Florida is often considered an underwhelming place to play golf. Sure, it’s fun to wear shorts in February, but good golf terrain has movement, and bland, flat marsh doesn’t have the same cachet as wind-swept cliffs overlooking the Pacific. The Sunshine State stereotype is a course surrounded by retirement homes that looks as if it just rolled off the production line. The state has more than 1,200 courses, the most in the US, but just three on Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses list.

That’s a lot of mediocre links—and yet it isn’t enough. More courses opened in the US last year than any time in over a decade, according to the National Golf Foundation, and almost a third of them were in Florida. NGF says the state has 16 new course projects under construction or in planning, twice as many as any other state.