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Charming the Snake Pit
By T.J. OLWIG
Innisbrook Resort's Copperhead course, a mainstay on the PGA tour, offers one of the most challenging – but fun – stretches in all of golf.
I’ve played a handful of
PGA TOUR host venues in my day, but never had I ever teed it up a week before the pros were slated to get after an $8.1 million purse ($8.4 million in2024) in prime tournament conditions. My fling with Copperhead, widely considered one of the toughest tracks on the pro circuit, meant airstrip-narrow fairways, 4 inches of gnarly Bermuda rough in every which direction, and greens so polished and so slick I might as well have worn bowling shoes. Throw in the three W’s of Florida golf– wind, water and wiry grass, certified kryptonite to my homemade game– and it was the ideal layout for my inaugural round of the season. This is, of course, to say nothing of the Snake Pit, Copperhead’s infamous closing trifecta.
Since 2003, the world’s best players have played the tree-lined trinity (holes16-18) more than a half-stroke over par, a final three-hole scoring average topped by just two other courses during that stretch. Kindly, Innisbrook does warn players of its difficulty (evocative of the famous warning sign at Bethpage Black in New York) with an oversize bronze statue of a snake on the 16th tee box, one of the hardest holes on the PGA TOUR. That’s where Striker, official guardian of the Snake Pit (who could easily moon-light as the Slytherin house mascot in Harry Potter), puts all comers on notice.
“The Moccasin, The Rattler and The Copperhead are Among The Most Difficult Finishing Holes on the PGA TOUR!” Should one want a before shot of their impending three-headed dance with the devil, the hashtag #SnakePitSelfie accompanies said alert. Neither a kneeling bench beneath the serpent, where I could have prayed for mercy, nor the counsel of my playing partner, Director of Golf Andrew Corry, could have thwarted my bailout of a snap hook into the stately Florida pines, a ball flight I had hoped my muscle memory retired in 2022. The damage: double bogey, par, bogey for a 3-over aggregate.
While my driver might have benefited from a visit to the swing doctor prior to my date with Copperhead, the gift of a TOUR-level tee time is the magic of the experience, not the letdown of a rusty swing. Sure, it was fun to rattle off three consecutive pars to close out my wobbly front nine (golf is, after all, a collection of small victories), but the true perk was doing it on the same manicured turf that I’ve watched the big boys compete on for years. Photoshopped fairways. Ball-eating primary rough. Spick-and-span greens running 12-plus on the Stimpmeter. Copperhead rewards imagination, one of my favorite parts of playing this game.
As the osprey flies, Copperhead’s first tee box sits 2,000 yards eastward of St.Joseph Sound in the Gulf of Mexico. There, in a scraggly treetop nest, a mated pair of the chirpy, masked sea hawks served as the unofficial starters for my round, signaling our proximity to the ocean. No matter my coordinates on the globe, a day on the links will forever double as a birdwatching tour – ever the more when I’m in the Atlantic Flyway.
After spotting a couple of orbiting bald eagles on my outward nine, a distant blur of pink triggered my trained eye as I walked up the 11th fairway. The fast-moving freckle of a cloud was multiple par 5s away in length. I raised my bin-oculars to confirm the skyward sighting. It was, in fact, what I had suspected – a roseate spoonbill, whose Champagne-tinted plumage brightened an otherwise haphazard hole where I may or may not have had a run-in or two with oak trees cloaked in Spanish moss. Wings may have eluded me on the scorecard, but the blue Florida sky gifted me with an unexpected avian first.
Outside of the months leading up to the Valspar Championship, Copperhead’s conditions are much friendlier on the everyday player. Resort wide, three additional layouts are available for guest play: the South, the North (nine holes) and the Island Course, Innisbrook’s original routing. The latter showcases one of the most surprising aspects at the resort: its undulating topography, an uncommon golf trait that will make you forget you’re in America’s flattest state.
Having come off of a blue chip layout in Copperhead, I was expecting a gentler day for my final round. Then I met the starter on the Island Course’s practice green, who, before directing me to the opening tee, casually declares, “Copperhead is a far more forgiving course.” He was right. Between Lake Innisbrook hugging the first six holes and the back nine’s wild elevation, the Island Course has some serious teeth. I also rewarded it with the prize for best hole on the 63-holeproperty at the par-3 fourth, where a hairy, lone Cypress tree acts as a fortress and flagstick gatekeeper in the middle of a greenside bunker.
While Innisbrook has something for everyone, its fairways and greens are its heartbeat, making for the ultimate golf trip. If you can, play all of its layouts, but just remember: “What happens in the Snake Pit, Stays in the Snake Pit”– unless you post a number, that is. In that case, broadcast your score for all to hear.
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