Heathrow Country Club: Nine U.S. Open Qualifiers Behind a Guard Gate
Ron Garl's water-laced 1985 course, Matt Kuchar's boyhood track, a second Fazio course under the same membership and a $3 million reinvestment. A profile of Seminole County's premier private club — members only, stated plainly.
3 minute read
Start with the rule, because everything about Heathrow Country Club follows from it: this is a private, members-only club inside a guard-gated community, at 1200 Bridgewater Drive in Heathrow. There are no public tee times, no walk-in dinners, no resort guests. What there is — for members, and for the guests members bring — is Seminole County’s premier country club: an 18-hole Ron Garl course with a genuine tournament pedigree, a second Fazio course two miles away under the same membership, and a reinvestment program that has made the combined Heathrow Legacy operation one of the most interesting club stories in Central Florida.
The Garl Course
The club was established in 1983, and its Ron Garl course opened in 1985, the year Heathrow itself was founded. Garl, a Lakeland native, built a water-lover’s test: hazards come into play on 14 of the 18 holes, and the par-71 layout runs 6,888 yards from the championship tees. No Garl design is complete without an island green, and Heathrow’s piece de resistance is the 12th. The course has hosted nine U.S. Open qualifiers over the past two decades — the statistic the club leads with, and one the USGA’s qualifying calendar backs up year after year.
The playing pedigree runs deeper than qualifiers. Matt Kuchar, PGA Tour winner and Olympic bronze medalist, grew up in Heathrow playing the Garl Course. Zach Johnson recorded his first double eagle on the 11th hole here. Chris DiMarco, Jim Thorpe, Payne Stewart and Fulton Allem are among the Tour players who have called the club home over the years. That is not a marketing list; it is what happens when a serious course sits inside a community that serious golfers choose to live in.
Two clubs, one membership
The modern club is really two. Concert Golf Partners bought Heathrow out of foreclosure in July 2011 — it was the first club Concert ever owned, and the company’s national headquarters still sits along the Garl Course — then purchased The Legacy Club at Alaqua Lakes in October 2013. The rivals became sisters. A full golf membership now spans 36 holes across two clubhouses about two miles apart: Garl’s water game at Heathrow, Tom Fazio’s forest game at Legacy, which we profile separately in our Legacy Club piece. Membership categories run from full golf and weekday golf to tennis and social, and membership carries privileges across Concert’s national portfolio of private clubs.
The $3 million statement
In 2024 Concert announced $3 million in upgrades at Heathrow Legacy, and the list reads like a club deciding what the next decade of members wants. The Garl Course received 18 new Champion Bermuda greens. The club installed 10 covered TopTracer Range bays — Heathrow Legacy was the first private club in Central Florida to put in TopTracer, turning the practice range into a data-driven, game-playing social space. Both clubhouses took renovations, the Legacy clubhouse getting a full remodel of its lobby, boardroom, bar and dining rooms. The pool deck was refreshed and the irrigation modernized.
The main clubhouse at Heathrow — 15,000 square feet with full dining and banquet facilities — remains the community’s social hall: member dining, weddings and galas in the grand ballroom, the calendar of events and classes that gated-community life actually runs on. Dining at the two clubhouses follows a shared menu philosophy, so the kitchen’s standards travel between properties.
The honest bottom line
Heathrow Country Club does not need this magazine’s ranking, and it does not have one — our Top Businesses rankings have not scored any business inside Heathrow’s gates, a gap we state plainly on the Heathrow hub. What we can say, on the record, is that this is a club with a real course, real Tour history, an owner that has put real money back in, and an athletic side — 13 tennis courts, a stadium court, pickleball, the pool — that we cover in our Racquet Club profile. If you are invited to play the Garl Course, accept. Just let your host handle the gate.
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