Kapalua Plantation - Your thoughts

[Morgan Clawson]

Except for the mighty 18th, The Golf Channel does a horse**** job of showing most of the other holes on the Plantation course.

Occasionally they are forced to show a few bits and pieces of some other holes.  And frankly, a lot of those holes look pretty cool and have some interesting ground game options. 

One thing I don't like is how close the hazards are to the greens on some holes.

Have you played it?

Did you like it?

How does it compare to other C & C courses?


 

[Terry Lavin]

It's a terrific golf course, with enormous elevation changes, fabulous views and great greens.  There are several gigantic gorges that the course winds around and through, creating the requirement for carts.  The greens are impossible for mere mortals to read.  The combination of grain and elevation are really mind numbingly difficult.  You can stand over a six foot put that looks straight downhill but you have to hammer it to get it to the hole.  Contrarily, I've had puts that look uphill and they're slicker than a fresh hockey rink.  The pros can figure them out and the locals are used to it, but if you only play it a couple times, it's a bit of a torture chamber in terms of reading greens.

[Jeff Evagues]

Its one of my favorite courses. After numerous tries, I was able to reach 18 in 2 last year. There are very few level lies.

[Bruce Katona]

The wife and I loved it.  I was on the fringe of 18 in 2 and made 5.....what slope.

Even better were the mai tais we had on the veranda watching the sun set.

[William_G]

love Plantation, its huge, with beautiful views, amazing chasms and elevation changes, greens can de diabolical as the are grainy bermuda with sweeping breaks, the pros have all week to figure it out

the wind can make it unbelievably difficult

additionally, the restaurant in the clubhouse is one of my favorites in the world

[Geoffrey_Walsh]

I have never understood why it is not on most Top 100 lists.  It's a fantastic course that is unlike anything else I have ever played before or since.

[Richard Choi]

The best course I have played in Hawaii, by far. The only negative is it is unwalkable.

It is truly a roller coaster ride. Heaping elevation changes, epic in scale with options galore. What I really love about the place is the variations in approach shots. Uphill, forced carries, and many where your best option is to bounce it down to the green.

Every resort should have a golf course as fun as this one.

[Bruce Katona]

The wife & I had a cart.  I walked most of the course (there are a few green-tee walks that are quite long so I jumped n te cart).  We played twilight golf and got all 18 holes in as well.

[Jeff Evagues]

You can walk but the distance between some holes is literally half a mile. You might notice they even ferry the players several times during the round - between 5 & 6, the eighth, and 9 to 10 to name a few.

[Wade Whitehead]

Morgan's first point is spot on: Coverage does a horrible job of featuring the architecture.  Every shot, as usual, seems to be of a lag putt or tap in.

I caught a glimpse of the first hole from the tee and really liked it.  Then, they returned to the typical cameras behind greens.

What tournament or broadcast features architecture best?  Probably The Masters.  Any others?

WW

[Chris Johnston]

Love it.  Love the course.  Love the Par 5 18th - long hitters dream.  Love the views.

Very underrated.  

[William_G]

definitely designed as a "cart" course by C+C, it's a resort in Hawaii of course, on a hillside in a former pineapple plantation, just try to  get to the driving range from the clubhouse, lol

also, I love the restaurant, that way I come back with the family, etc...

[Rob Rigg]

Fantastic course - super fun especially if the winds are up and you don't mind taking the good (tailwind) with the bad (headwind). Smashing 350+ yard drives isn't something that most of us do on a regular basis but with the right tailwind on the right hole you can get some crazy distance at KP - it's a lot of fun. The various lies that you will face along with the grainy greens also increase the challenge significantly. I'd advise anyone to forget about score - at least on their first round - and just enjoy the experience, it's fantastic.

I walked the course when I played but there are two challenges - 1) you have to take a caddie - so add $75 or so to your round (which probably started around $200) and 2) the caddie has to call HQ to get you both ferried from green to tee on a few of the holes (as has been mentioned).

