Bay Hill Club & Lodge - Challenger/Champion

Bay Hill's Championship Course traces to 1961, when architect Dick Wilson routed 18 holes across a genuinely rolling stretch of Florida sand near Orlando's Butler Chain of Lakes. Wilson used natural elevation and sinkholes to give the property topography rare for the state, and typically perched his greens slightly to aid visibility and drainage. Arnold Palmer first played the layout in a 1965 exhibition, fell for it, and bought the club in 1976, making it his winter home until his death in 2016. Over the decades he refined the Champion and Challenger nines that form today's Championship Course. The venue has long hosted the PGA Tour's Arnold Palmer Invitational, its water-lined closing stretch regarded as one of the game's most demanding finishes.