Apogee is a word borrowed from the sky. It names the furthest or highest point, a word that belongs to satellites and space travel, and it has become the ethos of the entire club. Michael Pascucci and Stephen Ross set out to build something in Indiantown, Florida that would sit above the ordinary: a "six-star destination," an ultra-luxury golf experience with the highest level of amenities. It is fitting, then, that the South Course began with ground that had no height at all. The site was dead flat, the kind of Florida land that offers a golf architect little but horizon. Tommy Fazio, nephew of Tom Fazio, and Mike Davis, the former CEO of the USGA, answered it by digging. Massive lakes were carved out of the property, and the dirt they produced, millions of cubic yards of it, was moved and shaped into something the land had never been. The fairways are wide and heave with movement. The bunkers are audacious and visually stimulating. Long views open across rolling terrain, and the features are large enough that the whole place carries a sense of grandness. It stands as an argument that, with modern construction, anything you can dream up can become a reality. There is a particular pressure in that dream. Apogee is a private megaplex, and the South is not alone on the property. Gil Hanse's West Course came first, and a Kyle Phillips design shares the land as well. Davis was managing the entire project on behalf of the owners, and his name is on this course. Fazio, building beside architects with more celebrated resumes, had every reason to feel the extra motivation of that company. The South is what that ambition looks like when it is pressed into the earth. What sets it apart is how plainly it speaks. Where the West leans on visual deception and creative ground contouring to build its strategy, the South plays more out in front of you. You can see what you are being asked to do. Both nines return to the clubhouse, and the routing works inside a series of lakes that border or surround the eighteen holes. Unlike the Phillips design, where the water comes into play, here it is kept to the periphery, but the periphery is never far. On the front nine it waits on the left for the errant miss. On the back nine the threat switches sides, and it is the miss to the right that will give you the most trouble. It is a simple idea, and it gives each nine its own temperament: the same lakes, a different fear. The bunkering is eclectic in the best sense. Expansive, waste-like hazards sprawl across the ground, while elsewhere steep, sharp-edged bunkers cut into the turf in the manner of those at Augusta National. One kind invites the eye to wander; the other asks for precision. Together they keep the round lively. The inward stretch from 15 to 18 looks to be where the course reaches its own apogee. Forced carries appear, and they reward the golfer willing to take the risk. The 15th has the look of a proper three-shot par 5, with a plethora of options for how to play it. This closing run promises to be some of the most stunning ground on the property. For all its scale, the South is playable and super fun, a departure from the typical flat Florida golf the landscape once seemed to promise. Whether it can stand with the big boys in Florida is a question the coming years will answer as the course comes fully into its own. And Fazio's work at Apogee reaches beyond it. He is also building a par-4 course, likely the first dedicated effort of its kind, a very interesting concept that furthers the variety at this ever-expanding complex. But the South is his statement. A flat piece of Florida, dug down into lakes and lifted into rolling ground, turned into something grand by people with something to prove.