David McLay Kidd’s new course is now welcoming its first preview rounds and giving golfers another reason to stay, return and keep the conversation going.
Bone Valley is Ready to Join Streamsong's Best Argument
By Brendon R. Elliott, PGA
Golf Industry Veteran, Award Winning PGA Coach, Golf Writer & Storyteller
The first argument at Bone Valley may begin before the first drink arrives.
A golfer will walk into Bone Valley Tavern after 18 holes and announce that Streamsong’s newest course is now his favorite. Someone else will defend Red. Another will make the case for Blue. Black will have a loyalist nearby, ready to enter the discussion.
I have heard plenty of those debates over the years. Golfers rarely begin by talking about architecture. Someone says, “I should have played that hole differently,” and the rest of the table jumps in. Bone Valley should give them plenty to talk about.
David McLay Kidd is counting on this.
Kidd has said his measure of success would be golfers sitting in the bar after their rounds arguing about which Streamsong course is better, with some insisting Bone Valley belongs at the top.
It is difficult to imagine a more fitting goal for Streamsong’s fourth full-length course.
Limited preview play has begun, with the official grand opening scheduled for Jan. 26, 2027. Bone Valley will join Streamsong Red, Blue and Black, along with the 19-hole Chain, on a property that has spent more than a decade showing golfers a side of Florida they did not know was here.
The new course adds 18 holes. What it really brings is another way to experience the land, another reason to return and another story for golfers to carry home.
A Name That Was Here First
The name Bone Valley was not created for a golf course. It was waiting beneath it.
Long before a tee was built or a flag was placed, this part of Central Florida sat beneath a shallow prehistoric sea. Sand and sediment collected over millions of years, preserving remains of marine life, mammals and reptiles. The region became one of North America’s richest fossil beds and eventually took on a name that described exactly what rested below the surface.
Bone Valley.
Phosphate mining later gave the land another life. It moved earth, created lakes and helped produce the sandy ridges, bowls and changes in elevation that still surprise golfers when they first arrive at Streamsong. Mosaic eventually saw a future for its reclaimed property that went well beyond its industrial past.
Red and Blue opened in 2012. Black followed. The Chain later brought a shorter, more playful kind of golf to the resort. Each new course found a different way to use ground that never looked like the Florida golf most players knew.
Now the land’s old name belongs to its newest course. The alligator-skeleton logo makes the connection impossible to miss. It brings together prehistoric Florida and the wildness that remains part of the modern property. The mark feels distinctive because it could not have come from a branding session held anywhere else.
The logo belongs to this exact piece of Central Florida. So does the course.
David McLay Kidd Finds His Own Ground
Kidd arrived at Streamsong with a challenge most architects would welcome and few ever receive.
He was given extraordinary land, but he was also joining Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. Each had already created a course with its own personality. Golfers do not leave Streamsong saying they played three versions of the same idea. They remember Red, Blue and Black separately.
Bone Valley had to feel like part of Streamsong without becoming a collection of borrowed traits.
The routing begins and ends at the clubhouse it shares with Black, then moves into its own portion of the property between Black and Red. Wetlands influence the opening and closing stretches. Broad sand, natural bowls, ridgelines and exposed ground carry the course through sections that change in scale and mood.
The design asks golfers to look beyond the center of the fairway, and the second hole offers an early example. There is room from the tee, but that room begins to disappear when a player becomes more aggressive. Push the drive farther and the landing area tightens. The bold play is available. It simply asks the golfer to hit the shot he or she just chose.
My coaching background probably makes me notice these choices more than most. On the second hole, I would want a player to look beyond the available yardage and study where the drive needs to finish. The longest tee shot may leave a poor angle into the green. Taking a little less from the tee could give the golfer much more to work with on the next shot.
Bone Valley’s greens bring another change. They are smaller than golfers may expect after playing elsewhere at Streamsong, but the approaches are not limited to shots flying directly at the flag. Contours, shelves, humps and kicker slopes keep the ground involved. Golfers who can see and trust a running route may find answers that do not appear on a yardage device.
Most golfers will leave Bone Valley with one or two holes still bothering them. Maybe the wind fooled them, or they attacked a flag from the wrong side. The next time around, they will have a plan. Whether that plan survives the second round is part of the fun.
Sometimes they are even right.
One More Course Means More Time Together
I returned to Streamsong a few weeks ago with my father and brother. We played Red, stayed at the Lodge and walked 13 holes of The Chain the following morning.
There was good golf during those two days. There was also a weather delay, a long family putt none of us will forget, dinner, laughter and the easy retelling of shots that improved a little each time the story was told.
What stayed with me most was the time between those shots.
Streamsong gives a golf trip room to breathe. The outside noise starts to fall away on the drive into the property. Once the bags are unloaded, the day becomes simpler. There is the round ahead, the people sharing it and whatever comes afterward. Bone Valley adds more of that time.
For golfers visiting Streamsong for the first time, four full-length courses create a wonderful problem. Red, Blue, Black or Bone Valley? Which one comes first? Which course fits the group? How many days will it take to play everything?
For returning guests, the decision is easier. Bone Valley becomes the reason to bring the group back together. That may become one of the course’s most important contributions to the resort. It extends the trip without making it feel padded, gives golfers a fresh course to anticipate and changes the answer when someone asks how long a Streamsong visit should last.
Stay one more night. Play one more round. Give the trip another day to become something the group will still be talking about years later.
The Next Streamsong Story Has Begun
Preview play is underway at Bone Valley, and attention has quickly followed. Golfers are studying the routing, photographing the views and beginning to compare Kidd’s work with the courses already here.
That is part of the fun, but the course will become real through smaller details.
The first ball to chase down a slope toward a tucked hole location. The first match turned by a brave line on the back nine. The first guest who walks into the clubhouse certain he left two shots somewhere on the course and equally certain he knows where to find them next time.
Those are the moments that give a course a life beyond its opening date.
Streamsong’s story has always been tied to what the land can become. Ground once covered by prehistoric water later supported an industry. Reclamation opened another possibility. Golf architects arrived and found holes in places most people would never have thought to look.
Bone Valley now continues that story under the name the land carried all along.
Golfers can now walk it, study it, misread it, solve parts of it and leave other questions for another trip.
By dinner, someone will insist Bone Valley is the best course at Streamsong.
Someone else will smile, take a sip and begin making the case for Red.
Kidd will have his answer.
