Halifax Plantation Golf Club, Ormond Beach, FL

I decided to make a tee time at the Halifax Plantation Golf Club not only because it was one of the least expensive golf courses in the area but because it was only about three miles away from our campground at Bulow Plantation RV Resort.  Handy, that.  As with most golf course nowadays, you can register your email at the Halifax Plantation Golf Club website to get emails with special rates and offers, but I chose to go with the standard winter time rate for Denny.  With tax, it cost just a tad over $38 for Denny to play eighteen holes of golf with a riding cart and there was no fee for me to ride along.  That's right, I'm still not able to play golf and this is yet another course that I would have loved to play.

Halifax Plantation Golf Course has an interesting layout--the two nines are each laid out in a circular pattern so you don't see other golfers or other fairways.  Looking at the map of the layout on the back of your scorecard, the golf course sort of looks like the front of a pair of eyeglasses; two round lenses with the "nose piece" being the clubhouse/pro shop/range.  This layout makes for a quiet round and a peaceful one because you feel like you're out there all by yourself.  For some reason (perhaps because it was a very chilly, breezy day) we didn't catch up to any other golfers until about the fourteenth hole, which is surprising for a Florida golf course.

As you can see by the photographs, the fairways are very wide, the greens are huge compared to most and the golf course is in very good condition.  There was a sprinkling of a strange dark gray sand on the greens, but that simply slowed the golf ball down a tad, much like a heavy dew.  There were very few ball marks on the greens and most golfers seemed to make use of the sand provided on the golf carts to fill in divot marks on the fairways.  Something I did find a bit surprising was the lack of water on any of the holes; only the par 3 thirteenth hole had a pond on either side of it.  Trees on the golf course were fairly widely spaced so you could shoot out from underneath them.  Basically it's a nice course for an easy round of golf.

There are five sets of tees; black, blue white, gold and red.  Yardage for the black tees is 7099 yards with a rating/slope of 74.0/130.  Blue tees' yardage is 6633 with a rating/slope of 71.9/126.  White tees' yardage is 6149 with the rating/slope of 69.4/122, the yellow tees' yardage is 5594 with a rating/slope of 66.7/115 and the red tees' yardage is 4888 with a rating/slope of 67.4/114.  Denny played with a pair of women who played off the yellow tees and had no difficulty playing bogey golf at that distance.  Of course, these gals tried to play golf every other day or so while they were visiting Florida so they weren't duffers to begin with.

Lining the tee boxes on many holes were large formations of coquina rock.  this one reminded me of a dragon's head.  The houses lining the fairways are set back at a distance, most have trees in front of them and they really don't factor into play at all unless you hit a truly errant shot.  And yes, Denny did manage to hit a roof or screened room on one shot.  I think it's mandatory for him on golf courses that are surrounded by homes.

The staff is friendly here, the prices are reasonable and the course is a fun one to play.  That's what a day of playing golf should be.