Florida Swing Special Report Tuesday 26 February

19.3million people live in Florida making it the fourth most populous state in the United States, with 1000 people per day moving to the state every day and 60million visitors every year it is clear that the state of Florida is one of the most popular destinations in the world. It is easy to see why. Almost constant sunshine and the laid back atmosphere make it a relaxing place for a holiday for adults, for children there is Disney World and for golfers there are 1,250 courses ranging from the up-scale resort to the championship venue and the daily fee municipal course. 

When the world's best come to Florida this week they will begin a four-week tour of the state, visiting four unique destinations and playing on four world-class major championship calibre courses, the kind of which attracts millions of tourists to this part of the world every year. Palm Beach Gardens, Miami, the Tampa Bay area and Orlando will welcome thousands of spectators and the world's best golfers to their leading courses, PGA Tour events and to their cosmopolitan cities.

Due to the nature of the professional golf tours many of the world's best golfers now live in various locations in Florida particularly Orlando and the Palm Beach Gardens area so in the main it won't be a tourists adventure this March, but the tour of the state begins in Palm Beach Gardens this week with The Honda Classic. Palm Beach Gardens is in the north part of the South Florida Metropolitan Area and has a population of just under 50,000 including several gated communities, the area is very popular with touring professionals including world number one Rory McIlroy and former world number one Lee Westwood who both live there. The city is in Palm Beach County, the county has more golf courses than any other county in America, underlining its credentials as the unofficial home of golf in the United States.

The PGA of America moved to Florida from Chicago in 1956, into offices in Dunedin, Pinellas County on the West Coast of the state. 9 years later the organisation moved across to the East Coast and Palm Beach Gardens, Palm Beach County and then into Lake Park, Palm Beach County in 1973 where it spent 7 years before moving into 30,000 square feet offices at the PGA National Resort and Spa in Palm Beach Gardens. The resort now has five courses, the first was The Haig (named after legendary PGA Professional, 11-time Major Champion and Ryder Cup captain Walter Hagen), opened in 1980. This was followed by The Champion, The Squire (named after the first golfer to achieve the Grand Slam, Gene Sarazen), The Palmer (named after Arnold Palmer) and The Estates. 

The Champion course is now the host of The Honda Classic after a $4m renovation in 2002, the course is now regarded as one of the most challenging and respected courses on the PGA Tour, perhaps even more so following the changes than it was after it hosted the Ryder Cup and PGA Championship. The move for The Honda Classic to PGA National has benefited both the PGA Tour event and the PGA National Resort, bringing the resort into the world's attention and attracting a consistently strong field in each of the 6 editions of the tournament played over The Champion course.

The world's best then move on to Miami for the second World Golf Championship of 2013 at the Doral Resort and Spa and the WGC-Cadillac Championship. The City of Miami has a population of 408,568 but is within the Miami Metropolitan Area which is inhabited by over 5.5m people in the South-eastern corner of Florida. Miami is known as 'The Gateway to the Americas' and its port employs over 175,000 people and generates an economic impact of $18billion per year for the city, 38million people visit Miami every year with over 4million passing through its port at some stage each year.

The skyline of Miami is one of the most recognizable in the world through television shows such as CSI Miami and Miami Vice; the NFL's Super Bowl has been staged in the city on 10 occasions, the most recent being in 2010 and the city has hosted the ATP World Tour at the Sony Ericsson Open since 1985. The Nascar season begins and finishes in Florida, with the Daytona 500 in February and the Ford 400 at Miami Homestead Speedway in November. These television shows and iconic global sporting events are watched around the world and because of this Miami has grown to become one of the world's most recognizable cities consistently ranked as one of the world's top fifty cities.

The Doral Resort and the Blue Monster Course in particular really stand out among the golf courses in the Miami area, which in comparison to courses in Orlando, Jacksonville and Palm Beach are less well-known. But some times it is better to have one, iconic course rather than a plethora of average ones, and for American golfers the Blue Monster stands out as one of the country's most infamous layouts. Doral's leading course has only ever staged PGA Tour events since it was built in 1962 and from that year until 2006 the Doral Open was played each March (sometimes late February) over the course which was considered a 'monster' in the 1960's and 1970's. The course was built originally with a yardage of over 7,000 yards in 1962, which when you consider the balls and equipment used 50 years ago the course, with its thick rough and abundance of water, gives validation to the name Blue Monster.

