The King Kamehameha Golf Club

The tee-to-green upgrading of the award-winning Mauna Kea Golf Course is underway with a redesign that will produce a new standard for oceanfront golfing on the Gold Coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. Led by renowned golf designer Rees Jones, son of the course’s original architect, Robert Trent Jones, Sr., the Mauna Kea Golf Course will be completely remodelled and reopened in Fall 2008. “Mauna Kea is not only one of the premier golf courses in existence, but one that cannot be replicated. It differentiates itself from other courses because of its history, its pedigree and its setting,” said Rees Jones. “Once our work is complete, the world of golf will be reintroduced to this historic golf venue and its elite playing standards.” Mauna Kea’s greens, tees, fairways and rough will all be replaced with new hybrids of turf that can be groomed for the skill levels of both resort and professional golfers. The bunkers will be restored to their original look with all the sand replaced. Plans include rebuilding greens to USGA standards and specifications, without changing their original strategy and challenge. Jones’ vision is to maintain the integrity of his father’s design, while utilizing today’s technology to be more efficient in caring for the course. Prince Resorts Hawaii, owner of the Mauna Kea Golf Course, is honoured to have Rees Jones carrying on its tradition with his redesigned expertise. Known in the golfing industry as the “U.S. Open Doctor,” Jones designed more than 100 golf courses, including redesigning seven U.S. Open venues, six PGA courses and three Ryder Cup sites. “When the work is complete, Mauna Kea Golf Course will again be the one of the finest golf experiences in the world,” said Donn Takahashi, president, Prince Resorts Hawaii. “Both returning golfers and those coming here for the first time will rediscover why this course is so revered around the world. With Rees Jones enhancing his father’s superior design, the ‘new’ Mauna Kea will truly be a joy and challenge to play.” In addition, the clubhouse and restaurant are also being renovated. The 18-hole, par-72, 7,165-yard Mauna Kea Golf Course opened in December 1964. Recognized by golfers worldwide for its signature oceanfront #3 hole, the course offers dramatic elevation changes, large undulating greens, 120 bunkers, and some of the most spectacular panoramic ocean and mountain views found in the islands.

US Pacific Division Best in State Rankings 2020 It’s two years since we revised the rankings for our US Best in State listings so now’s the time to refresh the numbers and publish the new charts. We’ll do this over the next few months in nine geographical groupings, starting in this edition with Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, before eventually ending on the opposite side of the country in New England. The five Pacific Division states now feature 205 courses in total as we’ve just added another ten to Washington. All told, twenty-four courses make a first appearance in our updated charts and, with sixteen of the more established top tracks occupying a place in our national Top 100, that gives you a good idea of the quality to be found across the entire region. Alaska We have a new No. 1 for the Last Frontier State and it’s the golf course at Settlers Bay, located an hour’s drive north of Anchorage in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. Set within the enormous Fairway Estates residential community, the layout originally started out as a 9-hole course in the late 1970s before an additional nine was opened for play towards the end of the 1990s. Since then, greens have been converted to bent grass, bunkers are all now refurbished and new tees added to make the playing experience more enjoyable for golfers of all skill levels. Settlers Bay Rank/ Click the link to see full details of our latest Alaska Best in State rankings California Five of the Top 10 layouts in California remain in the same position and one of the non-movers is the state No.1, Cypress Point Club, which also happens to be the #1 course in both our US and World Top 100 rankings. Recent comments from reviewers for this Alister MacKenzie masterpiece include: “CPC has that perfect combination of great strategic design, wonderful variety of terrain, and gorgeous ocean backdrops… the perfect golf course, every hole is memorable, each improving slightly from the previous… shot value, shot choice and the journey from sand to forest to sea is amazing.” Cypress Point A one-place upward move might at a glance seem like nothing much to get excited about, but when it’s made within the Top 10 tier of a very strong golfing state like California then such a modest advance has to be regarded as significant. Three courses make exactly that sort of short stride towards the top rung on the ladder. The first of these climbers is George C. Thomas Junior’s Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades (up 1 to #4), followed by Alister MacKenzie’s Valley Club of Montecito in Santa Barbara (up 1 to #8) then the Dunes course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club in Pebble Beach (up 1 to #10), which is currently reaping the rewards of a recent renovation by Tom Fazio and his former associates at Jackson Khan Design. Valley Club of Montecito The highest of ten new entries in our Californian listings arrives at No. 21 and it’s the South course at Los Angeles Country Club, where a sympathetic restoration of the layout was conducted a couple of years ago. For far too