The Village Green

The Biltmore Hotel golf course in 1926, the year of its opening, and opposite, the opulent golf course today.

The original plan for Coral Gables included two nine-hole golf courses and three 18-hole golf courses. In the end, two 18-hole courses were built for the Biltmore Hotel and only one nine-hole course was built for the public. The two Biltmore courses, the North Course and the South Course (separated by Blue Road) were designed by Donald Ross in 1924 and were officially opened with a 36-hole tournament on January 2, 1926.

In a 1921 Miami Herald interview, landscape architect and master city planner Frank Button

wrote: “The two golf courses … are bordered with native palms, pines, live oaks, wild figs, ferns and other tropical shrubbery that delight the nature lover and make ideal surroundings for golf… The ninehole course is well underway now and is 2,900 yards in length, with a 500-yard hole which will be a test for even the par golfer. The 18-hole course will have three holes of over 500 yards, and the entire course will be 5,574 yards, with good fairways, grass greens, and traps and hazards of the most modern kind.”

Following the September hurricane and subsequent collapse of the local economy, the South Course fell into disuse and was abandoned between 1936 and 1944, when the Biltmore Hotel sold the land for $50,000 to the newly formed Riviera Country Club. The abandoned South Course was redesigned and became the Riviera Golf Course. In 1993, golf course architect Brian Silva designed an exhaustive restoration and brought the course back to its original 1924 design and layout.

The North Course remained part of the Biltmore Hotel and maintained its original Donald Ross design. The strikingly beautiful course incorporates canals and towering banyan trees with views of the splendid hotel from nearly every hole. Unlike the Riviera, but like the Granada course, the Biltmore Golf Course is open to members of the public as well as to hotel guests. In 1991, a third 18-hole golf course was opened as part of the Deering Bay Yacht & Country Club at the southern tip of Coral Gables. Like the Riviera course, the Deering Bay course is a private, members-only club.

A Brief History of Golf Courses in Coral Gables

THE VILLAGE GREEN

Left: The country club on the Granada Golf Course was the city’s first public building.
Right: The country club today, following a full restoration after a bad fire in 1983

The Granada Golf Course is one of the city’s most unique and precious features. Designed by the “Golden Age” architecture team of William Langford and Theodore Moreau (who designed over 200 courses in their career), it was built in 1922 and first opened to the public on January 15, 1923, on what was once the Merrick family’s vegetable garden. Not only is it the oldest nine-hole golf course in Florida, it is also the best maintained, a veritable jewel. Owned by the city but operated by the Biltmore Hotel, the nine-hole, 36-par course is also part of the Coral Gables Golf and Country Club.

Unlike most developers who would tuck a golf course away behind luxury homes, Merrick made it a central feature of his new city, positioning it proudly between two curving streets that displayed his finest and most extravagant mansions, so that everybody could enjoy its beauty.

The residences that overlook the golf course are some of the finest in the city and include representative designs by such pioneering architects as H. George Fink, Martin Hampton, Kiehnel and Elliott, Phineas Paist, Walter DeGarmo, and John and Coulter Skinner. A majority of the homes reflect the Mediterranean architectural character and many of the original residents played an influential role in the developing city.

Not only was the site of the Granada Golf Course originally the heart of the Merrick family homestead, but even after George began developing his new city, this was the spot from which it grew. This is where Doc Dammers pitched his famous mule cart and conducted his legendary auctions; this is the spot from which George Merrick sold his dream.

The Biltmore is a beautiful and highly regarded public golf course and has been played by many professionals and celebrities from Babe Ruth to President Clinton and Tiger Woods. But in terms of its value and meaning to the city, nothing can compare to the Granada Golf Course. Bounded by North Greenway and South Greenway Drives, the Granada course sits in the very heart of the city, less than a five-minute walk from City Hall and the downtown business district. Granada Golf Course is Coral Gables’ Village Green. Every morning before work and every evening after work, young mothers pushing baby strollers, bare-chested joggers, Lycra-clad cyclists, inline skaters, and elderly couples with dogs on a leash, all walk, jog, and circle the 2.3-mile stretch of urban greenery. It’s where neighbors become friends and where friends meet up and exchange news.

For several decades, Burger Bob’s Diner on the Granada course was where all real Gables residents gathered to gossip and eat the “Best Chili in Town.” Sadly, following COVID and Bob’s subsequent retirement, the diner remained closed for two years until its recent grand re-opening under the name of The Birdie Bistro and the management of the much-loved Rita Tennyson and her beautiful family.

It is also a place where people play golf. From sunrise till sunset, seven days a week, even during the hot humid days of mid-summer, they are out there in pursuit of that elusive little white ball. Although there is a preponderance of retirees able to play golf during the working day, Granada’s regulars represent a typical cross section of Gables’ residents, male and female, young and old, including many city employees.

Unfortunately, young and old, residents and city employees alike are all exposed to sudden Florida downpours, with nowhere to shelter except beneath the trees, which is not a good idea in a thunderstorm. The beautiful 1940s rain shelters, complete with lightning rods, which once offered protection from the elements at each of the nine holes, were torn down a few years ago amidst vague talk of “modernizing.” The Historic Preservation Board, to say nothing of Granada’s neighbors, neighbors as well as rain-soaked golfers, have been demanding restoration of the original wooden shelters, but so far without success.

Left: Like a village green, Granada Golf Course lies at the heart of the city
Right: The author Patrick Alexander, walking among Granada’s banyan trees

There is one group of elderly Cuban retirees who, following the end of their morning game, gather under a Banyan tree to savor fine wine and eat French cheese. When not grumbling about the missing rain shelters, exchanging news about their latest medical ailments, or embellishing their golf scores, they complain about los banditos, the Castro brothers, who stole all their cattle and horse ranches and expropriated all their haciendas and sugar plantations. They call themselves “the Titans of Granada.”

During the summer months, the course is alive with the excited shouts and voices of school children receiving golf lessons, and during the winter months, we hear obscure French obscenities as the “snowbirds” from Quebec slice their shots into the trees.

Not only is this the final home of the errant golf ball, it is also the home of Virginia’s red foxes, descendants of the ones that Merrick released as part of the Biltmore fox hunts in the 1920s. More importantly, this is also the home of the endangered Florida Bonneted Bat. Although its body is only three inches in length, its wingspan exceeds two feet. Sadly, Granada Golf Course is the only place on the planet, other than Zoo Miami, where these elusive creatures are known to still exist.

Granada is more than just a golf course; with its natural beauty, its forgiving greens, and delightfully charming and professional staff, it is more than the village green, more even than the heart of the city. Granada Golf Course represents the very soul of Coral Gables.

This story is excerpted from the newly published “Coral Gables: The First Hundred Years” by Patrick Alexander.