Davis Love III helping design new Florida course

The St. Joe Company is constructing another Watersound Club golf course.

Watersound Club staff are working closely with Love Golf Design founders Davis Love III, Mark Love and Scot Sherman to bring the new course to life as an additional amenity for Watersound Club members. In homage to both the PGA great helping design the new golf course and the fact that it will be the third championship golf course in the Watersound Club collection, the new course will be named The Third.

The Third is designed to comfortably span about 300 acres just north of another Watersound Club golf course, Shark’s Tooth. The generous acreage allows the design team room to be imaginative in creating a layout that will please and challenge golfers of all skill levels.

Love Golf Design and Watersound Club teams selected an 18-hole, par 72 design with six sets of tees, allowing golfers to adjust the course distance to play from 4,900 yards to more than 7,600 yards on a firm, fast-playing course. The flexibility of play will offer accessibility for the casual golfer, and even the longest tour players will enjoy a challenge while hitting from the back tees.

The Third joins an impressive lineup of exclusive Watersound Club amenities including Shark’s Tooth and Camp Creek golf courses. It’s the latest of several Watersound Club projects launched in response to membership growth and strong demand for golf among members. Watersound Club membership has added more than 500 new members in 2023 and now welcomes approximately 3,100 members from 40 states.

“We’re blessed to have an amount of land and resources available that just can’t be found in many other places in the U.S.,” St. Joe hospitality SVP Patrick Murphy said. “We’re committed to using that to our advantage as we continue to add amenities for our Watersound Club members.”

Leading the Love Golf Design team is Davis Love III. He is perhaps best known as a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee who was twice picked to lead America’s Ryder Cup team. Just as impressive, though, are the 27 completed projects in Love Golf Design’s portfolio, including both new designs and renovations. Working to naturally incorporate the mix of upland vegetation and undisturbed wetland areas into the course layout offers an opportunity to top even those previous designs.

“After exploring the property on our first few visits, we found so many options it was hard to narrow the new course down to just 18 holes,” he said. “Lead architect Scot Sherman, Mark Love and I believe the variety of the site lends itself to building a course with a timeless character. We’re pleased to work with a routing that flows across white sandy dunes, with diverse native plant materials, along with beautiful pockets of old growth cypress and pine trees to frame the golf holes. We are thrilled with how the routing of the golf course is progressing at this point.”

Construction has already begun on The Third. The company anticipates the course will open for play in 2025.