One of Florida’s longest-tenured public golf courses has become a battleground in the ongoing debate over the potency of today’s golf club and ball.
Lake Worth Beach Golf Course was originally laid out in 1926 by William Langford and Theodore Moreau, so it is celebrating its centenary anniversary this year. Located in the heart of Palm Beach County, one of America’s hottest markets, it represents one of the most affordable area golf options for locals and visitors. Its slender, sporty routing measures slightly more than 6,000 yards on barely 100 acres, occupying a north-south-oriented rectangle between neighborhoods and the Intracoastal Waterway separating mainland Florida from the upscale beach community of Palm Beach.
It is not a big ballpark, and it never will be, but for a century it has satisfied local golfers. One of its toughest holes on the course ever since a 1948 redesign by famed midcentury-modern architect Dick Wilson has been the 3rd, a 401-yard par 4 that is the number 3-handicap hole per the scorecard. A skinny fairway snakes between a pond on the left and a bunker, the course’s western boundary and the local Parrot Cove neighborhood on the right…