The Legacy Club at Alaqua Lakes: Fazio’s Forest, Two Miles From the Gate
Heathrow's sister club in neighboring Alaqua Lakes pairs a 1998 Tom Fazio course — Audubon Signature Sanctuary certified, with close to 100 wildlife species — with Heathrow's Garl Course in one 36-hole private membership.
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Two miles from Heathrow’s gates, in the Alaqua Lakes community at 1700 Alaqua Lakes Boulevard in Longwood, sits the other half of Heathrow’s golf life — and we label it plainly: The Legacy Club at Alaqua Lakes is at Heathrow’s edge, not inside it, a neighboring club that shares ownership, membership and a combined name, Heathrow Legacy, with Heathrow Country Club. It is also, on the evidence, one of the finest private courses in Seminole County: a Tom Fazio design from 1998 that Fazio himself is reported to count among his best work, wrapped in a certified wildlife sanctuary. Like its sister club, it is private — members and their guests only.
The Fazio Course
The Legacy Club opened in 1998, and its 18 holes are the opposite of Heathrow’s water-driven Garl Course in almost every way that matters. Where Garl plays across open lakes, Fazio carved his layout through dense, mature forest, with topography the club describes — accurately, by Florida standards — as dramatic: slopes, rises and knolls that make the 7,160-yard, par-72 course feel transported from hillier country. It carries a 74.5 rating and 132 slope from the back, offers six sets of tees plus a hybrid option on the scorecard, and keeps Champion Bermuda greens. The 12th hole is known as the Tiger Trap, after the famous Buick commercial in which Tiger Woods appeared out of the surrounding forest to challenge golfers to a closest-to-the-pin contest — club lore, but lore the club still trades on, and the forest makes it plausible.
The practice setup matches the course: an 11,000-square-foot clubhouse, state-of-the-art meeting rooms, and a 10-acre practice facility with target greens and separate chipping, putting and bunker areas. The Legacy Clubhouse has recently undergone a complete remodel — lobby, boardroom, bar and dining space, new fixtures, flooring, furniture and decor — as part of the $3 million Heathrow Legacy upgrade program.
A sanctuary with a scorecard
In March 2025, the Fazio Course earned Audubon International Signature Sanctuary Certification — a designation held by only about 100 golf courses in the world, and one the course regained after seven years. The certification recognizes distinctive environmental excellence, and the wildlife census behind it reads like a Florida field guide: close to 100 species around the course, including deer, wild turkey, black bears, foxes, bobcats, alligators, fish and a long list of native and exotic birds. The course irrigates overwhelmingly with recycled water — the club reports 99 percent — under superintendent John Kopack, who helped with the original construction of the Fazio Course in 1998 and was among Concert Golf Partners’ first employees. That continuity is rare in Florida golf, and the conditioning shows it.
From rivals to sisters
For years Heathrow and Legacy competed fiercely for the same North Orlando membership dollar, a couple of miles apart. Both then hit the same wall: Concert Golf Partners bought Heathrow out of foreclosure in 2011 and Legacy under threat of foreclosure in October 2013, and merged the rivalry into a single 36-hole membership. Members move between the two clubhouses freely; the dining program runs a shared menu across both properties, with the same kitchen standards at each. It is, as more than one golf writer has noted, a two-for-one country club — the strongest structural argument for membership in the Lake Mary area.
Who it is for
The Legacy Club is not a visitor attraction, and this profile is not an invitation — there is no public play, and Alaqua Lakes is itself a gated community in neighboring Longwood. Its place on our Heathrow hub is as the second half of the Heathrow golf story: the forest to Garl’s water, the sanctuary to the stadium court’s tennis, the newer course that completed the older community’s offer. Readers weighing a move to the area should read it together with our Heathrow guide — and readers simply passing through will find the public version of this corridor, its restaurants and trails, on our Lake Mary hub and the Top Spots Map.
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