There is a particular courage in building on the ground that others walked past. When Tom Doak and Bill Coore were turned loose across the vast acreage at Streamsong, with a whole landscape of options before them, both men famously settled on the same plot. Their Blue and Red courses opened in 2014. The land to the south, the land neither of them chose, waited. Years later it went to Gil Hanse, and with his design partner Jim Wagner he made Streamsong Black out of it. The course was unveiled in September 2017, opening to the public that autumn after a lengthy grow-in. The setting itself is a story of transformation. Some 55 miles southeast of Tampa, in Polk County, the resort sits within a 16,000-acre site once mined by the Mosaic Corporation for its agricultural operations. The resort was launched in 2010, at the height of the recession, an odd moment to dream about golf. In a short span the place turned from something like an industrial badlands into one of the most progressive, upmarket golf resorts in America. The Black is the latest chapter of that turn. Hanse took the job during a crowded season, while he was also building the Olympic Course in Rio de Janeiro. What he found was plainer ground than his neighbors had been given. Unlike the rest of Streamsong, much of the land beneath the front nine was more silt than sand. So Hanse reached into the heaps of sand that Streamsong had at its disposal and created most of that stretch of holes from it. It is rarely talked about, but it changes how you see the opening holes. The striking par-three 5th, with its massive bunker guarding the front, is not a found thing. It is a made thing. That is the larger answer the Black gives to its plainer land. Where the Red and Blue catch your eye with dramatic dunes, the Black holds your attention with massive features. Eleven acres are given over to putting surfaces and their tightly mown surrounds. Fairways are enormous, and the greens heave and roll with aggressive shaping. Width here is not generosity so much as a question. On many holes the preferred side of the fairway changes drastically as the flag moves, and the tee shot only makes sense once you have looked hard at where the hole is cut. Elevation change is modest and water is kept to a minimum, so the drama comes from the shaping and the card itself. The par is 73, with five par fives, a couple of driveable par fours and a good variety of par threes. The 450-yard 9th asks for a blind approach into a large two-tiered punchbowl green, the kind of shot you hit on faith and walk toward with your heart a little high. The 13th offers two possible greensites and leaves you to puzzle out which one you are really playing to. Then comes the finish. The 205-yard 17th plays to an infinity green that seems to fall away into the sky, and the 586-yard 18th wraps around a small lake before it delivers you to the home green. The Black also refuses to be only a full round. Golfers can play shorter loops of six, nine or twelve holes. Immediately outside the clubhouse lies The Gauntlet, a large putting course. There is also The Roundabout, a free-flowing practice area of green complexes and short holes, which includes an alternate 9th green that offers a shorter way back to the clubhouse. It all adds up to a course that had to invent much of its own character, and did. The land that two great architects passed over became the ground where Hanse built something bold enough to stand beside their work.