With a fearsome course, a great location in a cosmopolitan area and a position on the schedule a few weeks prior to the first major of the year, the Doral Open always attracted a very strong field and it was I suppose you can say inevitable that a championship of global significance would be played on the course at some stage. In 2007 the WGC-CA Championship came to Doral and it has remained there ever since, with Cadillac assuming title sponsorship in 2011. Still without doubt its most iconic memories in recent years are dominated by the head-to-head between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in 2005 in the penultimate 'Doral Open' or Ford Championship at Doral as it was then. The likes of Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, Steve Elkington, Ray Floyd, Ben Crenshaw, Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods among others have won at Doral, backing up the claim that Doral has to being one of the most revered courses in all of American golf.

Unquestionably the most famous hole at Doral is the 18^th, which also has the name Blue Monster. The hole also is deserving of this name, with a huge lake to the left side of the fairway which wraps itself around the lake and has thick rough and bunkers up the right. The green is angled to a North-West position on a compass and is very shallow with bunkers on the right side and nowhere to bail out at all. It has produced some of the most infamous moments in PGA Tour history including Craig Parry's holed second shot to win in 2004.

The third week of the Florida Swing takes the TOUR to the Tampa Bay area on the West Coast of Florida and the newest event in the series, the Tampa Bay Championship at the Innisbrook Resort, Palm Harbor just north of St Petersburg. Tampa Bay is a large, natural harbour in the West of Florida and the large surrounding area is given the name of the Tampa Bay area although there is no actual place called Tampa Bay. The Tampa-St Petersburg-Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population of over 4.2m people and over 90,000 people each year move to the area. St Petersburg is the fourth most populous city in the state of Florida and attracts millions of tourists to the area each year, St Petersburg stages the Honda Grand Prix of St Petersburg Indy Car race each March which showcases the skyline of St Petersburg across the world on television. 

The city is locally known as St. Pete and the beach was formally renamed St. Pete Beach in 1994 after a vote by residents. St Petersburg is the second largest city in the area, with Tampa being the largest with over 345,000 inhabitants and Clearwater being home to just over 100,000 people. The Tampa Bay region is home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Tampa Bay Rays, major sporting franchises in the NFL and Major League Baseball which have brought global attention to the area with their achievements in their respective sports in recent years. The 2012 Republican National Convention was held in Tampa at the Tampa Bay Times Forum at the end of August which was one of the most televised events ever held in the region. The Tampa Bay area has hosted four Super Bowls, at the Tampa Stadium in 1984 and 1991 and at the Raymond James Stadium in 2001 and 2009.

Tampa Bay is also home to one of the world's top 25 tourist attractions, Busch Gardens is an African-themed animal theme park located in Tampa and welcomes over 4million people every year.

Tampa Bay is home to over 50 golf courses including the Tournament Players Club Tampa Bay which hosts a Champions Tour event each year and is located to the North of Tampa Bay itself, and five courses at the Innisbrook Golf and Spa Resort, including the Copperhead course which hosts the Tampa Bay Championship. The tournament has been played at the resort every year since it was established in 2000 and has grown exponentially in the last five years since it became a part of the Florida Swing.

The Copperhead Course was built in 1974 and has been ranked as the third best course in Florida by Golf Week Magazine, the courses is renowned for its unusual undulating nature in comparison to other Florida courses and is among the most difficult courses on the PGA Tour.

