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Tampa Palms Country Club celebrates 30 years

 
The Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club foyer features a modern interior. The club includes 25 luxury guest suites, an onsite restaurant, and other amenities.
The Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club foyer features a modern interior. The club includes 25 luxury guest suites, an onsite restaurant, and other amenities.
Published Jan. 9, 2017

Kevin Kenny can easily recall the first days of Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club.

"I have been around the New Tampa area since 1987," said Kenny, who has served as the PGA head professional at the club since 2004. "When I was a student at the University of South Florida and actually played here regularly and caddied in the Senior Tour event (the GTE Classic) here."

As Kenny has matured, so too has Tampa Palms. Once located in a community considered to be on the northern outskirts of Tampa, the club has served as a central landmark in Tampa Palms as growth has come to New Tampa.

Now Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club celebrates its 30th anniversary, still relevant in a community that has boomed with houses and retail.

The club enjoyed early attention when it hosted the area's first PGA Senior Tour event in 1988. Nearly 60,000 people attended the five days of the GTE Classic to watch greats like Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. The tournament relocated in 1992, but the course remains a popular destination, drawing both new and seasoned golfers alike.

And despite the passage of years, the country club remains similar to how it was in 1987.

"The club hasn't changed all that much other than the gentrification of the original members and a younger generation taking their place," Kenny said "It is by far the most unique layout in the Tampa Bay area and also one of the most challenging.

"I love its proximity to USF and the relationship I have worked to foster between our club and the university as a whole, but more importantly its golf teams."

Over the last 30 years, the golf course and country club, operated by Dallas-based ClubCorp, have drawn thousands of members, both from within the Tampa Palms community and elsewhere. In addition to the golf course, the private, members-only club also boasts 25 luxury resort rooms.

Though it has become a destination for out-of-towners on business and vacation, Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club remains a favorite for neighborhood residents such as Maggie Wilson. Wilson, who moved to Tampa Palms in 1989, has seen her once far-flung neighborhood become one of the city's most popular communities.

Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, named in 1986 for a prominent Hillsborough County deputy public works administrator, was as recently as the early 1980s a two-lane country road simply known as State Road 581.

That all changed when Tampa Palms developer Kenneth Good came to the area in 1984 and soon broke ground on the 4,100-acre community. According to Wilson, the first of the community's 28 subdivisions was Ashmont, where residents were moving in by 1986.

Since the club opened in 1987, the population of New Tampa has swelled since the City of Tampa first annexed the community in 1988. In 2010, the United States Census Bureau reported more than 13,000 people lived in Tampa Palms. The community now consists of 2,400 single-family homes and 1,100 apartment homes flanking Bruce B. Downs Boulevard between Bearss Avenue to the south and Interstate 75 to the north.

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With the growth, Wilson said, has come a welcomed mix of people.

"Tampa Palms is diverse," Wilson said. "We've got folks from all over the country and all over the world."

Contact Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez at hillsnews@tampabay.com.