Innisbrook’s famous Copperhead Course (Image: Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club)
Florida’s venerable Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club, home of the PGA Tour’s Tampa Bay Championship, is offering stay-and-play deals from as little as $149 per day. Based on double occupancy, the Classic Golf Package includes one round of golf daily, advance tee times, and unlimited use of the resort’s practice and fitness facilities. At least one round is guaranteed on the Copperhead Course, the headliner of the 900-acre property’s four layouts.
Innisbrook’s purchase in 2007 by black entrepreneur Sheila C. Johnson made headlines in a state where segregation was once the law and golf a lily-white game.
Since then, Johnson, the co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, has shepherded the resort near Tampa through a $30-million rejuvenation. First up was a major reworking of the treacherously difficult Island Course, featuring such aptly named holes as Uphill Intimidation, Trapped and High Anxiety.
But Innisbrook’s undeniable star is the Copperhead Course, one of the PGA Tour’s most popular venues since 1977. Designed by Lawrence Packard, Copperhead climbs and dips through rolling terrain, one memorable hole after another carved through tall pines, cypress swamps and citrus groves.
Not far from Copperhead’s 12th hole is the new 20,000-square-foot Indaba Spa. And across Mill Ridge Road from the 14th hole is a grandly expanded clubhouse that serves as a central gathering space.
