Golf and Travel

By Bradley S. Klein
June/July 1998

Nothing compares with a round of golf where the land tumbles into the sea—howling winds; variable weather; firm, sandy soil; and treeless fields of fescue and gorse. It also helps to have maddening greens, with bunkers and slopes to match. Unfortunately, there are only so many--or so few--seaside courses, and with environmental permitting so restrictive these days, the chances are slim that any new courses will be built on coastal sites.

Fortunately, four new, waterside public golf courses by noteworthy architects have managed to emerge that do give players a sense of the game’s links heritage. Not every course in this foursome is built on dunes reclaimed from the receding sea. But each sits along a vast, open body of water: Playa Conchal, in Costa Rica, runs along the Pacific Ocean.

By law, a quarter of Costa Rica’s land mass is set aside for nature preserves and

National parks--much of it in the form of rain forests. As in many countries, the coastline is subject to particularly close regulation. With golf relatively new--the country has a 9-hole layout dating to 1942 as well as two courses open in the seventies, one in 1988, two in 1997 and one last February--the government is careful to monitor developers.

So when the mammoth Spanish hotel chain Meliá sought to build a tasteful 650-acre seaside resort and golf course along the Pacific Coast in Guanacaste Providence, it turned for guidance to a designer with impeccable credentials as a naturalist: Robert Trent Jones Jr.

At Playa Conchal Beach & Golf Resort, Jones and his project designer Gary Linn were required to keep the golf grounds set back some 150 feet from the beach line. They so were not allowed to cut down any of the aged Banyan trees, which serve as a windbreak - and as it turned out, home to the area’s appropriately named howler monkeys. If you think their friendly chatter is amusing as a wake-up call each morning, wait until you waggle at the seventh tee, preparing to hit a draw shot on this lovely par-5; the darn monkeys just won’t keep quiet. But it’s a small price to pay for keeping the game in such pristine conditions.

A dry creek bed traverses Garra de León’s front side and many of the holes on this more open nine allow for broad views that take in the hills to the east and the ocean on the west. No one would mistake the Bermuda-grass course for a links layout. But while the shorter holes (like the 318-yard, par-4 first and the 145-yard, par-3 eighth) call for delicate shots over hazards fronting the greens, the longer holes are designed to accommodate shots struck low into the wind. The back nine has an especially natural feel, as holes 10 through 13 lie at the base of a hillside dense with hardwoods, and at the 16th green only a line of Banyon trees stand between you and the blazing white Pacific beach.

These new courses--each with its own distinctive use of lake, sea or ocean incorporate modern techniques of design yet look and feel as if they’ve been here for ages. These are precious examples of an age-old game where public players can experience a classic mix of traditional elements. When land hits open water, golf is at its most thrilling.