Author Archives: Aqua Greens Golf

By Dave Allen Earlier this year, Bonita National Golf & Country Club hired some temp laborers to retrieve as many floating golf balls as they could find along the banks of their aqua range—nearly one mile of shoreline (4,740 feet). They removed roughly 45,000 floater balls. “That’s a lot of golf balls,” says Simon Coulls, […]

By Dave Allen JP Shepherd picked one heck of a time to start his new job as Head Golf Professional at Bonita National Golf & Country Club. One month after leaving Alabama for Southwest Florida, Hurricane Ian came ashore just northwest of Bonita Springs, pounding the club with sustained winds of 150-plus miles per hour […]

By Dave Allen Like most new residential communities, The Cottages at Cypress Cay has a swimming pool, gym, 24-hour clubhouse and dog park. But what clearly separates this resort-style apartment community in Lutz, Fla., from others is what’s floating in the pond by their amenity center—two floating “chipping” greens. And as this video details, the […]

By Dave Allen According to statistics from the National Golf Foundation (NGF), there were more off-course golf participants (32.6 million) than on-course partakers (28.1 million) in the United States in 2024. This continued a post-Covid shift toward more off-course golf activities, with indoor golf simulator and virtual driving ranges and entertainment venues such as Topgolf […]

By Dave Allen (Photographs courtesy of Lakefront at Keystone) There have been a lot of changes to our way of life since the arrival of Covid-19 in early 2020, and nowhere has that been more evident than in the American workplace. Four years later, more Americans are working from home than ever before (22 million […]

By Dave Allen Birch Hill Country Club is nestled between the scenic Ossipee Mountain range and Lake Winnipesaukee in Moultonborough, New Hampshire. Formerly known as Ridgewood Country Club, Birch Hill was bought in February 2024 by a young professional tax attorney who had been a member for the past 15 years. Shortly after closing, the […]

By Dave Allen (Photos courtesy of Perspectrum Studios) In 2020, a new era was ushered in at Nemacolin resort with the transformation of its logo and mascot from Fat Bird to Pearl. The slimmed-down bird in high heels was named in honor of the resort’s CEO and owner, Maggie Hardy, who was nicknamed Pearl as […]

By Dave Allen Aqua Greens owner Matthew Gault walks you through the process of refurbishing the aqua range at Celebration Golf Club in Celebration, Fla., just outside of Orlando. Originally built in 2008, the range had gone through four major hurricanes and multiple other powerful storms, damaging several of the floating green structures. Aqua Greens […]

By Dave Allen For years, Crystal and her husband had been talking about having their own floating island green in their backyard at their rural Virginia home. Crystal’s husband was a golfing FANATIC. It was his biggest passion and he was very good at it, so good that he won several club championships and even […]

By Dave Allen When Matt Gault and his team were think-tanking some promotional concepts for Aqua Greens several years ago, they had this idea of putting a fretboard on the end of their guitar-shaped floating island green. The classical guitar design never made it to the water, but Gault held onto the concept, waiting for […]

By Dave Allen Randy Rockwood didn’t have to wait long to record his first hole-in-one. The plumber from Laconia, New Hampshire, took up golfing in 2014, and less than a year later, on July 4th no less, made an ace. “I should’ve stopped golfing right then,” joked Rockwood, a self-described ‘bogey’ golfer. “It got me […]