Princeville Makai Golf Club

Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed the Makai Course at Princeville on the north shore of Kauai, Hawaii in 1971, on a piece of Pacific clifftop land that the resort developers had bought from the Princeville Plantation. The course was the first championship golf in the Hawaiian Islands north of Oahu, and it has held its position as the architectural anchor of the Princeville resort ever since. The 1971 routing was originally twenty-seven holes — Makai (Ocean), Lake, and Woods — and the modern course is the eighteen-hole composite that Jones renovated in 2009.

The scorecard reads 7,223 yards from the back markers, par 72, with a slope of 135 and a course rating of 74.5. The four par-3s sit between 181 and 255 yards. The 255-yard third is the longest one-shotter on the routing and plays directly across a Pacific cliff drop with the ocean visible left of the green. The four par-5s range from 520 to 611 yards. The 611-yard fifth is the longest hole on the card and plays into prevailing northeast trade wind for most of the year.

The number-one handicap is the 385-yard fifteenth — a short par-4 whose difficulty rating reflects the green complex rather than the tee shot; the green is angled hard right against a deep Pacific bunker that catches anything missed long. The 476-yard second-hardest and the 446-yard third-hardest are both long par-4s. The Princeville signature hole is the seventh, a par-3 played over the Pacific to a green that sits on a clifftop with surf breaking below — the kind of one-shotter that Kauai's tourism photography has used for fifty years.

The Hawaiian trade-wind climate keeps the course playable year-round, with the prime window running November through April when the air is dry and the wind moderates. May through October is the winter swell season when the Pacific gets bigger and the cliffside par-3s become club-selection puzzles. Walking is allowed; carts are standard.