Emerald Dunes Club

Tom Fazio's original 1990 design was immediately well-regarded, ranked among the top five courses in Florida and the top 100 nationally shortly after opening. After the 2005 sale converted the club to private, the new ownership commissioned Fazio to return for a multi-million-dollar renovation, completed around 2011-2012: new championship tees, flash-faced bunkers, widened fairways, reshaped greens, a new irrigation system, roughly 2,000 transplanted mature palms, and cart paths rebuilt in crushed native coquina shell with hand-set pavers. The course plays as a full 18-hole private championship layout with a practice facility (double-ended driving range, chipping green, and putting areas) and is no longer open to public or daily-fee play.

Membership at Emerald Dunes is invitation-only and, per LINKS Magazine, carries an initiation fee that has been reported to approach $700,000 -- one of the steepest in the West Palm Beach private-club market -- though the club does not publish official pricing. Owning a home in one of the surrounding Villas, Links, or Ventura Greens communities does not include or require club membership; the club and the residential HOAs are separate, and membership must be pursued independently through the club's own application/invitation process. The club's ownership itself has changed hands more than once since it went private in 2005 (a 2009 foreclosure and 2010 public auction sale to attorney Steven Rubin, who outbid Donald Trump), which is worth knowing given how much a private club's membership terms and access can shift after a change in ownership.

Three gated sub-communities were built directly around the golf course, generally dating to the mid-to-late 2000s: The Villas at Emerald Dunes (condo floor plans roughly 873-1,390 sq ft, 1-3 bedrooms, with assigned carport/garage parking), The Links at Emerald Dunes (attached one- and two-story townhomes, roughly 1,100-1,607 sq ft, 2-3 bedrooms, attached two-car garages), and Ventura Greens at Emerald Dunes (two-story attached townhomes, roughly 1,845-2,001 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, one-car garages). Each operates under its own HOA; reported monthly HOA fees (from real-estate aggregator estimates, not confirmed association documents) run roughly $180-$271 depending on the sub-community and unit size.

The club itself offers a full-service clubhouse with dining, locker rooms, a member lounge, tennis courts, a fitness center, and a double-ended practice facility -- but these are club amenities tied to membership, not to condo/townhome ownership in the surrounding communities. Separately, the Villas at Emerald Dunes sub-community has its own clubhouse amenities for residents, including a fitness center, billiards room, putting green, and tennis courts -- an example of how the residential HOAs provide their own recreational package independent of the private club next door.

Emerald Dunes sits in West Palm Beach near Palm Beach International Airport, in the same general corridor as several other private clubs researched by US Golf Living, including Ironhorse Country Club and The Wanderers Club in nearby Wellington. Trump International Golf Club, also in West Palm Beach near the airport, is notable for a different reason here: Donald Trump personally bid on Emerald Dunes itself in the 2010 foreclosure auction, though that bid was unsuccessful and the two clubs are unrelated in ownership.