Golf in Hawaii

Hawaii is the only island state in the United States and the only state outside North America, an archipelago of eight main islands extending across 1,500 miles of the central Pacific Ocean. Golf arrived in Hawaii in the early twentieth century, when the plantation economy's professional and managerial class established private clubs on Oahu and Maui, but the contemporary golf landscape is defined primarily by the resort development of the post-statehood era—a building program that has produced some of the most celebrated resort courses in the world on six of the eight main islands.

The most concentrated resort golf in the state is found on three coastlines. The Kohala Coast of the Big Island—the dry, lava-carved northwestern shore shielded from the trade winds by the volcanic peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa—hosts a succession of championship resort courses beginning with Robert Trent Jones Sr.'s Mauna Kea Golf Course in 1964, which established the visual template for Hawaiian resort golf with its ocean-inlet third hole. The south shore of Maui, from Kihei through Wailea and Makena, provides a second concentration of resort courses in the consistent sunshine of the island's driest coast. The north shore of Kauai, from Princeville's plateau above Hanalei Bay through the jungle terrain of the Prince Course, offers a third environment of extraordinary scenic drama.

Oahu—the most populous island by far—provides the widest range of golf access models. Ala Wai Golf Course in Honolulu is one of the most-played courses in the world by virtue of its Waikiki adjacency and municipal pricing. Wai'alae Country Club hosts the Sony Open PGA Tour event in January, Ko'olau Golf Club is rated among the world's most difficult courses by multiple measurement systems, and the military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hickam, Schofield, and Marine Corps Base Hawaii maintain golf courses that serve the substantial active-duty population across the island.

Molokai and Lanai represent the more intimate scale of Hawaiian golf. Molokai's small Hawaiian community has resisted resort development, and Ironwood Hills Golf Club serves a local rather than visitor market. Lanai's Challenge at Manele—Nicklaus's oceanside lava-cliff layout above Manele Bay—offers one of the most dramatic settings in world golf, accessible through the Four Seasons resort that now defines the island's hospitality economy.

Hawaii's golf landscape is inseparable from its natural and cultural context. The ancient Hawaiian sites—fishponds, petroglyph fields, heiau—that appear within the routing of courses on the Big Island and Maui give Hawaii's resort golf a historical dimension unlike anything the game offers on the mainland.