Golf Around the Corridor: Three Davenport Courses, Three Different Tests
Highlands Reserve for fun, Providence for polish, White Heron for the examination — plus the ChampionsGate and Reunion splurges, plainly labeled as neighbors.
3 minute read
The US-27 corridor is quietly one of the best-value golf bases in the Orlando market: three genuinely different courses inside Davenport itself, two famous resort setups a short drive northeast, and villa rentals that let a foursome split a house instead of four hotel rooms. None of Davenport’s courses carries a magazine ranking — our ratings have not reached the corridor — so this guide runs on the courses’ own records: architects, yardages, and the kind of test each one sets.
Highlands Reserve: the fun one
Start at Highlands Reserve Golf Club, Mike Dasher’s 1998 design over the Green Swamp Ridge. About 120 feet of elevation change, waste areas in place of conventional rough, roomy fairways and a wildly inventive set of greens — including a Biarritz at the 16th — make it the corridor’s most playable and most characterful round, at about 6,650 yards, par 72. It is the right first round of a trip: forgiving off the tee, interesting on the greens, and wrapped in the villa community that shares its name.
Providence: the polished one
Providence Golf Club, at 1518 Clubhouse Boulevard in the gated Providence community on Davenport’s east side, is the corridor’s premium daily-fee test. Also a Mike Dasher design — opened in 2007, so a decade of the architect’s thinking separates the two courses — it winds through freshwater creeks, ancient hardwoods and wetlands at a full championship length of roughly 7,000 yards from the back tees, par 72, with undulating, European-influenced greens that were comprehensively rebuilt in 2018 in Champion G12 ultra-dwarf Bermuda. Wildlife is part of the round here; the club is matter-of-fact about alligators in the waterways and the occasional bear in the rough’s imagination. An 8,000-square-foot clubhouse with restaurant and patio dining makes Providence the corridor’s natural 19th-hole finish.
White Heron: the stern one
White Heron Golf Club at 200 Eagle Ridge Drive — long known as Ridgewood Lakes — is the examination. Ted McAnlis’s 1994 layout stretches to 7,290 yards, par 72, with water or natural wetlands in play on sixteen of eighteen holes and a resident breeze that, as the club notes, can change the course from day to day. It plays semi-private, keeps Champions Turf greens, and rewards the golfer who came to Davenport to test a handicap rather than protect one. Play it mid-trip, when the swing is grooved; Highlands Reserve will forgive your first round, White Heron will grade your third.
Nearby, plainly labeled
Two resort names dominate the corridor’s golf conversation, and both belong to neighboring portals rather than to Davenport itself. ChampionsGate, just northeast, pairs Greg Norman’s International and National courses with the David Leadbetter Golf Academy’s headquarters — see our ChampionsGate hub. Reunion Resort, northeast in Kissimmee, holds three signature courses by Palmer, Watson and Nicklaus — see our Reunion hub. Davenport-based golfers play both regularly; they are a short drive, not a home course, and the distinction is exactly what makes the Davenport three such good value by comparison.
One more name belongs in the conversation, labeled as what it is: Southern Dunes Golf & Country Club sits south in Haines City, Davenport’s neighboring city, and corridor golfers routinely fold its bunker-strewn 18 into a trip as the fourth or fifth round. It is not a Davenport course — but from a US-27 villa it is closer than most of Orlando’s famous names, and locals plan accordingly.
Planning the golf trip
The corridor pattern: rent in or near a golf community so the car stays parked, book early tee times before the Central Florida heat and afternoon storms, and rotate fun-polished-stern across three days — Highlands Reserve, Providence, White Heron — with a resort splurge at ChampionsGate or Reunion as the optional fourth. Rental sets are available at the Davenport courses for the golfer traveling light. Every course here is pinned on our Orlando Top Spots Map.
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