long this track had lurked in the shadow of its celebrated sibling, the North course, but that’s no longer the case, with the artistic talents of Gil Hanse bringing it out into the light. Los Angeles Country Club South course A couple of courses make prodigious leaps forward in the bottom half of the table. Leading the way with a jump from #97 to #54 is the old 1920s John Duncan Dunn layout at Santa Ana Country Club, located 20 miles southeast of Long Beach, which Jay Blasi totally redesigned in 2016 to improve safety, add variety and make better use of the natural landforms on the property. Santa Ana Country Club Not far behind at #61 (up 23 places) comes the 18-hole layout at Del Paso Country Club in Sacramento, where Kyle Phillips conducted an extensive redesign of the property back in 2006. In a recent post, the course was described by our regular contributor M. James Ward as “a mega shining star.” In his considered opinion “there’s no question The Golden State is blessed with many superior courses but Del Paso may be the most underrated.” Click the link to see full details of our latest California Best in State rankings Hawaii The David McLay Kidd-designed layout at Nanea Golf Club on the west coast of the Big Island remains the #1 course in Hawaii. Described in the past by our US Correspondent Fergal O’Leary as “the most under-rated course in the US,” Nanea received another review last year from somebody who said “it’s the best course you’ll ever play, next to Augusta”. Now that’s a very bold statement to make, but a handful of 6-ball reviews posted by golfers who have played here certainly adds credence to the claim. Nanea Golf Club Sixteen of the Top 30 move upwards in the new chart and the biggest four-place move is reserved for a couple of courses: the Ted Robinson layout at King Kamehameha Golf Club in the foothills of the West Maui Mountains (at #15) and Robin Nelson’s design at Puakea Golf Club on the southeast coast of Kauai island (at #23). King Kamehameha Golf Club The only new entry into our chart is The Dunes at Maui Lani at #30. Robin Nelson designed this public facility at the end of the 1990s and because it’s set out on a long, narrow tract the fairways are orientated in either a northwest or southeast direction, with the prevailing wind cutting across the holes when it gets breezy, adding an extra degree of challenge when playing here. The Dunes at Maui Lani The Robert Trent Jones Junior-designed Prince course at the Princeville resort on the North Shore of Kauai island is still closed while ownership issues continue to drag on (it's also in need of some repair work to storm-damaged sections of the layout). Once these matters are resolved, and the course is restored to its former glory, there’s no doubt it should slot back in near the top of the state rankings. Click the link to see full details of our latest Hawaii Best in State rankings Oregon There are no surprises at the top of the table in Oregon, with all four of the currently world-ranked courses at the Bandon Dunes resort retaining their ranking position in the chart. That means Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes course holds onto the coveted No. 1 slot, though it will be interesting to see where Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s brand new Sheep Ranch layout slots into the resort’s pecking order when the next biennial review is conducted. Bandon Dunes - Sheep Ranch For now, at least, Pacific Dunes rules the roost on the Oregon coast, with M. James Ward an unabashed proponent of its majesty, as articulated in his review of last month: “When Tom Doak came forward in 2001 with his tour de force effort at the mega-course facility he actually exceeded all the fanfare that the original Bandon Dunes created… the phrase ‘must play’ is mouthed to the point of being a mindless cliché. However, in this particular case, it’s worthy on all counts.” Two of the three new entries in the latest Oregon state listings are located at the same venue. The Craddock and Hankins courses at the Silvies Valley Ranch boutique eco-resort (new at #8 and #10) are part of a reversible 36-hole set-up that uses 27 greens for the two 18-hole layouts, with nine shared greens and nine stand-alone greens for each track. Designed by Dan Hixson and constructed over the best part of a decade, the two courses are configured so that only eight holes, four on each course, do not share common ground. Silvies Valley Ranch - Craddock course Only six courses make any numerical progress in the new chart and the biggest move is made by the 18-hole layout at the semi-private Eagle Point Golf Club (up three to #23), where Robert Trent Jones Jr. fashioned the fairways in the mid-1990s. The front nine occupies a flat, open landscape while the back nine is laid out on more undulating terrain, with sand-capping of fairways during construction ensuring optimum playing conditions no matter how hard it rains. Click the link to see full details of our latest Oregon Best in State rankings Washington The top five courses in the Evergreen State rankings stay as they were in 2018. Having ousted Chambers Bay from the top spot last time, Gamble Sands emerges with its No. 1 status intact. With another 14-hole layout (called Quicksand) from David McLay Kidd due to appear here very soon, it looks like the Gebbers family (who own this Brewster golf facility) aren’t content to rest on their laurels. Gamble Sands Our International Correspondent David Davis had this to say about the course in his review last year: “The fairways are very wide