Golf courses in Manatee County

This site holds records for 30 golf facilities in Manatee County, carrying 615 holes between them. That count comes from the county records rather than from a directory: Manatee publishes a golf course GIS layer and Sarasota assigns dedicated golf land-use codes in its tax roll, so a facility that exists is in one of them whether or not it markets itself. The split by access is 13 private, 9 semi-private and 8 public. Access type is the thing worth checking before anything else, because it decides whether you can play at all.

Yes. Manatee County has 8 public courses: Buffalo Creek Golf Course, IMG Academy Golf Club, Imperial Lakewoods Golf Club, Links at Greenfield Plantation, Manatee County Golf Course, Pinebrook Ironwood Golf Course, River Run Golf Links and Greens of Manatee Golf Club. Public here means you can book a tee time without a membership and without owning a home in a particular community, which is not true of most golf in this market. Several are municipally owned, so a resident rate may apply. Green fees change by season and by day and very few of these courses publish a fixed table, so call the golf shop for the current number rather than trusting a third-party quote.

13 of the 30 are private: Bradenton Country Club, Country Club East at Lakewood Ranch, Key Royale Club, Lakewood National Golf Club, Lakewood Ranch Golf & Country Club, Legacy Golf Club at Lakewood Ranch, Miakka Golf Club and Peridia Golf & Country Club, and 5 more. Private covers two quite different arrangements, and the difference is expensive. At some clubs membership is bundled with the home, so the cost arrives in the association billing whether or not you play. At others it is optional and bought separately, which means a lower monthly figure and a separate decision. Each club page here records which it is where a source states it, and says the club does not publish rather than estimating where none does.

Buffalo Creek Golf Course, IMG Academy Golf Club, Imperial Lakewoods Golf Club, Links at Greenfield Plantation, Manatee County Golf Course, Pinebrook Ironwood Golf Course, River Run Golf Links and Greens of Manatee Golf Club, and 9 more are either public or semi-private, which is the group a visitor or a new resident can actually get on. A semi-private club sells memberships and also sells tee times, so you can play it before deciding anything, and that is the sensible way to judge a course you are considering buying next to. A private club means a membership or a member host, and no amount of enquiring changes that.

The architects recorded for Manatee County are Arnold Palmer, Arnold Palmer Design Company, Arthur Hills, Chip Powell, Chris Wilczynski, Dana Fry, Dean Refram, Donald Ross, Gene Bates and Gordon G. Lewis, and 13 more. Architect, year opened, par and yardage are the facts this site will take from a golf publication, because they do not change and most small clubs publish no course specification at all. Membership structure, access and fees come only from the club itself. Where two sources disagreed about a course, the club's own figure was used, and where the club was silent and two directories disagreed, the fact was left out rather than guessed at.