Amelia National Golf & Country Club

Amelia National Golf & Country Club is a gated community anchored by a Tom Fazio design that flows through maritime forest and around natural wetlands near Fernandina Beach. The par-72 course features generous fairways, well-defended greens, and a strategic layout that rewards thoughtful play while remaining forgiving enough for members of all skill levels.

Amelia National Golf and Country Club is set on the northwestern edge of Amelia Island in Fernandina Beach, Florida, featuring a Tom Fazio-designed championship course that opened in 2006 within a residential community developed by ICI Homes. Amelia Island has a golf history that predates Amelia National by several decades. The island's position in Nassau County at the northernmost tip of Florida's Atlantic coast—separated from the Georgia border by only a few miles—gives it a landscape distinct from central and southern Florida: rolling terrain, mature live oaks draped with Spanish moss, coastal slash pine flatwoods, and tidal wetlands. These natural systems shape the setting of Amelia National, where Fazio's design team used the existing coastal forest to its advantage rather than clearing it wholesale. Tom Fazio is a prolific American golf course architect of the modern era, responsible for courses including Wade Hampton Golf Club, Shadow Creek, and the Congressional Blue Course renovation. At Amelia National, Fazio worked with collaborators Beau Welling and Tom Marzolf—both of whom have gone on to independent design careers—to route the course through the pine flatwoods and wetland corridors of the site.

The thick slash pines lining the fairways and backing the greens create an Augusta National-adjacent visual character, while native palms, palmettos, and Florida grasses mark the course unmistakably as a northeastern Florida design. Water hazards in the form of lakes and swales appear throughout the layout, and bunkers are positioned strategically around fairways and greens rather than concentrated as penal hazards. The course plays to 7,166 yards from the championship tees for a par of 72. The USGA rating is 76.0 with a slope of 143—numbers that position Amelia National among the more demanding private courses in northeastern Florida. Fazio designed the course to balance championship-level difficulty with genuine accessibility; the course includes multiple tee options that make the layout manageable for members across the handicap spectrum. Amelia National Golf and Country Club is a private residential community.

ICI Homes, a Florida-based homebuilder, developed the community and has maintained ownership involvement in the club since its founding. In 2025, ICI Homes undertook a major renovation of the golf course—the most significant renovation since the course opened. The work was carried out by Fazio Design—the original architectural firm—restoring the course to its original vision while updating it for modern agronomy and playability standards. Bunkers were updated, select tees were repositioned for improved strategy, and greens were restored to their original sizes to maximize hole location variety. The course reopened for play in November 2025. Amelia National includes an eight-acre driving range in addition to its practice facilities.

Amelia Island hosts a concentration of notable golf facilities, including TPC Sawgrass and the Omni Amelia Island Plantation courses within regional proximity. Within this competitive landscape, Amelia National has established itself as the private residential golf option on the island, offering members an intimate club experience centered on the Fazio course. Fernandina Beach, the island's only city, provides access to the Atlantic Ocean beaches, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the historic downtown district that lines Amelia Island's waterfront.