but the visuals are excellent, the bunker shaping fits perfectly into the Eastern Washington dune country… It plays very firm and fast and that may be new for many PNW players, especially if they haven’t been to Bandon Dunes or Chambers Bay… It opens up options to use the ground game and percentage-wise this doesn’t happen often enough in the US.” Two courses make impressive five-place gains in the new standings. The first of these is the 18-hole layout at the Desert Canyon Golf Resort in Orondo (now at #11), comprising the Lakes and Desert nines, which enjoys a fantastic setting on high ground above the Columbia River, with the Cascade Mountains to the west. The other big mover is the course at Kalispel Golf & Country Club in Spokane and this layout, originally established in 1910 as Spokane Country Club, is now owned and operated by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians. Sand Point Country Club The highest of the ten new entries is the old 1927 layout at Sand Point Country Club, located above the shores of Lake Washington, close to downtown Seattle. Nick Schaan from DMK Design has just completed a renovation here, re-building some of the holes, re-bunkering all the sand traps, and removing many of the trees that were blocking the fabulous long views across the lake. Click the link to see full details of our latest Washington Best in State rankings Next up – the Mountain Division states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses

US Pacific Division Best in State Rankings 2018 Five States in our West Region are updated in the first of nine US divisional updates. This is the fourth biennial update of the Best in State rankings that we introduced for the United States in 2012. As we did two years ago, we’ll publish the revised tables for the fifty states in nine geographical divisions over the next few months, beginning with the five Pacific States of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. In these state charts, a total of 195 courses are featured – nineteen of which appear for the first time – and with seventeen Pacific tracks currently occupying prominent positions in our national Top 100 for the United States, that statistic tells you it’s a region which is high on quality at the top end. So, without further ado, it’s time to embark on a golfing journey across North America that starts now on the western seaboard and ends in August on the opposite side of the country with the six states in our New England Division. Alaska Alaska is the only US state where we list fewer than ten courses. The Last Frontier State’s number 1 is still Bill Newcomb’s thirty-year-old Anchorage Golf Course, located on the edge of the City of Lights and Flowers, with the fairways framed by the Chugach Mountain Range, the Anchorage city skyline and the Cook Inlet. The golf season at the club runs from early May through to mid-October but it’s still possible to tee it up on the 1st at 8.00 pm during June or July and finish all eighteen holes around midnight. Rank/ Click the link to see full details of our 2018 Alaska Best in State rankings California There’s a little bit of movement within the Top 10 for California but Alister MacKenzie’s Cypress Point remains firmly in the number 1 position – which will hardly come as a shock to the system when you realise it’s also our current US and World Number 1! A reviewer had this to say after a recent round on the course: “Cypress for sure held up as the best course in the world. It was in pristine shape and every single hole was unique and fantastic in its own way.” Suffice to say, all but one of the posts we’ve ever received for this layout has been accompanied by a 6-ball rating. Two 18-hole layouts make significant two-place upward moves within the new Top 10 and both have benefitted greatly from extensive renovation work carried out over the last few years by two of the world’s top architects. The first of these climbers is the North course at Los Angeles Country Club (at number 3) which Gil Hanse has upgraded and the second course is California Golf Club of San Francisco (at number 6), where Kyle Phillips has given the layout an extensive facelift. Another course to have its fortunes positively transformed by a large-scale makeover is Monterey Peninsula (Dunes) (up ten spots to number 11) which has had its original 1920s Seth Raynor design remodelled by Tom Fazio and former associate Tim Jackson. Our US Consultant Fergal O’Leary visited last year and he told us there had been “improvements to drainage and irrigation across the course” along with “much-improved bunkering” and he felt “you’ll be left with countless memories due to the excellent design variety and aesthetics” after playing here. The highest of the twelve new entries in our updated Top 100 for the Golden State arrives at number 35 and it’s the result of another Tom Fazio redesign project at Rams Hill Golf Club in Borrego Springs. Only reopened in 2014 after being closed for a few years, the course enjoys a curtailed playing season during the Autumn and Winter months but its relative remoteness next to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park makes it an ideal weekend getaway destination for the more intrepid golfer. A reviewer in January described it as “a classic Fazio design, very picturesque, a really good track and fun to play for all levels”. Click the link to see full details of our 2018 California Best in State rankings Hawaii The top seven positions in the Aloha State remain the same as before so that means David McLay Kidd’s design at