Indian Bayou Golf Club in Destin, Florida

Indian Bayou Golf Club is a 20-year-old staple of the Destin golf scene, and if it's been around that long, it must have something going for it.

It does. The Indian Bayou golf course is indeed set back in a pretty bayou off the main road, U.S. 98, that runs through the heart of Destin. Those familiar with Destin know that you can be in the heart of the thriving, vacation city and still find relative solitude, since the area is situated on a thin strip of land between the yawning Gulf of Mexico on one side and the big Choctawatchee Bay on the other.

Indian Bayou has three, nine-hole layouts called Creek, Seminole and Choctaw, befitting the Indian theme.

The course is right beside the airport; in fact, the airport runs parallel to No. 3 on the Creek course. Instead of being distracting, I found it interesting to watch the planes landing and taking off; it's a small airport with small planes.

Since the course was built in a bayou, there are swamps and wetlands involved, but the fairways on all three nines are generally wide and forgiving enough that the marshes are generally there as scenery, as least off the tee.

Of the three nines, the Creek course stands out because of some tricky layups involved. No. 4 is a fairly short par-5 with two marsh carries - an exception to the above statement - in which you are encouraged to tee off with a long iron or fairway wood, targeting a landing area between the two marshes. Teeing off with a long iron on a par-5 is interesting to some, vexing to others.