Golf

Different Strokes on the Big Island’s Kohala Coast

By Adam Elliott Segal

Some of the most unique golfing in the world greets players with patience and a healthy sense of adventure in Hawaii.

It’s 6:30 a.m. and I’m slurping a bright orange papaya and sipping Kona coffee on my hotel balcony, the Pacific Ocean breaking sharply against the reef. As the Hawaiian wind whistles through palm fronds, I’m meditating on my golf swing: rhythmic like a wave, back and forth, back and forth. This lava-encrusted stretch of coast offers three different golfing experiences that are all quintessentially Hawaiian.

Lava bounce
Mauna Lani is as daunting as it is spectacular – and it’s here where I learned that these are the two dominant characteristics of Hawaiian golf. There’s lava everywhere on the South course, the moon-like landscape an echo of images of charred earth from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (which I’m reading beachside). Flocks of yellow-beaked myna birds call the thin fairways home, while skinny black lizards slither between rocks as you search in vain for balls inevitably lost. I stop counting the myriad times one of us (usually me) misses the fairway, only to get a lucky “lava bounce” back in play.

The back nine is the crème de la crème, with a trio of holes offering stunning Pacific views. The signature, over-the-ocean 15th is more than worth the frustration lesser players like me will experience getting to it. Stepping up to the tee, Maui in the distance, I almost forget I’m supposed to hit the ball. It’s that close to perfect.

After the round: Head to the Farmers’ Market in Waimea (20 minutes by car, 760 metres up Mauna Kea) on Saturday mornings for exotic breakfast fare like Kau oranges, coconut macadamia nut biscotti or my personal fave, the farm-fresh chorizo frittata, quite possibly the best omelette I’ve ever tasted.

Mongoose magic
Coral-rock tee boxes greet us as my dad and I walk up to the first hole of the Kings’ Course at Waikoloa Beach Resort. Islands of volcanic rock in the middle of the fairways play as lateral hazards and long, wheaty brush grows alongside the palm groves, lending hints of a Scottish links aesthetic to the Hawaiian landscape.

Designed in 1990 by British Open winner Tom Weiskopf, the course’s wide fairways make it considerably easier than Mauna Lani. Although the greens were noticeably slow (it rained the night before), it was impossible to complain. Several immutable images endure: teeing off on the wraparound 5th hole, a helipad engulfed by lava rock in the distance; standing deep in a fairway bunker, staring at a single sandpiper perched on a grassy hill; and watching a mongoose scamper across the hazy fairway as I hit my approach shot onto the edge of the green on the difficult, water-to-the-right, 287-yard dogleg 13th. (As luck would have it, that last one smacked the pin dead-on, ruining what would have been my birdie.)

After the round: Hop on a helicopter and take a tour of the still-active Kilauea crater with Blue Hawaiian Tours.

Pigs and peacocks
High on the slopes of Mount Hualalai sits Makalei Golf Club, just about the most unusual links experience imaginable. Dense forest blankets this mostly uphill course track, with elevations reaching almost 1,000 metres. Dozens of brash peacocks roam the course, sauntering up to your golf cart at each tee box. And that’s if you have the luxury of hitting from one – we were frequently forced to improvise due to the feral pigs that tear up the thicker, wetter grass during the nighttime search for grubs. Seriously. Wild. Pigs.

Makalei is an adventure, but the real reason I love it is that it gave me one of the most thrilling shots of my life: Standing under a giant tree on a steep, sloping ridge on the par-4 8th, my ball lying 100 yards from the green after an errant approach, I pulled out my pitching wedge and stuck my shot a few feet from the hole. Even the groundskeeper clapped.

After the round: At Sugai Kona Coffee in Kealakekua, a third-generation coffee plantation with over 100 acres of bean-producing land, we shell out for a year’s worth of Vanilla Macadamia Nut and hit the road, passing through historic Hawaiian villages such as Holualoa, windows open to get one last whiff of the coffee-infused mountain air.

(Adam Elliott Segal is a freelance writer based in Montreal. He plans on returning soon to the Kohala Coast to search the lava rock for lost balls.)

COAST COURSE: Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) / Ron Garnett
BREAKFAST:  ©iStockphoto / webphotographeer
PEACOCK: Courtesy Makalei Golf Club