There is something about Streamsong that brings out my best golf.
Maybe it is the drive into the property, when ordinary Central Florida gives way to something that looks imported from another continent. Maybe it is the sand, water, and long horizons creating enough space for the mind to quiet down. Or maybe it is the history I have here. I have celebrated more than one birthday at Streamsong, and each return feels less like checking into a resort than reopening a favorite book.
This visit came with a new chapter.
I had the opportunity to play a preview round on Bone Valley, the new David McLay Kidd design that will become Streamsong’s fourth regulation 18-hole course. There is also The Chain, the resort’s brilliant short course by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, so Bone Valley is properly described as Streamsong’s fifth course. Numbers, however, do not explain what its arrival really means.
The timing added another layer. The day before our round, six of Barstool Sports’ biggest trash talkers had turned Bone Valley into the stage for a live-streamed, two-team Grudge Match. By the time I arrived, the noise had moved on. I met the course on quieter terms, scorecard in hand and with no idea that I was about to play one of my best back nines of the year.
For years, Streamsong Black has occupied its own world on the far side of the property. I have always enjoyed that separation. Black feels big, bold and wonderfully strange, a course with enough room to make a golfer feel both liberated and very small. But it also felt alone.
It does not anymore.
Bone Valley begins and ends at the clubhouse it shares with Black before pushing into a distinct piece of the property. Black is no longer an outpost. Streamsong now has a second golf campus and a 36-hole pairing with enough contrast to make each course more interesting.
That realization stayed with me throughout the day. So did the golf. I shot 84, one of my better rounds of the year, but the number that best tells the story is 39. After working through the front nine in 45, I found my rhythm and played the back in three over par.
That is a satisfying way to finish any round. On a course this new, with contours and questions I was seeing for the first time, it felt even better.
A Name Beneath the Surface
Bone Valley sounds like a name created for a golf course, especially one whose logo is a skeletal alligator. In reality, the name was here long before the first fairway.
Much of Central Florida was once covered by a shallow prehistoric sea. The phosphate deposits that later made this region economically important also preserved ancient remains. Fossils found during construction included shark teeth, mammal bones, and even a megalodon tooth.
Streamsong exists because this land was mined and reclaimed. Its dunes, bowls, lakes and sandy expanses are a remarkable second life for an industrial landscape.
Bone Valley’s name acknowledges both histories. Its skeletal-alligator logo connects prehistoric Florida to the animal that still defines the state’s wild character. This is a course named for what lies beneath it.
Kidd’s routing follows ridgelines, bowls, wetlands, and exposed sand. The opening and closing stretches interact with water. Elsewhere, the land becomes broader and drier. At times it carries the scale of Black. At others, its movement feels closer to the original Streamsong courses.
The result is recognizably Streamsong without feeling assembled from leftover pieces of Red, Blue, Black or The Chain. It belongs here, but it has its own voice.
The Golfer Comes First
David McLay Kidd designed the original course at Bandon Dunes, helping prove that golfers would travel to a remote place for an authentic, walking-centered experience. His later work includes Gamble Sands and Mammoth Dunes, courses celebrated for width, playability and fun. That last word matters.
Kidd has spoken candidly about the evolution of his design philosophy. Earlier in his career, like many architects of his generation, he became absorbed by resistance to scoring and the idea that difficulty conferred seriousness. He eventually reconsidered whom an architect truly serves. The answer was not a critic, a ranking panel or even the person writing the check. It was the golfer.
Kidd describes his more recent philosophy through the “green-light hole.” Rather than frightening players into defensive swings, he wants to build confidence and encourage aggression. That does not surrender challenge. It lets golfers keep playing, recover, and occasionally earn a memorable score.
Bone Valley expresses that philosophy through width and choice. A broad fairway is not automatically an easy fairway. Width becomes interesting when one side offers a safer route while another creates a better angle into the green. The golfer receives room, then has to decide how to use it.