The TOUR then moves back to the East Coast of Florida for the crescendo to the 2013 Florida Swing in Orlando. Firstly at Bay Hill Club and Lodge for the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard and then many will play at Isleworth Country Club in the unique team competition that is the Tavistock Cup. The Arnold Palmer Invitational has a roll of honour comparable to any great event in the game with Tiger Woods winning a record 7 times and Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Fred Couples, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite, Paul Azinger, Payne Stewart and Fuzzy Zoeller have all won the tournament hosted by one of the all-time golfing and sporting icons; It is a fitting event to be played in one of the world's great destinations, Orlando welcomes over 50million visitors each year and has one of the top 30 busiest airports in the world.

The city has several world famous attractions, the biggest being the most visited entertainment resort in the world, Walt Disney World Resort was built in 1965 and opened in 1971, the Palm and Magnolia golf courses on the resort hosted the Disney Golf Classic on the PGA Tour from 1971 to 2012. The resort employs over 65,000 people and generates over $1billion in wages and has an estimated economic impact of $18.2billion to the state of Florida. International Drive is Orlando's main tourist strip, 11.5miles long 'I-Drive' as it is known colloquially has several attractions including the Orange County Convention Center (host to the PGA Merchandise Show), SeaWorld Orlando and the Universal Orlando theme park. The University of Central Florida is located in Orlando and is the second largest University in the United States by enrolment with just under 60,000 students, the University celebrates its 50^th birthday in 2013.

Orlando has a plethora of top-end resort courses including ChampionsGate, Grande Lakes, The Reserve at Orange Lake, Hunters Creek, Grande Pines, Grand Cypress, Deer Creek, Stonegate golf club, Red Tail, Faldo Golf Institute and Kissimmee Golf Club among others. But the three courses which stand out for worldwide audiences are Lake Nona (host of the Tavistock Cup every second year and home to many touring professionals), Isleworth Golf and Country Club (Host to the 2013 Tavistock Cup and several touring professionals) and the Bay Hill Club and Lodge. 

The golf course at Bay Hill was built in the 1960's and in 1974 was bought by Arnold Palmer and over the years his team have developed the club and course to a world-class standard and consequently the Bay Hill Invitational, later to become the API, has become one of golf's great tournaments outside of the Majors. The course has undergone many changes over the last twenty years including changing the par of the course, yardage and routing of holes, but the one constant has been its dramatic final three holes. Up until 2006 the Florida Swing concluded with the API and The Players Championship and a direct comparison could be made between the final three holes of both courses.

Bay Hill's terrific trio begins with a risk-reward par five with water in front and to the left of the green, then features a par three over water with a wide but shallow green and two bunkers protecting the target, and then concludes with one of the hardest and most exciting finishing par fours in world golf. From Pat Perez to Vijay Singh the 18^th has provided drama year-after-year but it is synonymous with Tiger Woods holing incredible putts across the green to win in most of his record seven triumphs.

This year the Tavistock Cup will be played at Isleworth Country Club, the former home of Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara and several other leading tour pro's. The match starts the day after the conclusion of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and will feature 6 clubs competing over 2 days on a course which could vie for the title of Florida's best. The course was originally designed by Arnold Palmer and is built on rolling terrain features greens that are generous, undulating and fast, earning its title as the toughest and longest course in the state by the Florida State Golf Association. The estate and club is owned by Tavistock Group and is located in Windermere, Florida in the Butler Chain of Lakes, just 4 miles away from Bay Hill.

So by the time Tuesday 26 March arrives the tour will have visited five golf courses in four unique destinations across the Sunshine State, playing on courses in perfect condition offering a major championship calibre challenge and they will have competed for over $25million and four of the PGA Tour's most significant titles on the road to golf's first major. My blog will bring you up to date with all of the latest news and information about the five events making up the Florida Swing in 2013 and will bring you more features including a look at the future of the Florida Swing and whether The Players Championship should move to be played in March once again; a feature about Arnold Palmer, the big three and the dawn of the television age and a look at a potential future team league for golf around the time of the Tavistock Cup.

I cannot guarantee you much about the next four weeks but I can promise that the golf will be spectacular and I will be reporting on it every day and giving my opinion based on my knowledge and experience, and will provide commentary on topics I believe have relevance to contemporary issues in the game. My next blog will give a more detailed preview of the upcoming Honda Classic tomorrow.