Tampa's City Golf Courses

The City of Tampa owns three public golf courses, Rocky Point, Babe Zaharias and Rogers Park, and the Tampa Sports Authority manages all three.

None of the three was laid out by the city. Rocky Point began as the Tampa Automobile Club's links, according to the Florida Historic Golf Trail, Babe Zaharias began as the Forest Hills course of a 1920s North Tampa development, and Rogers Park began as a volunteer project on land that Garfield Devoe Rogers donated to the City of Tampa. The federal government handed Rocky Point to the city in 1953, and the city reopened Babe Zaharias under her name in 1974.

Day-to-day operation belongs to the Tampa Sports Authority. A City of Tampa news release from September 27, 2024 describes the authority as a special district that was created in 1965 by Governor Haydon Burns to plan and maintain sports and recreational facilities for the Tampa Bay area, and states that the Tampa Sports Authority still manages Babe Zaharias Golf Course today along with Rocky Point Golf Course, Rogers Park Golf Course and Raymond James Stadium. All three courses have their own pages on the Florida Department of State's Florida Historic Golf Trail.

Rocky Point became a Tampa city course in 1953, when the federal government, which had taken it over for Drew Army Airfield in 1941, turned the property over to the city for $1.

It is also the oldest of the three. According to its Florida Historic Golf Trail history, the Tampa Automobile Club accepted the offer of John H. Drew in 1910 to buy one and a half acres for a clubhouse and 100 acres for golf links at Rocky Point, and hired Atlanta golf expert F.G. Byrd, the 1910 Southern Golf Champion, to design an 18-hole course. Nine holes were opened for play in 1912, and the 18-hole, 5,303 yard layout was completed in 1913. In December 1915 the course hosted the first statewide amateur tournament of the newly formed Florida State Golf Association, and in 1917 the club renamed itself the Rocky Point Golf Club.

The course carries two notable golf stories from the 1920s and 1930s. On April 24, 1926, architect A.W. Tillinghast, in Tampa to build the Davis Islands Country Club course, played Rocky Point with a single mid iron and shot 90. In 1931 Ed Dudley, a former Rocky Point caddy and head professional, won the Western Open by four strokes over Walter Hagen.

World War II ended the private club. The Golf Trail records that in 1941 the federal government took over the course and closed it for use as part of Drew Army Airfield, reopening it two years later to officers, enlisted men and the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps at Drew Field. In 1953 the government turned the property over to the City of Tampa for $1. A private lessee holding a 25-year lease reopened it in 1954, and the course grew from 18 holes to 27 in the early 1960s; when that lease expired in 1978, the city gave operations to the Tampa Sports Authority, and the course was redesigned back to 18 holes five years later.

Babe Zaharias Golf Course opened in 1926 as Forest Hills, passed to the Zaharias couple around 1949 or 1950, and reopened as a city course named for Babe in 1974.

The course began as part of a 1920s land development in North Tampa. The Hillsborough County historical marker states that the course, first called Northside Country Club and soon renamed Forest Hills, was designed in 1925 by J. Franklin Meehan as part of the higher-end community developed by Burks L. Hammer, and that the Grand Tudor Revival clubhouse, built in 1926, was the community anchor amid golf, tennis, and stables. The Florida Historic Golf Trail spells the developer as the B. L. Hamner Organization and describes a 2,000 acre development that was to feature two 18-hole courses, of which only Forest Hills was built.

Its namesake is Mildred Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911 to 1956). The county marker records that in the 1932 Olympics she set the world record in the javelin, won gold in the 80-meter hurdles and took silver in the high jump; that she and Patty Berg co-founded the LPGA in 1949; and that she set a 72-hole record in the 1951 Tampa Open. The official accounts differ on the purchase: the marker says George Zaharias bought Forest Hills in 1949, the City of Tampa's 2024 release says Babe bought it in 1949, and the Golf Trail says the couple bought it in 1950, the year Babe became the winter golf professional, and renamed it the Tampa Golf and Country Club.

