Royal St. Cloud Golf Links

Royal St. Cloud Golf Links is the budget anchor of the Orlando golf market, a 27-hole Chip Powell design that opens around 2001 with a third nine added in 2009. At $59 to $64 a round, it is the course that lets you stretch a four-round Orlando trip into a five-round one without inflating the budget. You will find it about 25 minutes east of Orlando International Airport and the Disney corridor, in the St. Cloud community.

The three nines are themed after the Scottish, British, and Irish links traditions. The themes are expressed through bunkering and green complex shapes rather than through any attempt to fake coastal links conditions in central Florida. The strategic concepts are borrowed from links architecture and applied to the available terrain. Across the various 18-hole combinations, the course plays beyond 7,100 yards with ratings above 74.6, so there is enough length to challenge a competent player.

The three-nine format is genuinely useful on a multi-round trip. Repeat visitors can play different combinations on consecutive days, which keeps the variety up without forcing a long drive to a different facility.

Conditioning is honest rather than exceptional. If you arrive from a round at Reunion or ChampionsGate, you will notice the difference in turf quality. Arrive with realistic expectations for a sub-$65 round and you will find the playing surfaces fair and the greens the strongest element, running true enough to reward a good stroke.

Royal St. Cloud is the Orlando course you book to add a day, not to define one. Approach it on those terms and you will walk off satisfied with the trade.