Old Marsh Golf Club

Old Marsh Golf Club is a private, guard-gated community in Palm Beach Gardens built around a Pete Dye championship golf course set inside 456 acres of protected wetlands. Established in 1987, the community holds just 184 single-family homes, making it one of the lowest-density golf club communities in Palm Beach County. Membership at Old Marsh is an equity club, offered by invitation only, and the club has intentionally kept its membership roll small since its founding.

Old Marsh comes up in conversations with buyers who want golf course living without the scale of a large club community. It is a quieter, more understated address than some of the bigger-name clubs nearby, and that is very much by design. I am happy to walk you through what ownership and membership look like here and how it compares to other golf communities in the Palm Beach Gardens area.

Golf

The golf course at Old Marsh was designed by Pete Dye and opened in 1987 on a 440-acre site that Dye himself described as reminiscent of the marshes and grasslands of Africa. Rather than the flat, engineered look common to South Florida courses, Old Marsh sits low against its wetland surroundings, with holes forming a continuous string of isolated land paths through natural and constructed marshland. The course plays to 7,039 yards from the tips with a slope rating of 152. Golf Digest has ranked Old Marsh among Florida's best courses continuously since it opened, including inside the state's top 10 from 1991 to 1997 and inside the top 15 for most of the 2000s and 2010s. It is currently ranked 26th in Florida on Golf Digest's 2025-'26 Best in State list. The club maintains a traditional caddie program and does not use tee time sheets, a deliberate choice that reflects its purist approach to the game.

Environment & Conservation

Old Marsh became a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary in April 1998 through Audubon International's education and certification program, and it continues to hold that designation today. Untouched wetlands border the community on three sides, and roughly 20 percent of the community's 456 acres is marshland. The course's drainage system was engineered so that irrigation and stormwater run into canals and retention ponds rather than into the surrounding wetlands, and fairway and rough treatments never reach the natural marsh. The result is a working habitat for a wide range of wildlife, most visibly the Florida sandhill crane, along with ibis, egrets, herons, and other species that share the property with golfers and residents. The conservation design was a defining part of the course's construction and remains one of the community's most distinctive features today, verified accurate as of July 3, 2026.

Clubhouse & Amenities

The Old Marsh clubhouse offers formal and informal dining, a golf shop, locker facilities, and two Har-Tru tennis courts. The clubhouse also houses a notable collection of antique, handcrafted golf clubs dating back to the mid-1700s, assembled by the club's first and only honorary captain, Laurie Auchterlonie, whose family heritage in the game traces back to the earliest days of the British Open and U.S. Open. The club's caddie program runs seasonally from November through April and is considered one of the defining traditions of membership at Old Marsh.

Membership

Old Marsh operates as an equity club, with membership capped at 275 members and offered by invitation only. The club has intentionally kept the number of memberships limited since it opened in 1987. Verified accurate as of July 3, 2026, the initiation fee is $300,000 with annual dues of $24,600. Outside members are permitted to join. Membership is by invitation and requires an application; Old Marsh does not publicly disclose further specifics of its admission process beyond that.

Real Estate

Homes in Old Marsh currently range from approximately $2.8 million to $12 million, reflecting the community's mix of custom-built residences on half-acre to two-acre home sites, with living space generally between 3,000 and 9,000 square feet. One current listing sits well above this range at $45 million, an outlier estate of nearly 18,000 square feet on approximately two lakefront acres, not representative of typical pricing in the community. In 2023, a fully renovated home on 1.3 acres sold for $11.25 million, the highest sale price recorded in Old Marsh at the time.

Location & Schools

Old Marsh sits at the corner of Hood Road and Jog Road in Palm Beach Gardens, between Donald Ross Road and PGA Boulevard. The location is roughly 20 minutes from Palm Beach International Airport and the Town of Palm Beach, with easy access to PGA Boulevard shopping and dining and The Gardens Mall. Zoned public schools in the Palm Beach County School District include Marsh Pointe Elementary School, Watson B. Duncan Middle School, and William T. Dwyer High School. The Benjamin School, a private pre-K through 12th grade option, is also nearby and used by some families in the area.

Working With Me

If you are considering a home in Old Marsh, I would be glad to talk through what ownership and membership look like here and help you understand how the community compares to other golf clubs in Palm Beach Gardens. Reach out any time to start the conversation.

Seth Mansfield | Douglas Elliman

Frequently Asked Questions