Best golf courses near Marco Island, FL

You might consider Naples National a test run for Calusa Pines. Built eight years earlier by the same team of architects, Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, on a site nine miles away, Naples National occupies a similar type of vegetated, swampy non-descript land requiring significant enhancement to make it work. Excavated lakes provided material to create topographical interest, sandscapes and alluring landscaping, just on a smaller scale than at Calusa Pines where a similar approach would create a large dune system 60 feet high that holes could run up and down. Though more modest in scale and elevation change, Naples National is just as unique. A thick layer of coral rock beneath the site that had to be pounded out for necessary irrigation was repurposed as colorful edging support for lakes and hazards, and also for an ongoing motif of rock walls that run along fairways, greens and bunkers.