A new golf course midway between Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Florida, will be the area’s first new course opening in more than a decade and a half.

The Stillwater Golf Club, which is being built within the Lennar’s news active adult community between Longleaf Pine Parkway and Greenbriar Road on County Road 210, has about 12 of the 18 holes shaped and irrigated, with sod walls put in. It will be grassed in April.

“We’re pretty far along and the surprise is that the soil is much better than I initially thought,” said course architect Bobby Weed. “It will be fantastic for draining and playability.”

The course, which will be managed by Hampton Golf, will be a par-71, tipping out at around 6,800 yards. The property was already clear-cut for the 549-home development but there are numerous wetlands throughout the course, native areas that Weed said will be left undisturbed and a variety of short and long holes, small to large greens and strategically-place bunkers.

He also said it won’t be a cookie-cutter Florida golf course.

“It’s the first golf course built in St. Johns County so don’t expect a golf course from the past,” said Weed, who has also designed the Slammer & Squire, the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley and done renovations at Timuquana and the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club Ocean and Lagoon courses. “It’s not the same-style golf course. We’ll have things you don’t see on North Florida courses, such as sidewall bunkers, lay-down walls … they will be angled, with a much cleaner, elegant finish.”

Weed also said there will be no rough and no cart paths. Most of the time, carts will be driven through crushed shell areas.

The routing also will lend itself to creative choices by players. It is set up for three-, six-, nine-, 12- and 15-hole loops, with every third hole winding back near the clubhouse. Stillwater will join other area courses such as Blue Sky and The Yards in offering more options than 9- or 18-hole rounds.

There will be five sets of tees, with tifeagle bermuda grass on the greens and tiftough on the fairways.