the ultra-exclusive Nanea holds on to its status as the number 1 in state. According to the DMK website, this was the first course in North America to use paspalum from tee to green, across the entire course. David’s father Jimmy had pioneered the use of this grass in the Middle East years earlier and he felt that it would be ideally suited for the Hawaiian islands. Taking a not so subtle swipe at his critics, the architect says: “Nanea was my retort to those that enviously postulated that anyone could have designed Bandon Dunes.” The only course to progress within the Hawaiian Top 10 is the Rees Jones design at Kohanaiki, inching one spot closer to the top at number 8. Laid out with six ocean-front holes on a coastal site near Kona international airport, the course is the sporting centrepiece of a private residential development where its paspalum fairways are routed around a rather unique environment of Ahu rock shrines, numerous anchialine ponds and black lava outcrops. The highest-placed of three new entries is Makena Golf & Beach Club on the southeast coast of Maui which enters at number 15. The course started out as the North course at the Maui Prince Hotel in the early 1990s but, after several changes of ownership over the last decade, the Discovery Land Company acquired the property four years ago and commissioned Dennis Wise, a former Tom Fazio associate, to remodel the layout. Click the link to see full details of our 2018 Hawaii Best in State rankings Oregon The top four slots in our Beaver State chart are all held by courses from the iconic Bandon Dunes Resort with Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes layout retaining its position at the top of standings, where it has held a tight grip on the number 1 position for the last six years. All four 18-hole layouts at this modern golf destination are firmly entrenched within our US Top 100, giving Bandon a reasonable claim to be considered as the best golf resort in the country. The course at Waverley Country Club rises seven places to number 5, tucked in behind another three Bandon layouts in our chart. Originally redesigned by Chandler Egan more than a century ago, the layout has been modified over the last couple of decades by Gil Hanse, with many trees removed and bunkers reinstated to help revitalise its Golden age design credentials. Host venue for a number of USGA tournaments over many years, the course came under the national spotlight again last year when it was used for the 2017 Senior Women’s Amateur. The only new entry in the Oregon Top 30 appears at number 11 and it’s yet another Bandon Dunes layout, the 13-hole par-three circuit named Bandon Preserve, which is located between the sand hill holes at Bandon Trails and the closing holes at Bandon Dunes. Our International Correspondent David Davies awarded this short track a 6-ball mark when he played here, saying it “has enough eye candy to equal every one of the other Bandon courses… the routing is wonderful and runs through extremely wild and rolling sand dunes… a roller coaster ride of short irons, punch and knock down shots”. Click the link to see full details of our 2018 Oregon Best in State rankings Washington The Evergreen State chart is now headed by David McLay Kidd’s Gamble Sands which eases up one place from the runner-up position to number 1. Laid out on top of a sandy mesa within a massive 1,000-acre property, this course proves that it doesn’t take an enormous construction budget to create a nationally ranked top track. Of course, it helps to have the right topography and an architect who knows how to extract the best from it. The course at Wine Valley Golf Club advances two positions to number 3 in our revised state listings. It’s Dan Hixon’s second design and already he’s being earmarked as an architect worth watching (his 2017 reversible creation at Silvies Valley Ranch in Oregon is also receiving praise). Last month, one reviewer posted the following for this course: “there’s plenty of width here in a similar vein to Gamble Sands. With width you get options and with the wind that blows here it’s a necessity. Wine Valley will appeal to minimalists but it just seemed a touch bland off the tee lacking focal definition to my eyes – a few more fairway bunkers [required] perhaps.” The first of two new entries comes in at number 20 and it’s the course at White Horse Golf Club near Kingston in Kitsap County. Now operated by the Suquamish Clearwater Resort and Casino, the original Cynthia Dye-designed layout opened a decade ago to much critical acclaim, though many observers felt it was just too tough. When the golf facility changed ownership a few years back, architect John Harbottle III (who sadly passed away in 2012 at the age of just 53) was called in to soften the layout by widening fairways, removing bunkers, clearing trees and adding more tees. Since those changes were carried out, the club has never looked back. Click the link to see full details of our 2018 Washington Best in State rankings We’re always happy to hear what you think about our re-ranking process so feel free to let us know your opinion of our five newly updated US Best in State charts. Which course have we overlooked or maybe there’s one (or more) that really shouldn’t be listed? Perhaps a particular layout features too prominently or maybe it sits too low in the standings? Whatever your thoughts, please click the “Respond to this article” link at the top or at the bottom of this page if you’d like to voice your opinion. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses