Ko'olau - CLOSED

Dick Nugent built the course at Ko’olau Golf Club in 1992 and it’s a formidable test, even from the resort tees. Hewn from the tropical rain forest beside the towering Koolau Ridge mountain range, this layout offers a stiff challenge at each and every hole on the card.

Tom Doak made a point of playing Ko’olau in 2016 and brutally awarded the course a zero out of ten on his Doak rating scale:

“Celebrated by the golf press of the day for its 155 Slope rating, the highest in the nation, Ko’olau is a torturous test of golf tacked onto a rainforest mountainside, just half an hour from Honolulu. Built originally by a Japanese conglomerate, it was bought out by a local church, which prized the large clubhouse as a space for a place of worship and operated the course to try to generate money for the congregation. So, it would be blasphemous for me to say what I really think of it, other than Lord have mercy for those who choose to play here.”
In September 2020, the First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu decided to shut down the Ko'olau course and golf club, citing the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic as the main reason for the closure. Perhaps the Lord took Tom Doak's comments seriously.