Kauai: Home to Four of Hawaii's Best Golf Courses

LIHUE, KAUAI -- Golf
LIHU‘E, KAUA‘I -- Golf course designers are a lot like Hollywood producers. Both seek dramatic scenery as backdrop for their art, worrying as much over sightlines as plotting. And that’s why both love Kaua‘iKaua‘i, whose Technicolor hues provide the palette for films as different as “South Pacific” and “Jurassic Park I, II and III,” as well as for golf architects as different as Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Jack Nicklaus.
It must be that “Garden Isle” thing. Kaua‘i Kaua‘i courses are as much about the garden as the golf. Everywhere you look - or hook - there’s another sun-dashed beach, another verdant peak wearing a crown of swirling mist, another splash of tropical color.
And, happily, the men who created the island’s nine courses did some of their best work here. In 2005, Golf Digest magazine rated the Prince Course at Princeville at Hanalei Golf Courses as the state’s best golf course, along with Kiele at Kaua‘i Lagoons Golf Club #6, Poipu Bay Golf Course #12 and Princeville’s Makai #14. So within about an hour’s drive, you can play four of Hawai‘i’s top 15 courses.
This is such a concentration of riches, golf-wiseKaua‘i Kaua‘i is certainly among the “haves” of the world. Throw in the recent health/wellness boom, the emergence of talented young chefs preparing Pacific Rim cuisine and a variety of lodging options, and for a golfer it just doesn’t get any better. Here’s a look atKaua‘i Kaua‘i’s magnificent nine.


Wailua Golf Club -- Golf on Kaua‘i began in the plantation era with nine holes at Wailua. Former Head Pro Toyo Shirai later designed what is today the seaside front nine. The course is a genuine links course, generally flat and playing through groves of coconut and ironwood trees, featuring plenty of doglegs and bunkers in all the wrong places.

This is one of the best municipal courses in the United States and is where the 1990 PGA Hawaiian Open Champion David Ishii and 1996 Publinx Champion Guy Yamamoto learned the game. Great courses produce great players.

Princeville Golf Club -- “In all the world,” Robert Trent Jones Jr. says, “I would never expect to see a more spectacularly beautiful place to build a golf course than Princeville, overlooking Hanalei Bay.”

Trent Jones Jr. built two, the 27-hole Princeville Makai in 1971 and the Prince in 1990. The names of the three Makai nines - Woods, Lake, Ocean - tell you a lot about Kaua‘i golf.

Makai, which hosted the 1978 World Cup and the 1986-89 LPGA Ladies Kemper Open and recently underwent a $3 million refurbishing, is important for Kaua‘i because it established the island as a golf destination. Makai is important to Jones Jr. because “it was my first work that was distinct from my father.” That’s RTJ Sr., the father of modern golf course architecture.

“I was still a pretty good player in those days, and I like to see the bottom of the flagstick,” he says. “My father liked a raised green, so you only saw the top part.”

Jones Jr. generally gives you a reconnaissance look at the hole, often with the use of elevated tees. But he is nothing if not a trickster. An elevated tee makes the fairway narrower, the target smaller. The par-3 seventh on the Ocean nine drops 100 feet from tee to green. It’s visually dramatic, especially with Hanalei Bay in the background, but a test of club selection - usually one or two clubs less than normal for the yardage. The par-5 18th on the Lake nine, the finishing hole for the Ladies Kemper, provides drama with a lake running along the left side of the fairway and protecting the front of the green.

By the time he built the Prince, Jones Jr. was a different man. “Young golf course architects usually put in too many bunkers,” he says. Three holes at the Prince - the first, 11th and 12th - don’t have a bunker. Four holes feature just one.

“Even without a bunker, the first is tougher than Beethoven’s Fifth,” says Jones Jr. “The 15th has just one rather small bunker, but it may be the best par-5 I’ve ever designed. I’ve learned restraint.”

He shows perfect restraint on the par-3 seventh. Tee and green are set on sea bluffs, ocean to the left, the shot over a jungle ravine. Beyond the green, forested ridges rise into sheer mountains. It is so naturally beautiful, you’re grateful that Jones Jr. brought you this way.

The par-4 13th is the most dramatic inland hole in Hawai‘i, with the green set at the base of an ancient lava tube from which flows a waterfall. Ferns and flowers grow lush in its mist. A beautiful, natural hole. The Prince, which has been called the best example of jungle golf in the world, is as natural as golf courses get.

The Prince is rated the second toughest course in Hawai‘i, but five sets of tees make it playable for all skill levels.

Kaua‘i Lagoons Golf Club -- When Jack Nicklaus opened Kiele in 1989, he started what has since been called the “golden age of golf course design in Hawai‘i.” Not only did it further enhance Kaua‘i as a golf destination - hosting the Grand Slam of Golf in 1990 and ’91 - it helped turn the state into a world-class golf mecca.

Nicklaus designed the perfect first hole at Kiele - a short, wide-open par-4. “Even though we built one of the largest practice facilities in the world here, I know that even when people are on vacation they don’t always leave time to warm up before a round,” Nicklaus says. “And even if you do hit a few balls to warm up, there are still those first-tee jitters. This first hole gives you a chance to loosen up physically and mentally without facing any severe challenges.”

Thereafter, however, Nicklaus slowly tightens the noose. His brilliance here is in the way that holes become gradually tougher, finishing with an island green.

In a state full of spectacular holes, Kiele’s par-3 13th is one of the most beautiful. It plays downhill 207-188-162-126 yards over crashing surf from one dramatic promontory to another. The diagonal green looks about as big as a beach blanket from the tee, but Nicklaus does provide a bail-out area to the right.