After her death in 1956 the course was abandoned for years. The Golf Trail states that in 1974 the City of Tampa reopened the golf course and named it in her honor, and the county marker adds that the city completed a rehabilitation project sensitive to the original design. Today it is an 18-hole, par-70 course with four sets of tees from 4,800 to 6,000 yards, and its front nine is called the Babe and its back nine the George. The City of Tampa reported in September 2024 that the course had completed a $1,000,000 renovation of all 18 greens and the practice putting green, installing new TifEagle greens and greenside bunkers at 11412 Forest Hills Drive.

Rogers Park Golf Course is on the National Register because its original site holds the course Willie Black and fellow Black caddies built for golfers barred from white-owned facilities in the segregated South.

That is how the Florida Department of State described the Rogers Park site in 2015, when it announced the listing: the course encompasses the work of Willie Black, an African-American caddie and golfer who designed and expanded the golf course for local residents who were otherwise barred from white-owned facilities in the segregated south. The same announcement says Garfield Devoe Rogers, a prominent African-American businessman for whom the park is named, donated the land.

The Florida Historic Golf Trail states that the park was dedicated in 1951, and that Tampa Mayor Curtis Hixon gave permission to a group of Black caddies, who worked at Palma Ceia Country Club to build a 9-hole golf course at Rogers Park. The work was led by Willie Black of Albany, Georgia, who directed volunteers to remove trees and shape the land by hand and became the first head golf professional when the nine holes were completed in 1952.

Accounts of the early dates differ. The Department of State in 2015 said Black built the first nine holes in 1947 and that the course opened in 1952 and reached 18 holes two years later; the Golf Trail says nine more holes were added on an adjacent parcel to the west in 1961. Both agree that after desegregation the course drew amateur and professional golfers from around the country, and the Golf Trail dates that desegregation to 1963. The Golf Trail adds that the City of Tampa gave management to the newly formed Tampa Sports Authority in 1976, which began a $400,000 renovation designed by Ron Garl, followed by a $4 million renovation from 2000 and a new clubhouse in 2002. The Tampa Sports Authority timeline gives a different year, recording that in 1978 the authority took over Babe Zaharias, Rocky Point and Rogers Park from the City of Tampa. In November 2014 the original Rogers Park Golf Course site became the fourth golf course in Florida listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

All three Tampa city courses play 18 holes today, with Babe Zaharias the shortest at par 70 and Rocky Point and Rogers Park both par 71.

The table follows the Florida Historic Golf Trail's course pages. Rocky Point has many areas reserved for wildlife habitat and bird sanctuaries, plus a full driving range, pro shop and full service restaurant. Babe Zaharias is a short course that plays very tight through the tree-lined Forest Hills neighborhood. Rogers Park has a Toptracer practice range, is home to the First Tee of Tampa Bay, and has a nine-hole, par 27 short course of 751 yards between its 12th, 13th and 16th holes, built in a collaboration between the City of Tampa, the Tampa Sports Authority, the Tampa YMCA and First Tee, Tampa Bay.

Rogers Park also has the largest footprint. A Department of State release from September 9, 2019, when Rogers Park was the Florida Historic Golf Trail course of the month, describes a 160-acre golf facility surrounded on three sides by the Hillsborough River, away from homes and busy streets. Its street address sits on North Willie Black Drive, the road that carries its builder's name.

Babe Zaharias carries a Hillsborough County historical marker erected in 2023, and Rogers Park has a City of Tampa proclamation for its historical marker dedication in 2024.

Hillsborough County reports that the Babe Zaharias Golf Course marker was erected in 2023 by the Hillsborough County Historical Advisory Council and the Forest Hills Neighborhood Association at 11412 N. Forest Hills Drive. Its two sides cover her Olympic and LPGA career and the history of Forest Hills, including the city's rehabilitation of the course before its 1974 reopening.

For Rogers Park, the City of Tampa posted a proclamation titled Rogers Park Golf Course Historical Marker Dedication Day, dated Friday, October 4, 2024 on the city's site. That marker adds to the course's 2014 National Register listing, while Rocky Point's history, from the Tampa Automobile Club to Drew Army Airfield, is told on the state's Florida Historic Golf Trail.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the three Tampa course pages on the Florida Historic Golf Trail, the Hillsborough County Babe Zaharias marker page, two City of Tampa pages and two Florida Department of State releases on Rogers Park, and the Tampa Sports Authority timeline.