Golf Huntington Hills Golf & Country Club

Polk County's Lakeland Florida
Part 1

by Anthony Scaggs

Hunting for Huntington Hills Golf and Country Club in Lakeland, Florida is worth the quest. According to the Huntington Hills’ General Manager, Tiger Woods was in the hunt for the Huntington Hills Golf and Country Club when he made a coffee commercial for an Asian Company on Huntington Hills’ driving range. She added, “It took 2 weeks to do a 30 second commercial”.

Lakeland, Florida’s Huntington Hills Golf and Country Club is an excellent golf course in Central Florida’s Polk County. Huntington Hills Golf Club is reasonably priced with a restaurant and a well appointed clubhouse, practice putting area plus a driving range lighted by floodlights. This Ron Garl designed course was built in 1992. Including the championship tees, there are six tee placements which effectively creates 6 different courses that allows the course to play from 5,000 plus yards and to nearly 7,000 yards. Excluding the championship tees, the rate and slope range from 68.4 to 72.6 and 109 to 127.

The layout and condition of Huntington Hills Golf and Country Club makes one feel as though theywere playing on an expensive Orlando resort golf course costing two to three times as much. The back tees, coupled with the large bunkers and complicated greens, make this course very challenging for golfers at all levels. Further challenges, to the golfers at all levels, are Garl’s linking of the tees to specific parts of the fairway. Instead of using one large fairway at which everyone aims, there are multiple landing areas on each hole that correspond to the various tee boxes. This result in giving the low, medium and high handicappers a course within a course, which allows golfers at all, levels to grow without having to move to an entirely different golf club. Combine this course design with the scenic lakes that lie throughout the Huntington Hills Golf and Country Club and influence play on at least 10 of the 18 holes, it can be quite intimidating. Fortunately, fairways are relatively wide and aesthetically defined with several different cuts of rough. Although trees and scrubs are seldom a factor in the largely open golf course, the plant life that is used is strategically located to further intimate the golfer and make course management an integral part of course play.

Click on selected photos for expanded view.

Images copryrighted CGA