Querencia Golf Club (Campo Bajo)

A recent list of top ranked Mexican and Caribbean courses featured all the usual suspects at the top of the chart, including Bermuda’s Mid Ocean Club, Sandy Lane (Green Monkey) in Barbados and The Abaco Club in the Bahamas.

What may surprise many is that Mexico’s Querencia was placed as highly as number two in the list (just behind Casa de Campo’s Teeth of the Dog in the Dominican Republic) so when a course like this can hold its own in such esteemed company, you can be sure that the golf experience here is going to be one of the very best on offer anywhere.

The Tom Fazio-designed course is laid out within an 840-acre private residential estate between Palmilla and Costa Azul in the fashionable resort area of Los Cabos and it’s complemented by a modern clubhouse and practice facilities that face onto the Sea of Cortez.

Fairways are routed in an out and back fashion with a testing set of holes in the middle of the front nine (holes 4 to 7 are rated as stroke index 1,3, 7 and 5), followed by a couple of back-to-back par fives around the turn. The 14th may be the shortest of the four par threes on the scorecard (at only 164 yards from the back tees) but the position of the green, perched on a ridge above an arroyo, ensures it is also the most difficult of the short holes.

Gil Hanse has designed (on paper) a second course at Querencia, a development that is bound to raise the profile of the resort even higher, assuming the project ever gets off the ground.