Links Golf Buys Sugarmill Woods Country Club & Southern Woods Golf Club By Brian Weis

Links Golf Buys Sugarmill Woods Country Club & Southern Woods Golf Club

By Brian Weis

Tampa-based Links Golf LLC has just acquired Sugarmill Woods Country Club, Southern Woods Golf Club and Oak Village Bath & Tennis Club from Cabot Citrus Farms of Canada, the new owner of what was World Woods Golf Club in Brooksville.

Links Golf is led by Scott Yates, a 30-year PGA Member/Club Pro, and his wife Penny Parks. Yates has served as the department head, head golf professional, and general manager at nine different properties throughout Southwest Florida, including Lake Jovita, Crescent Oaks, and River Strand.

"I am excited to lead the efforts to restore these storied golf properties and club to the high quality the membership and community deserve," said Yates. Penny and I look forward to creating the best golf experience possible.

Parks is the founder and President of Links Financial, which provides advisory services for businesses, ranging from start-up, finance, restructure, grow and sell companies. She is one of the founders of the Executive Women's Golf Association, which is now the LPGA Amateur Golf Association, and a board member of the Tampa Sports Authority which manages Tampa's municipal golf courses.

Sugarmill Woods Country Club & Southern Woods Golf Club are both located in Homosassa, Florida just off Highway 19. Sugarmill Woods is an 18-hole championship layout designed by Mr. Florida Golf-Ron Garl--with two distinctively different nines that capture the pure essence of Old Florida. Southern Woods Golf Club is a strong test of golf designed by PGA Professional Hale Irwin stretching out to 6,935 yards with 73.0/127 slope rating. Both courses are the centerpiece of residential communities named for the courses.

Revised: 12/20/2022 - Article Viewed 1,718 Times - View Course Profile

About: Brian Weis

Brian Weis is the mastermind behind GolfTrips.com, a vast network of golf travel and directory sites covering everything from the rolling fairways of Wisconsin to the sunbaked desert layouts of Arizona. If there’s a golf destination worth visiting, chances are, Brian has written about it, played it, or at the very least, found a way to justify a "business trip" there.

As a card-carrying member of the Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA), International Network of Golf (ING), Golf Travel Writers of America (GTWA), International Golf Travel Writers Association (IGTWA), and The Society of Hickory Golfers (SoHG), Brian has the credentials to prove that talking about golf is his full-time job. In 2016, his peers even handed him The Shaheen Cup, a prestigious award in golf travel writing—essentially the Masters green jacket for guys who don’t hit the range but still know where the best 19th holes are.

Brian’s love for golf goes way back. As a kid, he competed in junior and high school golf, only to realize that his dreams of a college golf scholarship had about the same odds as a 30-handicap making a hole-in-one. Instead, he took the more practical route—working on the West Bend Country Club grounds crew to fund his University of Wisconsin education. Little did he know that mowing greens and fixing divots would one day lead to a career writing about the best courses on the planet.

In 2004, Brian turned his golf passion into a business, launching GolfWisconsin.com. Three years later, he expanded his vision, and GolfTrips.com was born—a one-stop shop for golf travel junkies looking for their next tee time. Today, his empire spans all 50 states, and 20+ international destinations.

On the course, Brian is a weekend warrior who oscillates between a 5 and 9 handicap, depending on how much he's been traveling (or how generous he’s feeling with his scorecard). His signature move" A high, soft fade that his playing partners affectionately (or not-so-affectionately) call "The Weis Slice." But when he catches one clean, his 300+ yard drives remind everyone that while he may write about golf for a living, he can still send a ball into the next zip code with the best of them.

Whether he’s hunting down the best public courses, digging up hidden gems, or simply outdriving his buddies, Brian Weis is living proof that golf is more than a game—it’s a way of life.