Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, Jacksonville, Florida

80 Years of Tennis, Bathing and the Best Club Amenities

Sep 16, 2008

This family-oriented yet luxurious resort was a favorite among socialites in 1928. Eighty years later, it's completely modernized and still swank

Florida's Ponte Vedra Inn & Club was a seaside resort for the socially registered when it opened in 1928. Eighty years later, it’s still registered, though with a somewhat different society – the American Automobile Association – which awarded the resort five-diamond status for the first time in 2003.

The 300-acre property on Ponte Vedra Beach, about 20 miles east of Jacksonville, features four restaurants, a gym and 15 Har Tru tennis courts (up from the one clay court available at the Ponte Vedra Racquet Club in 1932), along with a panoply of professional assistance in using them, from tennis camps to private teaching courts. “Tennis” magazine once ranked the Racquet Club number three on its list of the top five U.S. tennis resorts.

A number of activities from 75 years ago are still available, albeit modernized. For example, although it’s obviously been redesigned several times in the interim, you can still tee off on the site of the original 1928 golf course, one of two 18-hole courses.

As guests did 80 years ago, you can bathe (the resort now has four pools, including an Olympic-sized one, all heated), rent a paddle boat to fish in the lagoon, go horseback riding along one of numerous trails, or learn fly fishing with fly-casting lessons offered on site. These days, you can also rent a catamaran or get a strenuous workout at the hands of a massage therapist at the spa.

The resort offers 250 guestrooms, each with a terrace, and replete with the amenities you’d expect to find at a top-of-the-line resort. Rates run from $225 a night for a modest room in the slow season (which is, unlike in many parts of Florida, the winter) to $595 for the penthouse suite in the high season of early spring.

For those who’d like to make the resort a way of life, different levels of club membership are offered (in an unexpectedly flattering touch, anyone under age 35 is considered a “junior” member and must turn 80 before his membership can be considered “senior.”)

For more information, call the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, 800-234-7842 or 904-285-1111; 200 Ponte Vedra Boulevard, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida 32082.

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