Deerwood's Golf Course Closes This Fall: Why Three Jacksonville Clubs Aren't on the Same Clock

If you have been cross-shopping golf-course homes in Jacksonville, you have probably noticed that Deerwood, Glen Kernan, and Jacksonville Golf & Country Club keep showing up next to each other. Similar price bands, similar gates, similar country-club amenities. On paper they read like interchangeable comps.

They are not, and the reason has nothing to do with square footage or lot size. Each of these three private clubs is sitting at a different point in the same multi-year renovation cycle, and that timing changes what you are actually buying when you close on a home behind any of their gates. Deerwood's 18-hole course goes dark for construction in October 2026, which is next month. Anyone touring homes there right now needs to understand what that means before, not after, they sign.

One Course Just Finished. One Closes Next Month. One Hasn't Started Yet.

Glen Kernan Golf & Country Club already went through its renovation. The private club, owned by Corner Lot and managed by Hampton Golf, closed its course for a redesign led by 17-time PGA Tour winner Jim Furyk, with input from Ponte Vedra-area professional Cam Smith, who is also a minority investor in the club. The course reopened in September 2025 after a $25 million project that lengthened the back tees by roughly 400 yards to just over 7,200 yards while shortening the forward tees to keep the course playable for a wider range of members.

Deerwood Country Club is next. The course, originally designed by George Cobb in 1960 and renovated once already in 2004, closes for construction in October 2026 and is scheduled to reopen in October 2027. The redesign is led by Erik Larsen, a Ponte Vedra Beach-based architect who spent years as Arnold Palmer's project designer and whose earlier redesign of Atlantic Beach Country Club earned a Golf Digest Best New Course rating. Larsen's plan stretches the course to roughly 7,350 yards and adds a signature shared double green at holes 12 and 14. MacCurrach Golf Construction is building a six-hole short course called The Approach first, so members have somewhere to play while the main 18 is under construction.

Jacksonville Golf & Country Club is furthest out. Members approved a $30 million capital plan called Blueprint for Tomorrow in an April 2025 vote. Construction on the clubhouse and pool is expected to begin next month, in September 2026, with the golf course itself, redesigned by architect Andy Staples, closing in September 2027 for roughly 10 months to a year.

Three clubs, three different points on the same calendar. A buyer who assumes they are shopping three equivalent products is missing the part that actually matters right now.

What "Closed for a Year" Looks Like If You Live There

Deerwood's closure is the one with the most immediate relevance for anyone touring homes today. The club has arranged reciprocal playing privileges at other area courses for the duration, and the short course opened ahead of the closure specifically so members would not go a full year without golf on-site. Deerwood's general manager, C. Thayer Kern, described the short course as intended to be "a social focal point for the membership" during construction, not just a placeholder.

Still, a six-hole short course is not an 18-hole championship layout. A buyer who closes on a Deerwood home this fall and expects to play the club's signature course this winter will instead be looking at a construction site until October 2027. Larsen has talked about the redesign in terms of visual drama, including what he calls a "wow" factor built around the shared double green, and the course has real pedigree behind that ambition. It hosted the PGA Tour's Greater Jacksonville Open seven times between 1967 and 1975, the tournament that eventually became The Players Championship. That history is part of what makes the reopening meaningful. It does not change the fact that the amenity a buyer is paying for will be a construction zone for a full year.

The Bill Always Lands on Somebody

Renovations at this scale do not fund themselves, and the three clubs are handling the cost in different ways that a listing sheet will never spell out.

Jacksonville Golf & Country Club is the most transparent about it, because the cost was disclosed as part of the member vote. Resident golf members were assessed roughly $31,750 and social members roughly $19,150 to fund the $30 million plan. That is real money attached to a real membership category, approved by the people who own the club.

Deerwood operates differently. It has been an equity member-owned club since 1999, when the membership bought the club's assets outright rather than leasing it from an outside owner. That ownership structure means the cost of the current redesign flows through the membership in a way that is less publicly itemized than Jacksonville Golf & Country Club's assessment, but no less real. Glen Kernan is different again. It is owned by Corner Lot and managed by Hampton Golf, an investor-operator model, which means the $25 million renovation cost was absorbed by ownership before the course reopened rather than billed to members after the fact in a single visible assessment.

The practical upshot: whoever owns a home today at Glen Kernan is buying into a finished product where the renovation cost has already been paid by someone else. Whoever buys at Deerwood or Jacksonville Golf & Country Club in the next year is buying into a club still working through that bill.

Reading the Calendar Before You Read the Comps

None of this means one club is a better buy than another. It means the three are not comparable the way a spreadsheet of price per square foot suggests, and the calendar tells you something the comps cannot.

If what you want is a finished golf amenity with the disruption already behind it, Glen Kernan is past its cycle. The course reopened in September 2025, and the renovation cost was already built into ownership's investment rather than sitting ahead of you as a pending assessment.

If your time horizon is longer, Deerwood is worth a closer look precisely because of the timing, not despite it. A buyer comfortable with a construction year and the short course as a bridge is stepping into a club on the front end of a redesign that stretches the course to 7,350 yards and adds one of the more talked-about green complexes in the region, on a property with real tournament history behind it.

Jacksonville Golf & Country Club sits furthest from its own finish line. Clubhouse and pool work starts next month, and the course closure itself does not begin until September 2027, which gives a buyer the most runway before disruption but also the clearest, most quantified cost already on record in the member assessment figures.

When you tour any of these three, ask where the club is on its calendar before you ask what the course looks like today. That single question tells you more about what you are actually buying than the listing photos ever will.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Deerwood members still be able to golf during the closure? Yes. The club has arranged reciprocal playing privileges at other area courses for the duration of construction, and a six-hole short course called The Approach opened ahead of the main course's October 2026 closure specifically to give members somewhere to play on-site.

How much is the Jacksonville Golf & Country Club renovation costing members? Members approved a $30 million plan in April 2025. Resident golf members were assessed roughly $31,750 and social members roughly $19,150 as part of that vote.

Is Glen Kernan's renovation finished? Yes. The course reopened in September 2025 after a $25 million redesign led by Jim Furyk, with input from Cam Smith, and the clubhouse and spa renovations were completed as part of the same project.

Golf-course communities like these rarely trade on price alone, and right now the calendar matters as much as the comps. If you are weighing a purchase in Deerwood, Glen Kernan, or Jacksonville Golf & Country Club, or wondering what a home in any of these communities is actually worth given where its club sits in its renovation cycle, Julie Little Brewer has spent more than 35 years tracking exactly this kind of detail across Jacksonville's private club neighborhoods. Request Your Complimentary Home Valuation and get a read on the market that accounts for more than square footage.