About Fort Walton Beach Golf Course
The Fort Walton Beach Golf Course offers a fantastic and casual golfing experience. The well-maintained courses, The Pines and The Oaks, feature beautiful scenery and a relaxed atmosphere. While the pace of play can be affected by groups not allowing others to play through, the overall enjoyment remains high. The facility also includes a reasonably priced driving range, and the clubhouse is noted for its quality. It's a family-friendly destination, making it a great value in the Destin area. The Pines course is the easier of the two, with a wide-open layout and very little trouble. The Oaks, on the other hand, is shorter but much tighter, requiring golfers to stay in the fairway. The course conditions can vary, but it's always busy, indicating that avid golfers prioritize the availability of choices over the condition of the greens. The restaurant on-site is not associated with the golf course, so golfers can bring their own beverages and ice without issue.
Edited after rennavations, 11/25/25... two full 18 holes on site, practice range are mats only but they have trackman, a nice big putting green and decent chipping area as well. Tee times could be spread out, place gets overcrowded at times. Overall, its an above average course, when they are in good shape they are two fun courses, fairly straightforward golf... cart service and bar area are great, tho could use people with better customer service in pro shop.
The Oaks is in fair condition. The Pines is better as it was closed for half a year to rebuild the greens. The greens on the Pines are now in very good condition. Those on the Oaks can be bumpy and the speed seems to vary from day to day. But the course management appears to try to keep it up as best they can.
Pace of play is a crap shoot. There seem to be some favored groups that are regularly able to get inserted into the schedule that can back things up in the morning. And the course marshals never do anything about making sure people don't dawdle as they make their way around. You can certainly tell it's a municipal course and not a privately operated public course.
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Played The Oaks course. Nice course with some challenging holes and some small greens. Gave it a 3 only because the greens were aereated recently and top dressed with sand and they didn't tell us. More sand than the beaches! Made putting impossible. Very disappointed they didn't tell us before teeing off.