When Golf Digest named Vineyards Country Club's North Course one of the nation's best transformations this January, the club had already been through this before. A year earlier, Golf Inc. magazine gave the same course an honorable mention in its Best Renovation of the Year awards. Both times, Vineyards was the only club in Southwest Florida, public or private, to make the list.
Here is what most residents driving past the fairways on Vineyards Boulevard don't know: the project that earned those honors didn't start as a bid for national attention. It started because the greens were three decades old and no longer met USGA standards.
The Problem Under the Grass
By the early 2020s, both of the club's 18-hole courses, the South Course designed by Bill Amick and the North Course designed by Mark McCumber, were pushing 35 years old. The greens had accumulated more than three decades of organic layer, the buildup of thatch and decomposed material that thickens under a putting surface over time. Club officials said at the outset of the project that this layer needed to be removed entirely, not patched, because it was compromising both playability and the course's ability to drain properly during Naples' wet season.
That drainage problem is the detail easy to miss in a story that later became about awards. The renovation wasn't cosmetic. It was structural, and it addressed an issue that had been building since the courses opened in the late 1980s.
A Renovation Run in Relay, Not All at Once
Vineyards Country Club could have closed both courses simultaneously and finished faster. Instead, the club ran the project in sequence, a decision that meant members never lost access to golf entirely during construction.
Work on the South Course began in April 2023 and reached substantial completion by September of that year, with the new Bimini bermudagrass and TifEagle greens ready for play by December 2023. Only after the South Course reopened did crews move to the North Course, breaking ground in March 2024 and finishing that December. The club celebrated with a grand reopening on December 10, 2024, running two shotgun-start tournaments for full golf members so they could play the new layout the same day.
Architect Kipp Schulties designed both renovations, and Plant City-based QGS Development built them, giving the two-course project a continuous design hand across the roughly twenty months that separated the South Course groundbreaking from the North Course's reopening. Billy Huskins, the club's Director of Agronomy, oversaw the greens and turf work throughout.
What Actually Changed Besides the Scorecard
The redesigned courses share a family resemblance but were built to feel distinct from each other. The North Course leans into what the club calls an "Old Florida" aesthetic, with native palm trees, oaks, and ground plantings replacing some of the more manicured turf areas. That's not just a landscaping choice. Reducing maintained turf lowers water usage and chemical inputs, which the club has framed as part of a broader sustainability commitment.
The more consequential change is underground. Both courses got new irrigation and a new drainage system, and the North Course's system was approved by Collier County specifically because it improves stormwater management, a benefit the club has said extends to the surrounding area, not just the fairways. For a community built around 38 lakes, that's a meaningful upgrade regardless of whether you carry a golf handicap.
On the design side, the South Course was lengthened from roughly 6,800 to 7,200 yards to bring it up to a more competitive championship standard, while the North Course kept its links-style character with stone cap walls and two wood bridges added to differentiate it visually from its sibling course. The North Course now plays at 7,047 yards from the back tees.
The Recognition Came After the Work, Not Instead of It
Golf Digest's editors evaluated more than 350 renovated courses nationwide for their Best Transformation category this year, an honor reserved for projects that deliver a genuinely new architectural identity rather than a routine refresh. Fewer than 50 courses made the cut. Vineyards' North Course was the only one from Southwest Florida, joining just two other Florida courses, one in Orlando and one in Tallahassee.
That sequence matters. The award didn't arrive because the club set out to win one. It arrived roughly thirteen months after the North Course reopened, once enough play had happened on the new greens and fairways for outside evaluators to judge the result. The South Course, which underwent its own transformation a year earlier, has already hosted senior PGA Tour events under its original design, including stops for the Aetna Challenge, the Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate Challenge, and the IntelliNet Challenge, giving the club a competitive pedigree that predates either renovation.
Why This Is Worth Knowing Even If You've Never Played a Round
Membership at Vineyards Country Club is optional, split between a Full Golf Membership and a Lifestyle Membership, and plenty of residents across the community's 38 gated neighborhoods have never set foot on either course. For them, the more relevant fact might be how the club paid for all of this.
This was the third major renovation the club has undertaken since its founding in 1988, and officials have said none of the three came with a member assessment, meaning the roughly 1,600 members weren't billed extra to cover construction. That financing detail says something about how the club has chosen to operate for close to four decades, funding upgrades from reserves rather than special fees.
It also explains why the club shows up so often in conversations that have nothing to do with golf. The same 70,000-square-foot clubhouse that anchors the course renovations is also one of the more active event venues in this part of Naples, regularly booked for weddings and social gatherings that draw people from well outside the gates. The course project and the club's role as a community gathering space are part of the same story: an institution that keeps reinvesting in itself well past the point most facilities its age start to show wear.
If you live in the Vineyards, the next time you drive past the North Course and notice the native oaks lining a fairway that used to be open turf, you're looking at a decision that started with a drainage complaint, not a design brief. The trophy came later. The pipes came first.
If you're weighing what a home near Vineyards Country Club, or any golf or waterfront community in Naples and Marco Island, is really worth once you look past the listing photos, Darlene Roddy has spent more than two decades reading these neighborhoods block by block. Contact us when you're ready to talk specifics.
