Why does a summer storm shut Sandhill down while courses with continuous cart paths can switch to Cart Path Only and keep running? If you golf in The Villages, you have probably run into this exact confusion on a summer afternoon. The course you played last week closes at the first sign of a downpour. The one you played yesterday barely slows down.
The answer has nothing to do with drainage quality or how much your neighborhood pays in amenity fees. It comes down to a construction detail almost nobody outside the district office had reason to know about until this year, and the fix for it is already underway.
Forty-four courses, three original exceptions
The Villages runs 44 executive golf courses, and before the extension projects, three of them lacked a cart path running the full length of every hole. Sandhill's fifth hole, Longleaf's third, and Lowlands' second are par fours where the paved path stopped short and picked back up closer to the green.
Before the extension projects, three of the 44 executive courses in The Villages lacked continuous cart paths on every hole, according to Assistant District Manager Bruce Brown. That gap sounds minor until you understand what it does during a storm. On a course with a continuous path, staff can call a "Cart Path Only" rule the moment the ground gets soft. Carts stay paved, players keep moving, and the course stays open. Before the extensions, Sandhill, Longleaf, and Lowlands lacked continuous paths on the affected holes, so the only option left was to shut the whole course down.
Before the extensions, the three courses without continuous paths also ran smaller groups than courses with continuous paths. Where continuous-path courses allowed up to four carts per group, the district capped those three below that number to limit wear from carts crossing the same unpaved ground repeatedly.
What $201,405 actually buys
In February 2026, the Project Wide Advisory Committee approved spending to close that gap for good. The Sandhill extension runs $59,390. Longleaf costs $80,090, the most expensive of the three because of the length of path needed. Lowlands comes in at $61,925. Altogether, the district committed $201,405 to finish paving those final stretches.
Before the extensions, the difference between courses with and without continuous paths was:
| Courses with a continuous cart path (41 of 44, before the extensions) | Sandhill, Longleaf, Lowlands (before their extensions) | |
|---|---|---|
| Wet-weather rule | Shift to Cart Path Only and keep playing | No path-only option, so the course closes outright |
| Carts per group | Up to four | Capped below four to protect turf |
| What golfers see after rain | Path flags go up, tee times continue | A closed gate until the ground firms back up |
Once the remaining two projects finish, every executive course in The Villages will have the same wet-weather option.
The debate over the extensions
Not everyone on the committee thought the spending made sense. Supervisor Dale Martin, who represents Community Development District 12, raised a practical objection. Once golfers pass the green tee on these par-four holes, carts tend to leave the path and cross onto the fairway anyway, which makes a strict path-only rule hard to enforce even after the pavement is finished. Martin argued the extensions might see rare use and questioned whether the cost was justified.
Director of Executive Golf Maintenance Donald Jones offered the counterargument that carried the vote: the request originated from resident feedback, and repeated cart traffic funneling down the same unpaved routes was already wearing grooves into the turf regardless of weather. The paths were approved to solve two problems at once, storm closures and everyday wear, not just the rain issue alone.
Where the money landed first
Lowlands was first in line. The course closed March 16, 2026 and reopened April 13 after crews finished a full bunker refresh alongside the cart path extension on hole two. That means Lowlands has been running under the new rules since mid-April, several months now. If you have played it recently and noticed carts staying on pavement through a wet afternoon that would have closed the course a year ago, that is the project at work.
Sandhill and Longleaf have not had a public closure date announced as of this writing. Both are funded and approved, so residents who golf those two courses regularly are the ones most likely to still hit a full closure the next time a storm rolls through this summer.
Not every closed sign means the same thing
Worth knowing before you assume every "closed" listing is rain-related: The Villages closes courses for planned turf work constantly, and those closures have nothing to do with cart paths. Turtle Mound shut down on July 24, 2026 for a complete renovation with a planned reopening in spring 2027, a closure that is still in effect today. That same week, Red Fox, Sweetgum, and Loblolly each closed briefly for rest and rehabilitation, aerification, and turf maintenance, and all three have since reopened. Roosevelt is next, scheduled to close this month with construction wrapping in December and a reopening also targeted for spring 2027.
In July 2026, an Amenity Authority Committee member asked district staff about the Hawkes Bay closure, which had been publicly listed as "rest and rehabilitation." An internal email later surfaced describing a sinkhole as a geologic anomaly discovered by the mowing crew. Reopening was delayed while crews packed the area with grout.
How to actually check before you load the cart
None of this requires guesswork if you check the right place before heading out.
- Golf management makes its wet-weather call by 7 a.m. and posts it on GolfTheVillages.com the same morning.
- WVLG carries the same closure announcements, useful if you are already in the cart and not near a screen.
- If a course you know well shows a closure with no storm in the forecast, it is worth a quick look at the district's closure list rather than assuming rain is the cause.
The distinction between Sandhill and Longleaf, which still lack continuous paths, and the other 42 courses will not matter much longer. Once the paving crews finish the last two projects, all 44 executive courses will have a continuous-path option for wet weather.
Understanding a community down to the hole-by-hole level like this is exactly the kind of local detail that shapes how someone experiences life in The Villages long before it ever shows up in a listing description. If you are weighing a move here, or thinking about what your own Villages home might be worth in a market that keeps evolving one course, one town square, and one committee meeting at a time, Martha Ridgway brings that same level of attention to every conversation. Reach out anytime to talk through what is actually happening in your neighborhood, not just what the listing sheet says.
