Fairwinds Golf Course

Sitting just above St Lucie's "Treasure Coast" Airport, Fairwinds Golf Course is a wonderfully linksy Jim Fazio design. It benefits from a modicum of earthmounding, breaking up the innate flatness of the original terrain.

In keeping with the course's linksy persona, the feel is generally quite open, with a scattering of pines, palms, oaks and pampas grass separating the good-width, nicely rippling fairways.

Big-hitters will enjoy this open and generally forgiving layout, provided they straighten things up in time for the more water threatened back-nine. This second nine-hole loop brings plenty of water into play, courtesy of four small lakes, alongside which several holes are routed. Two of the best are the shortish risk-reward snaking par-5 13th and the seriously water-flanked, right-to-left doglegging par-4 18th.

Around the often large and slightly elevated greens, your bunker play and pitching out of bermuda-grassed sloping lies will be tested. Not all the greens however are bunker defended, with just one greenside bunker in play at the par-4 10th, and none at the ensuing par-3 11th and par-4 12th holes. The posse of sand-traps at the 13th redresses the balance.

With no housing around the course, a peacefully natural environment can be enjoyed here, broken only by the occasional arrival and departures of light aircraft.