Cabo Real

Cabo Real, at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, was created in the mid 1980s as an enormous, 3,000-acre resort development and its seven hotels along the coastline of the Sea of Cortez supply a steady stream of vacation golfers to this 18-hole course.

The opening six holes rise through a desert landscape at the foot of a rugged mountain range with the 454-yard 5th running along the edge of an arroyo to a green sited at the highest point on the course, some 450 feet above the coast.

The lush, emerald fairways of the back nine are routed over gentler terrain, moving towards the water’s edge at the short par four 14th, then along the shoreline at the par three 15th hole, before turning back uphill toward the clubhouse.

The task of laying out a course was originally allocated to another, lesser known, architect but when the developers discovered that El Dorado next door was to be a Nicklaus signature course, they employed another designer “name” to match their competitor – a case of keeping up with the golfing Jones’s you might say!