Legendary Golf Course Designer Celebrates 100th Birthday in Style

Wearing his trademark red plaid jacket and sporting a dapper, floppy red bowtie, legendary golf course designer Larry Packard recently celebrated his 100th birthday at Packard's Steakhouse, a restaurant named in his honor that overlooks Innisbrook's acclaimed Copperhead golf course, which he designed. 

Family, friends and fans joined Packard for the celebration in Palm Harbor on Nov. 15, which was the day he turned 100.  

“It’s all about what you eat and what you put into your body,” he says.  No salt, don’t eat a lot of butter and fats. You also have to be happy, and make sure you like what you do every day.” 

No doubt, Packard loves designing golf courses. The centenarian has enjoyed a long and distinguished career designing and working on more than 600 golf courses over the last 80 years. 

Packard first became interested in landscape architecture during the Great Depression when he was planting grass at Westover Field Air Base in Massachusetts. He later worked as a wartime architect and created a camouflage design for the airbase in order to prevent an enemy attack. Packard did such a good job that some of the U.S. fighter pilots could not find the runways when trying to land their planes.

Packard's expertise was later sought to help design Chicago's famed O'Hare Airport, which is the fourth busiest in the world. After World War II ended, Packard began his career in golf course architecture with an entry-level position in the firm of famous course architect Robert Bruce Harris. Packard spent the following 50 years designing more than 350 new golf courses and redesigning another 250 in the United States, Egypt, Japan, China, South Korea, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

Included in the courses Packard designed are Innisbrook's acclaimed Copperhead course (which hosts the PGA Tour's Tampa Bay Championship, won in 2012 by Luke Donald) and three other Innisbrook courses.

Packard wound up liking Innisbrook so much, he decided to make it his home.

“I thought this was the perfect piece of land to create a great golf course like Copperhead,” says Packard.  “It had everything you could hope for, and the natural roll of the land was beautiful. I could immediately see the holes in my head and how the water would come into play. There was so much variety in one piece of land that I knew this would be a special place, and that is why I live here. It’s why people fall in love with this resort.”

Packard has lived with his wife Ann at Innisbrook for the last 40 years. He has two grown children, Pamela Sharkey and Roger Packard, who is also a golf course designer.

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