07/24/2026
Gene Sarazen called New Port Richey home in the late 1920s. He was already a golf star by the time he arrived, a U.S. Open champion at just 20 years old, when local developers recruited him to help build the town's first golf course at the Jasmine Point subdivision.
He built a home along the river and served as the course's resident pro for several years. It was there, practicing in the sand trap behind his own house, that Sarazen developed what would become the modern sand wedge, a piece of golf equipment still used today. He later credited the idea to a mid-flight observation while flying with Howard Hughes. He used the invention to win the British Open in 1932, and in 1935 he hit the shot still remembered as one of the most famous in golf history, a double eagle at the Masters.
The golf course is gone now. But Sarazen's name stayed part of this place, on a street a few miles from here, in local history archives, and now on the first building built at The Central on Orange Lake.
Change is constant. As Developer Frank Starkey puts it: "no place stays the same." This is one way, our way, of paying homage to the legacies of our past as the world continues moving forward.
