Sometimes the smallest things in life can spur an adventure that you never expected. Such was our trip to Los Angeles and the Big Island of Hawaii. During a trip out west in 2021, I met some people who would ultimately be the motivation for my wife and I to undertake the long journey to Hawaii. More on that later. This was a journey we never really planned on taking.
We are not beach people and spending eleven hours in a plane to spend time on islands that are best known for their beaches seemed like a fools endeavor. The trip turned out even better than I could have dreamed and our decision to break up the flights with stops in Los Angeles on the way to and from proved to be a very good move for two people who don't like flying.
 |
| Nanea Golf Club, par four 9th hole |
Our journey to Hawaii began with the aforementioned stopover in Los Angeles. My wife has never been to Southern California so our first stop was the Lake Hollywood Park for a close up view of the Hollywood sign.
Our first day in Los Angeles continued with a stop at The Getty Museum. You need to take a tram to get to the museum (seen below). The museum has an amazing collection of art from many different periods.
One of the highlights of the museum for me was Vincent Van Gogh's Irises, seen below in front of my big bald head. The Getty bought the painting in 1990 for somewhere between 50 and 70 million dollars!
Golf began on day two of the trip. First up was Hillcrest Country Club in the Century City part of Los Angeles. The course was originally designed by Willie Watson in the 1920's but undertook a dramatic renovation by Kyle Phillips in 2019. Phillips created several new holes in addition to renovating existing holes. The most impressive part of the course to me was the back-to-back half par holes at 11 and 12. On the card, eleven is a short par four, and twelve is a very long biarritz style par three. Wind direction can make the par four easily reachable and the par three not. Even with no wind I would argue it's easier to make three on 11 than 12 depending on pin locations.
 |
| Hillcrest Country Club, par four 11th hole. |
The biarritz style par three twelfth hole featured a back pin making it play 260 yards. The opportunity to try to hit a low driver through the swale of the biarritz was a rare treat.
 |
| Hillcrest Country Club, par three 12th hole |
We headed to Griffith Park for the second round of the day. Roosevelt Golf Course is located inside the park and features views of the world famous observatory and is located across the street from the Greek Theatre. The course is nine holes and is busy from dawn to dusk. They book golf in fivesomes and sadly we weren't able to finish as it took us two hours to play five holes before we had to quit.
 |
| Roosevelt Golf Course, Par three 3rd hole. The very steep walking trail to the Griffith Observatory can be seen at the top of the picture |
On day three we flew to the Big Island of Hawaii. Our Big Island adventure began at Hualalai Resort. We played the Hualalai course designed by Jack Nicklaus. The course hosts the Champions Tour every January and is a very enjoyable and fairly easy test of golf which is something that was welcome after a long morning flight.
 |
| Hualalai Course, par three 17th hole |
Our first full day in Hawaii featured the most golf played on the trip. We began our day at the Tom Fazio designed Kukio Golf & Beach Club. This Discovery Land property was the first to have their famous comfort stations. It was a new experience for my wife as she had never played a Discovery Land property. Obviously she very much enjoyed it, especially the margaritas dispensed from a coffee urn!
 |
| Kukio Golf & Beach Club, par three 6th hole |
The second course we played on day four was the south course at Mauna Lani Resort. The course was designed by Homer Flint, Raymond Cain, and Robin Nelson. I actually remembered the course from the Senior Skins game that was played here in the 1990's.
 |
| Mauna Lani Resort(South), par three 15th hole |
The last course I played on this full day of golf was the Waikoloa Beach Resort. The resort used to have two 18 hole courses, one each by Robert Trent Jones and Weiskopf/Morrish, but they subsequently abandoned nine holes of the Weiskopf/Morrish course, so now they have three nines, named Beach, Kings, and Lakes. I played the Kings and Beach nines so I got a little bit of both architects.
 |
| Waikoloa Beach Resort, Kings nine, par five 2nd hole |
Day five of the trip began with a drive to the southeastern part of the Island for a visit to Hawaii Volcano National Park. One of the volcanoes erupted a few years ago and the crater of that eruption is a big feature of the park, seen below. Part of the park, Mauna Loa Volcano is actually in danger of eruption right now.
One of the coolest thing at the park was the Thurston Lava Tube, which was a great opportunity to be inside a volcano.
We headed back to the western part of the island in the afternoon for a round at the original big name course on the island, Mauna Kea Golf Resort, designed by Robert Trent Jones in the 1960's. Easily the hardest course on the island, Mauna Kea was a stable in the various top 100 lists through the early 2000's. The architecture is definitely a time warp to the 1960's.
 |
| Mauna Kea golf resort, par three 11th hole |
The sixth day of the trip began at the Rees Jones designed Kohanaiki Golf Club. The course is very close to the airport and you fly right over it on approach. Creative use of lava and rock formations were a fun quirk of this course.
 |
| Kohanaiki, par four 14th hole |
The second course of day six was the reason we were in Hawaii. Nanea Golf Club was designed by David McLay Kidd and opened in 2003. The course is fiercely private and is owned by Charles Schwab and George Roberts. I was fortunate to meet some members on a trip last year. When they graciously offered to host us at Nanea, I came home from that trip and told my wife, "we need to go to Hawaii ASAP". I am forever grateful to our hosts and can't thank them enough for the amazing experience we had at Nanea. The course was even better than I could have imagined and is in my top 30 courses played. It's my wife's 2nd favorite course now, behind only Sand Hills.
 |
| Nanea Golf Club, par four 4th hole |
I think the thing that made Nanea great was that no two holes were even close to similar. The routing is so good that you forget you don't encounter a par three until the 8th hole and there are only three on the course.
 |
| Nanea Golf Club, par three 8th hole |
There are almost no trees on the property, but the few that remain in the design are used to great effect as seen on the wonderful short par four 16th hole.
 |
| Nanea Golf Club, par four 16th hole |
 |
| Makalei Golf Club, par three 13th hole |
We flew back to Los Angeles after our round at Makalei. We wisely slept in the next morning after arriving late, and headed to Rolling Hills Country Club for a late morning round. Rolling Hills, one of at least 20 courses with that name, was re-designed by David McLay Kidd in 2017. Kidd was very creative in his design, creating great holes with shared fairways and turned the course into something very unique and fun. Fun is one of the words I always think when I play a Kidd course. He really understands how to design to make the game fun for golfers of all abilities.
 |
| Rolling Hills Country Club, par four 8th hole in foreground, par three ninth in background |
The last course we played on the trip was a very pleasant surprise. Palos Verdes Golf Club was designed by George Thomas and Billy Bell. The architects responsible for all of the big courses in the LA area, LACC, Riviera, and Bel-Air. Palos Verdes was built on bluffs that overlook the Pacific ocean. I would love to see a proper restoration of the course as it has great bones and wonderful holes but could be even better.
 |
| Palos Verdes Golf Club, par three 4th hole |
So that's a wrap on our first trip to Hawaii and my wife's first trip to Southern California. Will be return to Hawaii? That remains to be seen. I would very much like to play Kapuala on the island of Maui and Manele on the island of Lanai but they are way down on the priority list so we'll see.
FLAGS
No comments:
Post a Comment