The Legacy Course: Palmer Golf With Actual Hills

Florida golf is supposed to be flat. Arnold Palmer’s Legacy Course at Reunion Resort & Golf Club did not get the memo. Routed over hilly, rolling terrain in Kissimmee with elevation changes of up to 50 feet — genuine, walk-up-to-the-tee-and-look-down elevation — the Legacy is 6,916 yards of golf that feels transplanted from somewhere with actual topography, and it is the most purely fun of Reunion’s three signature courses.

The Palmer philosophy, in the ground

Palmer played golf the way the Legacy asks you to: go for it, and live with the result. The resort describes the course as a risk-reward experience, and that phrase does real work here. Holes present a safe line and a heroic one, with deep bunkers and contoured greens guarding the heroic. An elevated par three early in the round turns club selection into a small drama of drop and wind. A short par four dares you to drive the green and makes you pay in sand if the dare goes wrong. It is golf as a series of interesting decisions rather than a series of executions — the most Palmer thing imaginable.

At 6,916 yards from the back, the Legacy is the shortest of Reunion’s three, and the yardage is a trap for the overconfident. The course defends itself with terrain, angles and putting surfaces rather than length, which is precisely why it suits mixed-ability groups: forward tees genuinely change the questions, and a shorter hitter who plays the angles can beat a bomber who keeps taking the bait.

How a round unfolds

Start conservatively. The elevation changes are at their most disorienting early — Florida golfers are not calibrated for downhill lies and raised greens, and the Legacy’s rolling fairways will hand you both. By the middle of the round the course settles into its rhythm: a heroic option on most holes, trouble placed exactly where the heroic option fails, and greens that reward the approach played from the correct side. The closing stretch, played with the resort spread out around you, is where the course’s scenery catches up with its strategy.

Conditions and presentation are resort-grade, and the course is inspected periodically against its original design blueprint, as are all three Reunion signatures — a detail the resort states plainly and one that matters on a course whose identity lives in its contours.

Playing it as part of the trio

The Legacy pairs naturally with its two siblings. Tom Watson’s Independence Course (7,154 yards) tests the short game the Legacy’s greens have just sharpened; Jack Nicklaus’s Tradition Course tests precision at full length. Our guide to playing Reunion’s Big Three sequences the three across a stay, and Independence and Tradition profiles the other two. For regional context, see our Best Golf Courses in Orlando rankings.

Access and booking

The Legacy is a resort course, not a public one. Eligibility to play runs to guests staying at Reunion Resort & Golf Club or through its Preferred Rental Program; tee times are required, not guaranteed, and worth booking well ahead in prime season. Vacation-home renters booking through outside platforms should confirm their property’s membership and golf privileges before assuming a tee time exists. After the round, the Clubhouse by the Grande is the closest debrief — or ride the resort shuttle to Traditions at the Nicklaus Clubhouse if the group is replaying the day properly.

Reunion’s golf is the reason the community exists, and the Legacy is its most charismatic expression: Palmer’s swagger, Florida’s weather, and hills nobody expects. The rest of the resort — dining, water park, villas — is gathered on the Reunion hub and plotted on the Orlando Top Spots Map.

Filed under Arnold Palmer · Golf · Kissimmee · Reunion · Reunion Resort

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