Mauna Kea Golf Course

Robert Trent Jones Sr. designed Mauna Kea Golf Course in 1964 on a piece of Big Island, Hawaii lava-rock land that Laurance Rockefeller bought specifically to build the first championship-grade resort course in the Hawaiian Islands. The site was raw black volcanic terrain when Rockefeller commissioned the project, and Jones brought in earthmoving equipment, topsoil, and irrigation infrastructure to convert the lava field into a playable championship venue. The course opened in 1965 as one of the most-photographed Hawaiian golf images of the 1960s, with the famous third hole — a 261-yard par-3 across an ocean bay with the green set on a peninsula — appearing in nearly every Pacific resort golf advertisement for the next two decades.

The course plays around 7,370 yards par 72 from the championship markers, with paspalum turf and a slope in the upper 130s. Jones routed the eighteen holes through the natural lava-rock outcrops and the kiawe (mesquite) groves that had grown back since the 1859 Mauna Loa lava flow that created the substrate. The third hole — across the bay — and the seventeenth, a 555-yard par-5 with the Pacific visible left of the fairway, are the routing's photographic signatures. The lava-rock subsoil produces firm fairway conditions year-round, and the trade winds off the ocean give the routing reliable afternoon wind.

Mauna Kea is part of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel resort complex and is open to resort guests at premium daily-fee rates. The property went through significant 2008 restoration after Jones's son Rees Jones reworked the green complexes and the bunkering. Caddies are available; carts are standard for resort guest tee times given the lava-rock terrain and the property's elevation changes.

Big Island Kohala Coast climate keeps Mauna Kea playable year-round with consistent trade winds and the firmest conditions in the dry season (October through April). The leeward position keeps the property dry — the windward side of the Big Island gets ten times more rain — and the lava-rock setting gives the routing its distinct visual identity. The Mauna Kea volcano rises behind the property to nearly 14,000 feet.