Larsen-designed St. Johns Golf Club reopens

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Golf course architect Erik Larsen and St. Johns County reopened the St. Johns Golf Club in southern St. Johns County on Tuesday, Nov. 29.

A brief ceremony with remarks, a ribbon cutting and a nine-hole, shotgun start were scheduled to offer a first glimpse at the course, with full public play beginning on Wednesday, Nov. 30. 

Larsen, a Ponte Vedra Beach resident and former executive vice president of Arnold Palmer Golf Design Company, has been working on the St. Johns Golf Club project for seven years – from feasibility study to planning and finalization.

Larsen worked in concert with General Manager/Director of Golf Wes Tucker and his staff, St. Johns County, its Board of County Commissioners and Wadsworth Golf Construction Co. of Plainfield, Illinois. The St. Johns Golf Club work follows Larsen’s successful 2015 reinvention of the Atlantic Beach Country Club course and its infrastructure east of Jacksonville.

The St. Johns Golf Club is in Elkton amid the 550-home Cypress Lakes subdivision two miles west of Interstate 95 at State Road 207 and approximately 10 miles west of downtown St. Augustine.

St. Johns Golf Club was established as a county-owned facility in 1989. After weighing whether to sell the land for housing, the county opted in 2021 to approve funding on an $8 million renovation to develop an 18-hole course.

The county will use the excess 80 acres to build new fire and sheriff’s stations and establish to-be-determined amenities. 

Larsen and Tucker decided to use “traditional throwback” design principles. Features include wide fairways, Biarritz, Punchbowl and Redan green designs and square, low maintenance “coffin” bunkers throughout, tributes to architects C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor from the early 1900s.

An expansive short-game area and finishing and beginning holes and the practice area situated much closer to the clubhouse are also part of a completely new complex. 

St. Johns County-established greens fee rates range from $25 for afternoon walkers to $59.50 for out-of-state visitors.