The second hole is a strong early example. There is space from the tee, but the farther a player pushes the drive, the more the landing area tightens. Aggression can create an advantage, but it has a price. Those decisions continue throughout the routing. Safer lines keep the ball moving. Bolder lines can open an approach or shorten a hole. The golfer participates rather than merely survives.
That distinction may help explain my own scorecard. A 45 on the front could have turned into a forgettable day. Bone Valley never made the round feel lost. There were still shots into greens, angles to find and chances to recover. I was able to reset, play the back nine in 39, and walk away feeling that I had learned something about both the course and my game.
Kidd has said that scoring and recovery produce more fun. My card offered convincing evidence.
Smaller Targets and More Imagination
The obvious comparison is Streamsong Black, but Bone Valley does not try to out-Black Black.
Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner designed Black at a monumental scale. Its fairways can appear almost limitless, and its putting surfaces can feel like landscapes unto themselves. Bone Valley shares some of that visual breadth, especially in the exposed sand and long views, but the green complexes bring the experience back into focus.
During a media tour, Kidd reportedly joked that Bone Valley’s largest green would rate only a “five out of ten” on a Streamsong Black scale. Bone Valley’s targets are generally smaller, but slopes, shelves, humps and banks create different ways to reach them.
The ground game is part of the everyday strategy. A player can use a contour to feed the ball toward a flag, choose a lower route, or recover without manufacturing a towering shot. The best option changes with the wind, the hole location, and the player’s confidence.
This is where playability and challenge coexist. Bone Valley provides room, but it does not always reveal the ideal shot. A line that looked conservative may prove awkward. A route that appeared dangerous may be the most useful.
The closing stretch returns to the wetlands for a fitting final exam. By then, the course has taught the player how it wants to be approached. For me, those holes also carried the energy of a good score coming together. Bone Valley was still in its preview era, fresh and settling into itself. My 39 on the back became part of my first memory of it.
Streamsong Black Has Neighbor
The most important contribution Bone Valley makes to Streamsong may be larger than any individual hole.
Red and Blue have always been natural companions. Black never had that.
Its physical separation gave it independence, but a trip to Black felt like an excursion away from the main current of the resort. Bone Valley changes the equation. The shared clubhouse now becomes the center of a legitimate second act, with two regulation courses that offer sharply different experiences.
Black is vast, extroverted, and sometimes surreal. Bone Valley is more directed, using width to demand specific decisions. Black’s enormous greens ask golfers to solve problems after hitting the green. Bone Valley asks them to earn the proper angle before they get there. Together, they are better.
A 36-hole day on Black and Bone Valley should have the variety that defines a great golf trip. The scenery remains connected, but the questions change. One course expands the canvas. The other edits it.
Streamsong Black no longer feels lonely.
Streamsong Enters Another Conversation
Streamsong was already exceptional. Red by Coore and Crenshaw, Blue by Doak, Black by Hanse and Wagner, and The Chain form a collection few resorts can match.
Bone Valley adds David McLay Kidd to that roster. More important than the names is the variety. A golfer can spend several days at Streamsong without encountering the same architectural conversation twice.
The Final Score
Great destinations are not simply collections of highly ranked courses. Their measure is the depth of the experience, the quality of the contrasts and the desire to plan a return before the first trip has ended.
Bone Valley strengthens every part of that argument. It gives the resort another full-length course without diluting what made Streamsong special. It gives Black a partner. It turns a remote clubhouse into another hub. It lengthens the ideal trip and makes choosing a favorite even more difficult.
I came to preview a golf course. I left feeling that I had watched a golf destination become more complete.
The scorecard is now on my desk. It shows 45 going out, 39 coming home, and 84 at the bottom. Years from now, those numbers will help me remember a day when Streamsong once again brought out some of my best golf. But they will also remind me of the first time I saw Black with a neighbor and realized that my favorite golf destination in Florida had moved onto an even larger stage.
Bone Valley is new. Somehow, it already feels essential.