experience. The staff were extremely rude, as were the members. The starter was not friendly or welcoming at all. Rather, he was commenting about my playing partners shirt not being tucked in...?

The course was fairly wet from the previous days rain and was cart path only. Completely understandable. However, packing in as many groups as possible made the pace of play absolutely terrible. We were waiting 15-20 minutes per shot. We politely called the course Marshall who told us “it is what it is..” It took us over 2.5 hours to play a nine.

The course was decent, it was a fair layout. Greens were very slick and the pin positions were in ridiculous locations. There was no need for them to be this challenging.

Overall there are many other courses I’ve played and enjoyed here in this area. Very doubtful I’ll return.

Course is good but not excellent. Green is getting bad and not doing good job on maintaining it.

I checked with golfnow regarding in sharing cart with strangers, they said no, it's not mandatory if cart fee is included.
However, I was forced to share a cart a couple minutes before tee time and divider isn't installed, we had to do that which wasn't installed properly.

Not friendly staffs!

Rude staff, particularly the starter. It seems to be a common issue for many Florida courses that unfortunately this course follows suit with. The starter acts as the face of your course and sets the tone for a golfers round, having rude/clueless staff is not the hallmark of a top tier course, take it from someone thats played across the country and the globe. Its hard to recommend or come back and play a course where your treated rudely. Having played Esplanade at Azario the previous day, I had positive expectation for the course, needless to say, this was a let down. As for the course, it was in good conditions, the green speed was good, the layout was unoriginal and posed little challenge from the tips. At the end of the day, for those who have chosen to read this, flip a coin, your odds of picking the outcome are about equal with whether you will have a positive experience. My recommendation would be to play Esplanade at Azario or another course, there are plenty of course at this price point within the area that offer more original layout, more beautiful layout, and while its hard to find, better staff. This course could simply fire their poor staff, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Course was in very good shape. Wide open layout that lets you hit the driver. Played in 3-1/2 hours as a twosome on Monday afternoon.