Director of Agronomy at Tiburón Golf Club, Grayson Grainger, and his golf maintenance crew were awarded the 2025 Florida Celebration® Golf Course of the Year for the club’s Gold Course. The honor recognizes talented maintenance professionals who display outstanding maintenance of Celebration, Latitude 36® or NorthBridge® Bermudagrass golf courses and sports fields.
“With all the great golf courses in South Florida that maintain Celebration at an outstanding level, we're very proud to be recognized as one of those,” Grainger said.
The 2025 Florida Celebration® Golf Course of the Year plaque recognizing Tiburón Golf Club’s Gold Course.
Celebration was installed on the Gold Course at Tiburón in 2016 during a renovation and re-grassing. Grainger shared that it was chosen for the deep green color as well as wear and drought tolerance.
Prior to coming to Tiburón in October 2020, Grainger spent his career in the Carolinas, including 13 years as Golf Course Superintendent at the Clubs at St. James in Southport, NC. Originally from a small town near Myrtle Beach, SC, he is a GCSAA Class A Superintendent now living in Naples with his wife Lenzie and son Levi.
Grainger explained the Gold Course at Tiburón has 55 acres of Celebration tees, fairways and approaches with no formal rough and stacked sod bunkers. “It's a very sandy site so drought tolerance is important, especially during the spring when there is little to no rainfall and high temperatures.”
Tiburón Golf Club is home to two Greg Norman-designed courses, the Gold and the Black and is regularly ranked among Florida’s top golf facilities by national golf publications. Tiburón’s Gold Course opened in 1998 and stretches more than 7,300 yards.
He noted one unique aspect of Tiburón is that it hosts two professional tour events just two weeks apart. In November, they host the LPGA CME Group Tour Championship, and in December, the PGA/LPGA Grant Thornton Invitational. The Black Course at Tiburón Golf Club hosted the PGA Tour Champions Chubb Classic in February 2025.
“The deep green color of the Celebration fairways shows well on TV, but it also allows us to really push it hard for the first event and then quickly bounce back and look great for the second event,” he acknowledged.
Tiburón Golf Club named 2025 Celebration® Course of the Year.
When it comes to televised events at the course, Grainger said they don’t do much differently for these tour events. The maintenance crew adjusts timing to ensure the grass peaks at the right time.
He said they could probably be a little more conservative during the fall if they didn’t have those events because it leads into their lowest growth time of the year. But he attributes Mother Nature for giving them the right amount of sun and heat to quickly recover the grass from any stress caused by the events.
Being in South Florida’s high-profile and high-heat setting, Grainger likes Celebration’s ability to hold color well into the winter months when the weather isn’t ideal. “It’s our peak season in South Florida so all the members and guests expect great conditions.”
Beyond professional televised events, Tiburón supports the local community by holding several tournaments, including the Poa Annua and GC Horn Memorial events for the Everglades GCSA, which the club has hosted for the past four years. The club has also been an Audubon Certified Cooperative Sanctuary since 2001.
Sod Solutions Director of Florida Operations Mark Kann presents Grayson Grainger with the 2025 Florida Celebration® Golf Course of the Year award at Tiburón Golf Club.
Sod Solutions presented Grainger with the award at Tiburón the week before the Florida Turfgrass Association Conference, held Sept. 30–Oct. 2, 2025, at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala. The honor was formally announced during the conference.
Tiburón now joins a notable list of past winners including Florida Atlantic Softball Stadium, The Country Club of Naples, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, The Club Pelican Bay in Naples, Admiral’s Cove in Jupiter, Orlando FC’s Exploria Stadium, North Palm Beach Country Club, Harbour Ridge Yacht and Country Club, Country Club of Florida and George M. Steinbrenner Field.
This article was written by Cecilia Johnson.
