You pull up the tee sheet planning a Tuesday morning round at El Diablo, and it's grayed out. Fine, you think, you'll just walk over to El Santiago instead, since the starter building for both courses sits behind the same recreation center. That one's grayed out too.
If this happened to you sometime after May, you weren't imagining a run of bad luck. Two courses that share a starter building went dark within months of each other, and a third course across town followed in July. That's not a scheduling accident. It's what happens when several of the Executive Trail's oldest courses hit their renovation number in the same stretch of one year.
The Recreation Complex That Lost Both Its Courses
El Santiago was already listed as closed for renovation on the district's course tracker by early March. Then on Tuesday, May 12, its neighbor followed: El Diablo Executive Golf Course closed for a complete renovation, with new greens, tees, fairways, drainage, and irrigation, funded by the Amenity Authority Committee. Both courses share the same starter building, tucked behind the El Santiago Recreation Center, which means that one recreation complex has been running at zero executive courses for months, not weeks.
The two projects weren't handled as separate emergencies. Public reporting on the bid process describes them as a bundled package, with the AAC weighing a roughly $2.7 million bid covering renovation work at both El Diablo and El Santiago together, including Certified TifEagle Bermuda grass on the new greens and redesigned greens loops meant to improve drainage. That's a capital project sized, bid, and budgeted well ahead of the day the gates actually closed, not a surprise shutdown.
Down Right Now vs. Back in Rotation
Here's where the Executive Trail actually stands as of this week, based on district announcements and course status reports.
| Course | Status (early August 2026) | What's happening |
|---|---|---|
| El Santiago | Closed | Full renovation: tees, greens, bunker refresh, course enhancements |
| El Diablo | Closed since May 12 | Full renovation: greens, tees, fairways, drainage, irrigation |
| Turtle Mound | Closed since July 24 | Complete course renovation |
| Red Fox | Back in rotation | Was closed through July 31 for rest and rehabilitation |
| Sweetgum | Back in rotation | Was closed through July 26 for aerification and turf maintenance |
| Loblolly | Back in rotation | Was closed July 28 through August 1 for turf maintenance |
| Bacall | Open since May 12 | Reopened the same day El Diablo closed, after its own renovation |
| Lowlands | Open since April 13 | Reopened after a bunker refresh and cart path extension |
| Oakleigh | Open since May 4 | Reopened after closing March 30 |
Three courses are out for full rebuilds right now: El Diablo, El Santiago, and Turtle Mound. The others that made news this summer, Red Fox, Sweetgum, and Loblolly, were routine maintenance closures measured in days, and they're already back. That distinction matters if you're trying to figure out whether a course you love will reopen next week or next quarter.
Golf Courses Have Renovation Clocks Too
The Executive Trail is 46 nine-hole courses, and it's tempting to think of them as one amenity that gets maintained on one schedule. They don't. Each course runs on its own clock, set by the year it was built and how hard it's been played since.
Look at the pair the district reopened earlier this year. De La Vista was built in 1995 and Walnut Grove in 2001, and according to the district's own announcement, neither had ever received a full renovation before this year's work. Compare that to El Diablo, which opened in 1997, waited eighteen years for its first full renovation in 2015, needed roughly $100,000 in sinkhole repairs in 2022, and is now going through its second full rebuild just eleven years after that first one. Two courses running 25 to 30 years on their original bones before ever seeing a full rebuild. A third hitting its second major rebuild on an eleven-year cycle. Same trail, three completely different maintenance histories.
That's the actual explanation for why this particular summer feels more disrupted than a normal one. It isn't that the district let something slip. It's that a handful of 1990s-vintage courses all reached the point where deferred work stops being optional at roughly the same time.
A closed course on the Executive Trail is never really gone. It's being paid for, scheduled, and rebuilt one nine-hole loop at a time.
What This Means for Your Tee Time This Month
A few things worth knowing before you plan around the closures.
- Summer tee times start at 7:02 a.m., the earliest slot of the year, and run until roughly 30 minutes before dusk.
- Every course on the trail, not just the ones in the news, closes twice a month for maintenance during May through September and again in December. A course that looks fully open on paper may still have a quiet Tuesday or Thursday morning off the books.
- Aerification happens twice per course each summer, once early in the season and once toward the end, on top of those twice-monthly maintenance days.
- Come October and November, every course closes for four straight days to complete overseeding, regardless of what's happening with the current renovation projects.
- Greens fees are already covered under your monthly amenity fee. The only separate cost is the trail fee, which applies if you want to bring your golf car onto the course paths, and it can be paid per round, monthly, semi-annually, or annually.
If you're planning a round more than a day or two out, it's worth checking the district's course closure list before you load the clubs, since maintenance days rotate and aren't always front-page news the way a full renovation is.
What You'll Actually Get Back
The upgrade underway at El Diablo and El Santiago isn't cosmetic. TifEagle Bermuda is a finer-textured putting surface built for faster, truer rolls, and the redesigned greens loops are specifically aimed at moving water off the course faster, which matters on a trail that gets played nearly 365 days a year in a climate that specializes in sudden afternoon downpours.
For anyone who's played it, El Diablo earning its name back is worth the wait. It's rated one of the tougher tracks on the trail, with elevated, undulating greens that make par feel like an accomplishment from the first hole, and its last three finishing holes are considered among the best on the entire Executive Trail. A course that's been humbling golfers since 1997 is about to do it with better turf.
Whether you're tracking which course reopens next or wondering what all this investment in the amenity infrastructure says about property values in the villages around it, Amanda Fincher keeps an eye on both sides of that question. If you're weighing a move here, or just curious what your own home in The Villages is worth in today's market, get your free home valuation and put a local resident's read on the numbers to work for you.
