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Golf is at once a magical, mystifying and maddening game. Those who play know that the sport can bring great joy and even greater frustration. It can also bring, especially for those just starting out, a sense of unapproachability—for many, the word golf is associated with exclusive country clubs and exorbitant prices. Such is not the case at Lake Venice Golf Club.

Rod Parry and the team at Lake Venice Golf Club have a mantra: “We carry to the masses, not classes.” The semi-private 27-hole golf club, established in 1959, is something of a throwback. There are no tee times at Lake Venice, golfers can walk or ride at any time and play all 27 holes, starting from either the first or 19th tee. There is a purity to Lake Venice that Parry, who has been the General Manager of for 34 years, wants to keep. There are no housing developments along Lake Venice Golf Club, meaning that the course, located adjacent to the Gulf on Venice Island, gets plenty of ocean breezes and marvelous sunsets. Some things at Lake Venice have changed over the years. Parry has added more tee boxes, to make life easier on some of the course’s older regulars. “We moved the tees up and gave them a chance to play from something where they can at least have some fun and play the way they did when they were younger,” says Parry. “That’s the beauty of golf. You can play anywhere in the world without knowing another person.”

The course, originally designed by Mark Mahannah, has undergone renovations, such as the redesign of holes 19-27 in 2013 by renowned golf course architect Jan Bel Jan. Other things, like Parry’s desire to grow the sport, have not changed. For just $3, juniors who attend a Venice school, can walk the course. Holes 16 and 17 are some of the most picturesque, lying adjacent to the intercoastal waterway, with Parry calling the 17th one of the toughest in the county. “It’s a par four dogleg left with a narrow landing area,” he says. “You can either go for it or you can lay up and then you’ve got around a 165 yard shot to the green over some mangroves with water on both sides.”

Lake Venice Golf Club, 1801 South Harbor Dr., Venice, 34285, 941-488-3948

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