Golf Insider

One of the most versatile golf resorts in Florida is the Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club in Palm Harbor, a short drive from Tampa. You can roll out of bed and have resort staff whisk you to one of the resort's four great courses in minutes.
 
The four courses are almost always in excellent shape, but the best is the Copperhead, where the PGA Tour pros play every year. The pros love it.

"Copperhead is the best course we play on tour," Ryder Cup Captain Paul Azinger told the media.

Playing a great course is always a treat, but trying to play it like the pros enhances the experience. Here's a hint, though: Don't try it from the back tees.
 
"You can get an appreciation of what they face in their approaches by playing the green, or even the white, tees," said Doug Schmidt, the director of marketing at the resort, who said he's seen the pros attack the course six times and played it at least 100 times.

Copperhead is a course of angles and slopes, elevation and execution and risk and reward. The Larry Packard design lies atop the Ocala Sand Ridge, a geological formation that extends across the state to Ocala and terminates in the north in Jacksonville. That elevation can make a two- or even three-club difference.

Almost every hole has some sort of risk/reward, even if it's not always initially obvious. You have to stay focused the entire round. Play wily and stay below the hole.

The pros let the weather dictate what they do here. With a helping wind, many bomb it over the doglegs with a driver. With the wind a hindrance, which it is almost every day when it kicks up from the nearby Gulf of Mexico, it's back to the safety of the three-wood.