Featured Golf Trip: TPC Sawgrass

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It’s hard to put a finger on exactly where TPC Sawgrass sits in the pantheon of bucket list golf destinations.

It has the island-green 17th at Stadium, obviously, and it’s difficult to imagine many individual holes that golfers would like to play—talking American public golf here—more than that one. It’s just so fun to imagine yourself stepping up to that tee box and trying to find dry land. Throw in the rest of that full-throttle finishing stretch—the scoreable but sweat-inducing 16th, the tee shot at the last—and, yeah, most would probably love a shot at the Stadium course. It ranks 11th on the ​composite top 100​ public golf courses in America for a reason.

I’m just not sure TPC Sawgrass has cracked the code on enticing buddy trips.

A big part of the equation boils down to cost. You’ll pay between $775 and $875 for the pleasure of playing the Stadium Course—a price that, when we did a ​greens fee analysis​ last year, ranked it the second-most expensive tee time in America, behind only Shadow Creek’s utterly absurd $1,250 fee.

Tack on the second Pete Dye course on property, Dye’s Valley, which comes with its own $350 – $375 price tag, and you’re suddenly in the hole as much as $1,250 for two rounds of golf. You could head up to Sand Valley and play four bangers for ​around the same​—and there, you’d be treated to all the extras that come with a ​Dream Golf​ experience, side-quest golf and putting courses and decked out cabins, for example.

Ok, so what about ​stay-and-play​ in Ponte Vedra? Well, for two nights at the ​Sawgrass Marriott​ and a round at both courses, you’ll pay $1,732—about $500 beyond the greens fees, pricing your stay at around $250 a night. What you’re really paying for is the ability to book ahead of time, because without staying on property, you won’t be able to secure a tee time until 14 days out. (At ​current check​, over the next two weeks during what is surely one of the busiest times of the year, there are plenty of Dye’s Valley slots and a few weekday times at Stadium.)

All of this is not to deter you from going and experiencing TPC Sawgrass and the amazing and historic layout that is the Stadium Course. Valley, too, sound like a very worthy member of the Dye portfolio (the No Laying Up crew had nice things to say in a recent ​Jax vid​). But it sure would spice up the deal if the place steered into the golf trip experience of it all. Perhaps opened up a stay-and-play at a beach house, found more ways to tie-in nearby 12-holer ​The Yards​, or at least just lowered the damn prices.