At just 330-325-279-255 yards, and playing steeply downhill, it might be possible to drive the green of the par-4 16th. The problem is that in front of the green the fairway narrows to about the width of your golf bag, and to the left is the ocean 100 feet down.

The par-4 18th hole plays 431-403-361-325 yards slightly uphill into the prevailing trade winds, with out-of-bounds on the left and a lake on the right. The lake swings around and guards the front, right and back of the green. Each hole at Kiele is named for an animal, depicted in a marble statue at the tee, and Nicklaus saves the best for last - a signature Golden Bear. The 18th is indeed a bear.

The adjacent Mokihana course (Nicklaus, 1990) is somewhat less dramatic than Kiele, but it is also somewhat less daunting while sharing much the same feel, and is recommended for higher handicappers. Still, Nicklaus created plenty of trouble for wayward shots with creative mounding, large waste areas and false fronts for greens. For settling a friendly wager, the par-5 18th rewards only the brave - and the accurate.

Puakea Golf Course -- If there were just more of it, people used to say, Puakea would be ranked among the top courses in Hawai‘i. Until this year, Puakea was a glorious oddity with only 10 holes. But thanks to AOL founder Steve Case, who recently bought Grove Farm, golf course architect Robin Nelson got a mulligan for eight more. That’s good news because even in its incompleteness, Sports Illustrated called Puakea, also known as Grove Farm, one of the country’s 10 best 9-hole courses.

The full 18 opened July 2003, and Nelson has seamlessly woven together his originally designed sequence. His masterful architecture clearly conveys the routes one should take to achieve textbook pars. But he hints enticingly at ways to achieve gambling birdies that can quickly turn into bogies or worse.

The par-5 11th hole (formerly the first) is a primer in Nelson strategic design.

It plays from tee over sloping fairway to a plateau, then over a ravine to another plateau. It’s obvious where the architect wants you to play for a textbook par. But he also hints at ways to a gambling birdie that could turn quickly into bogey or worse.

The par-4 12th is a dogleg right with a fairway that slopes toward water on the right, a green protected on the right by a mango tree, a safe plateau on the upper left protected by bunkers, and a diagonal green with water on the right and bunkers and mounds on the left.

The long par-3 13th plays over a creek through a chute of trees and down a natural valley to a deep but narrow green.

Puakea is nestled at the base of the dramatic Ha‘upu Ridge adjacent to where Steven Spielberg filmed the “Jurassic Park” trilogy. Just like the movies, Puakea is a sure blockbuster and great fun for the entire family.

Poipu Bay Golf Course -- The four closing holes at Poipu Bay form an emerald strand rising to a 150-foot red sea cliff. You can see the final four from the clubhouse and from nearly every hole on the course. They seem to glimmer and beckon as they rise out of a soft salty mist. Playing those holes, golfers often see monk seals sunbathing on the beach below, sea turtles bobbing just outside the shore break and humpback whales spouting offshore - endangered species all.

“Poipu Bay is a links course, although it’s not true links land,” Jones Jr. says. “This is a links course built on headlands, like Pebble Beach.”

It is to Pebble Beach that holes 14-17 are often compared. The par-5 14th sets the stage as it rises to an ocean bluff, like Pebble’s sixth. Then the course turns back along the coast with trade winds at your back. The view from the elevated 15th tee, with waves crashing to the left and the closing holes stretching out along the shore, is one of the loveliest vistas in Hawai‘i.

But there is more to Poipu Bay than its closing holes. Jones Jr. reaches into his bag of tricks to create a course that annually challenges the winners of the four “major” championships - Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA Championship - in the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, which has been contested here since 1994. One of the architect’s best tricks is to place a green in a flat, open area devoid of framing references, such as at the eighth. The fairway and green are flat and treeless. Two small bunkers fronting the green are but a blip on the horizon. The backdrop is endless sea and sky. This visual legerdemain lures many golfers into coming up short.

The elevated tee of the 16th hole provides another optical illusion. At 501-472-383 yards, this is the longest par-4 on the course. The elevated tee makes the hole appear to be even longer, so you may be tempted to give your drive a bit more oomph. In fact, the tradewinds and the natural sloping of the fairway to the left bring the ocean into play, and the last thing you need is more oomph. Jones Jr. makes creative and sensitive use of an ancient lava rock wall that runs down the left side of the fairway parallel to the cliff and an ancient fishing heiau, or sacred Hawaiian temple.

The 18th, which has decided many a Grand Slam, is a par-5 reachable in two if you’re willing to flirt with bunkers on the right, water on the left and front of the green.

Kiahuna Golf Club-- Kiahuna, located just inland at Po‘ipu, opened in 1983 and also bears the RTJ2 imprimatur. As Jones Jr. puts it, Kiahuna is a “fun, gentle” course. The property is rather small, so Jones Jr. adjusted by presenting “smaller targets and awkward stances.”

It works. A meandering creek, lava formations and thickets of trees add to the challenge. This is a course where golfers usually think they ought to be scoring better than they are. Talk about optical illusions.

Kukuiolono Golf Course -- Toyo Shirai also designed the funky 9-hole Kukuiolono. It’s a little rough around the edges, but the design is excellent. Holes play across rolling, forested hills that afford breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean.

# # #

CONTACT:
Emele Freiberg, Account Supervisor, Travel & Tourism
McNeil Wilson Communications, Inc.
1001 Bishop Street, Pauahi Tower, Suite 950
Honolulu, HI 96813
808-539-3440 phone
808-521-7163 fax
emele@mcneilwilson.com
5/07