The Copperhead is the best resort course in the Tampa Bay market and one of the most respected tournament layouts in the Southeast. It hosts the PGA Tour’s Valspar Championship every year, it’s been ranked in Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Courses, and the finishing stretch known as the Snake Pit is among the most discussed three-hole closing runs in professional golf. Playing it as a Lodge guest is the closest most golfers will ever get to teeing it up on a Tour-level stage.
The History
E. Lawrence Packard designed all four courses at Innisbrook, building the complex between 1969 and 1973 on what was then an undeveloped stretch of Pinellas County land in Palm Harbor, northwest of Tampa. The Copperhead was his masterpiece, a layout built on genuinely rolling terrain unusual for the Florida Gulf Coast, with pine-lined fairways, sinkhole-fed lakes, and elevation changes that give the course a character more reminiscent of the Carolina sand hills than any typical Florida resort. Golf Digest ranked it among the 100 Greatest Courses in the country for twelve years from 1977 through 1990, and it has consistently held a top-40 spot in Florida’s best course rankings ever since.
The PGA Tour’s Tampa Bay Classic launched at Copperhead in 2000 and has run annually under various sponsorship banners, most recently as the Valspar Championship. The tour professionals who play Copperhead every spring consistently rank it among the best resort courses on their annual schedule, and the wildlife that inhabits the property, fox squirrels, bald eagles, ospreys, alligators, and blue herons visible from multiple fairways, reinforces a feel that no real estate or development interrupts the natural setting.
The Golf
The Copperhead plays to 7,209 yards from the back tees as a par 71, with the tournament setup stretching it toward 7,300 yards. The front nine opens with a demanding par-4 before the par-4 3rd, named Narrow Neck, plays through a fairway flanked on both sides by ponds with almost no margin for error. The tree-lined corridors and rolling fairways demand accuracy off the tee throughout, and the premium is on placement rather than raw distance.
The Snake Pit is what defines the course. Holes 16, 17, and 18 close the round with three of the most demanding finishing holes at any resort in Florida. The par-4 16th, named Moccasin, is heavily water-defended. The par-3 17th, Rattler, plays long over a pond to a green that punishes any shot that misses short. The par-4 18th, Copperhead itself, is a long uphill hole with one of the most heavily bunkered greens on the course, demanding a precise approach to a target that looks small from the fairway after a tiring round. Tour professionals lose tournaments in the Snake Pit every April. Resort guests find out why.
Want to play the Valspar Championship course on your next Florida trip? Coastal Golfaway has been packaging stay-and-play golf vacations since 1986. Reach out and we’ll put it together.
