Life on the links: Indiana's golf-course communities are in demand.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Indiana Golf

Some have called them "condo canyons"--golf courses with patio-lined fairways and hazards that include not only bunkers but barbecue grills and barking dogs.

That was then. Today's golf-course communities offer plenty of room for golfers and backyard gardeners alike, with corridors plenty wide to keep duffers from landing a drive in a toddler's sandbox. Modern golf-course communities are a relief for both golfers and homeowners.

"I've played some courses where I felt like I had to drive it down a pipe," says Tom Hodkin, general manager of Sagamore Development Co. in Noblesville. Not so at his new Sagamore golf-course community, which is going up around a brand-new Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course. The golf corridors at Sagamore are at least 350 feet wide, and while the majority of the lots will have a golf-course view, homeowners won't find play to be intrusive.

"You need to maintain at least a good 100- to 150-yard corridor for the golf holes in relation to backyards," agrees Craig Wood, general manager of the Quail Crossing golf community in Boonville. Though he hesitates to name names, he can think of a number of earlier Hoosier golf communities that are significantly less roomy.

The design of golf-course communities is, indeed, evolving and maturing, a good thing because such communities represent a large portion of the new golf courses being developed in this country. According to the National Golf Foundation, nearly half of all new courses are associated with residential real estate, a rate that has doubled in the past decade and is clearly reflected in Indiana's most recent developments.

A solid business reality is behind the growing link between golf and real estate. "Land is so expensive," Wood says. "To build a stand-alone course, you can't get the price for your greens fees that you would need to get. You have to offset it with housing."

Wood's course opened in 1997 and is surrounded by more than 200 home sites and 72 sites for townhomes. He's originally from the Evansville area, and he and wife Mamie picked the southwest corner of the state for their golf-community project because "there hadn't been a course developed here for 25 years. Since we built ours, three others have been built here," he says. Mamie Wood, a PGA pro since 1986, is the pro at Quail Grossing. A one-time Indiana University golfer, she has served as pro at a number of Hoosier courses.

Sagamore, the latest entry among Indiana golf communities, is a...