|
Up to Par
Your Complete Golf Guide
By Bradley Fraser
Los Cabos is a golfer’s paradise. It has fantastic sunny weather, sandy beaches, great restaurants, fishing, first class hotels, and a collection of designer championship golf courses. In fact, it has become the new, must-go vacation destination for all the right reasons. The best names in course design: Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Tom Weiskopf, and Robert Trent Jones II, have designed championship courses to blend into the remarkable desert and ocean terrain. At the present time, Los Cabos has seven public and two private courses in operation. There are at least five new courses on the drawing board, or being sodded, as of this writing.
Let’s have a look at some of the golf courses that are open to the public. We begin with Questro Golf, Mexico’s first family of championship golf management. In Los Cabos, Questro Golf offers exceptional diversity with its courses: Cabo Real, and Club Campestre San Jose, as well as the soon to be completed Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus courses in Puerto Los Cabos.
Cabo Real, designed by Robert Trent Jones II, opened in 1989. It’s arguably one of the most underrated courses in Los Cabos. The first six holes run gradually up the desert mountainside, with gorge carries, two par fives and two longish par threes, to make it interesting. Every hole has a view of the Sea of Cortes and comes with the luxury of its cooling breezes.
The second Questro Golf course, the Jack Nicklaus-designed Club Campestre San Jose, was completed in the spring of 2007. The wide fairways of Paspalum seawater grass are durable and verdant green, leading to undulating, but hopefully rewarding greens.
Questro will also be managing the new Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus courses in the Puerto Los Cabos development. The Jack Nicklaus-designed Cabo del Sol Ocean Course has been the ‘it’ course in Los Cabos for some time and only shows improvement. This championship layout is praised by Nicklaus himself, for having the “three finest finishing holes in all of golf.” The Tom Weiskopf-designed Cabo del Sol Desert Course incorporates traditional bunkering, expansive greens, wide fairways, multiple tee boxes, natural waste areas, and spectacular ocean views.
In addition to the Questro Golf courses, there are several other praiseworthy courses to choose from in Los Cabos, including the Palmilla Golf Course, Cabo San Lucas Country Club, and Mayan Palace Golf Los Cabos. The Palmilla Golf Course has 27 holes of three nines: the Ocean, the Arroyo, and the Mountain courses. Five sets of tee boxes, rolling fairways, constant shifts in elevation, and four lakes, promise golfers of varying skill levels a fair shake. The Cabo San Lucas Country Club course (formerly Raven Golf Club), is an 18-hole design by Pete Dye, that presents a fair challenge for all players. Fairways slope down to the Sea of Cortés and provide a view of Land’s End. Lastly, a Mario Shedjnan design, Mayan Palace Golf Los Cabos (formerly the San Jose Municipal Golf Course), is a nine-hole course with moderate green fees that is meant for both intermediate and beginner golfers.
Come on down to Los Cabos! The weather is great and the golf courses even better.
|
