When going through the interview process of selecting an architect, the Shell Bay Club ownership group asked one primary question: How would you create a course with an unlimited budget?
Greg Norman apparently came up with the best answer. The Great White Shark and his design team are doing the renovation work on what was the Diplomat Country Club in Hallandale Beach, FL. Norman’s selection also made sense in the fact he renovated the course in the early 1990s. The original course, designed by Red Lawrence and Joe Lee, opened in 1957.
What does an “unlimited’’ budget look like? For starters, the 150-acre property, which includes a 108-unit high-rise tower and 60 guest suites inside the clubhouse, will be ringed by a berm of palm trees and other vegetation that eventually will make it impossible to see from the outside roads. The only palm trees on the Shell Bay Club property, in fact, will be on the outside. Approximately 30 existing Banyan and Ficus trees dominate the course’s interior (think nearby Indian Creek) and several younger Banyan and Ficus trees were brought in to help line the fairways.
Ficus and Banyan Trees are signatures of Shell Bay Club
True to Norman’s Australian roots, Shell Bay’s greens complexes are each low-mowed for a variety of shot options. The greens will be TifEagle, with TifGrand in the approaches, TifTuf in the fairways and zoysia in the rough.
“The idea is to create contrast,’’ said Shell Bay Director of Golf David Armitage. “Once the course has matured, the contrast between the different grasses will really make it stand out.’’
In addition to the championship course, Norman designed a 900-yard, par-3 course that features a “Road Hole’’ pot bunker and “punch bowl’’ green.
The overall idea at Shell Bay is to create one of the more prestigious private club addresses in South Florida.
Beyond golf, The Residences at Shell Bay will feature a marina, spa, basketball courts, restaurants, swimming pool, barber shop, men’s and women’s locker rooms, business suites, batting cage, bowling alley, all-inclusive golf comfort station, halfway and gym.
The racquet facility will include pickle ball courts and grass, clay and Har-Tru tennis courts, giving Shell Bay one of the only clubs in the country to have at least one surface representing each Grand Slam surface.
The guest suites will be operated by Auberge, which adds a bit more luxury. Located between Fort Lauderdale to the north and Miami to the south. Shell Bay is the first “new’’ private golf community in South Florida in the past 25 years.
The ‘big’ course will play as long as 7,300 yards and feature double-green complexes, as well as man-made lakes, each lake carefully designed and maintained for erosion control.
The Club’s one-acre golf practice area will include a golf academy led by the St. Andrews, Scotland born Armitage, one of the game’s top teachers. Shell Bay also will have a robust caddie program.
Red’s Alley at Shell Bay Club
The only remnant of the original Lawrence/Lee design is the second hole, known as “Red’s Alley,’’
“I think we have created a much tougher golf course than I imagined when I first arrived,’’ Armitage said. “Chris Campbell (Norman’s lead architect) did a great job. A lot of it was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, like ‘Where can we make this lake and where can we fill in that lake?’’’
Armitage, who early in his career worked with legendary course architect Tom Doak, stopped his golf car near one of those lakes and waved his arm over the course back nine.
“Everything here was created,’’ he said. “This land wasn’t given to us to ‘see’ a golf hole. We had to create a golf hole and make it feel natural. We only had 44 acres where we could go above eight feel elevation.’’
In other words, the design team didn’t have land – or dirt – in which to create a lot of elevation changes.
“We blended in some subtle elevation changes,’’ Armitage said, ‘so it doesn’t feel as flat as some Florida golf courses. I actually gained a lot more respect for (course) architecture with this project. Some land is hard to screw up. But this land took a lot of brain power to create something.’’
What that brain power created is a South Florida beauty.
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