The last cart ferry is between 9 and 10, so you can walk the entire back nine. For the amount of elevation change I didn't think it was that hard a trek - it's just the transfers that are kind of annoying because they really disrupt the flow.

If you share a cart with someone and want to walk (aside from the transfers) be careful if it is "primetime" because they may tell you to get back in the cart and stop walking.

[Dan King]

It's the very definition of the "finest course of its kind." It is a great cartball course. It can't hold itself up in polite company with real golf courses, but for cartball -- super.

On a first trip to Maui it is something worth experiencing. Having played the Plantation a number of times, I'd easily pick a dozen rounds walking at  Waiehu Golf Course over a single cartball round at Plantation.

Cheers,
Dan King

So the British, of all ages, still walk the course. On trips to Florida or the American desert, they still marvel, or shudder, at the fleets of electric carts going off in the morning like the first assault wave at the Battle of El Alamein. It is unlikely, for some time, that a Briton will come across in his native land such a scorecard as Henry Longhurst rescued from a California club and cherished till the day he died. The last on its list of local rules printed the firm warning "A Player on Foot Has No Standing on the Course."
 --Alister Cooke

[Mike Cirba]

Can someone PLEASE chop down those ridiculous stands of pine trees seemingly planted at every horizon point and which only seem to serve to block the stunning views?

Pretty please??

[Matthew Rose]

Was a great disappointment for me, if only because it was absolutely soaking wet. I knew I wasn't getting to play it in the right conditions. We'd all been looking forward to hitting our tee-shots on the downhill chute hole (#4?), only to hit great drives that plugged.

I birdied the first hole and got very excited, then promptly doubled the par-3 second.

It also got dark before we could play the 18th, which was another bummer. We spent pretty much the whole day behind a foursome that was so slow you could see the cobwebs grow on them while they putted. One thing I'll never understand is why you can pay that much money to play a world-class golf course and then not feel at least one single modicum of urgency caused by something such as, I don't know, the loss of daylight?

I remember thinking "how does anybody walk this course?"

It would be nice to get another shot at it on a drier day without idiots holding me up. Maybe one day.

[John Foley]

Loved it when I played it, but the further away the day I played it the less I remember, especially the front 9. One note when I played it in the mid 90's is the holes were named and one of them was named National. The yardage book talked about NGLA as the inspiration and at the time this GCA obsessions was just begining. I remember thinking at the time I need to go find out about this national course!

17 & 18 are very cool holes with the elevated tee, balls fly & run forever. Would like to see the course again, especially with the new greens.

Drinks on the veranda at sunset is one of the great places I've been.

Cart ball or not - it is one hell of an experience and should not be4 missed when you are on Maui.

[Jeff Wallach]

Easy if the wind's not blowing.

By the way-- the wind is always blowing.  Brutal.  Never watched a tee shot travel farther from side to side than it did forward until I played there.  That said, it's terrific fun, some fantastic holes, some nice architectural deceit, and more.  And the golf academy there is among the bestaround.

[DMoriarty]

Not much to add.  Great course for what it is, but the discontinuity and not being able to walk detracts from the experience for me.   I have played it many times and have enjoyed it less over time, I think probably because of the cart ball experience.   Real beauty of the course is how well it plays in the wind.

Someone above described it as a roller coaster ride, and I agree, but would add that there are portions of the course where it feels a bit like that slow climb a roller coaster makes before the big drop.   In other words, some of the uphill holes feel like a bit of a slog, but that is the price one pays for the spectacular ride down.

[mike_beene]

would it be extremely expensive to put walking suspension bridges from the fifth green to the sixth tee and from eigth tee to green?Could the sixth tee be located by the fifth green to create the mother of all cape holes with a speed slot to boot?I could live with the walk from nine to ten.In my mind those simple steps would take the course from not a top hundred to a top forty in the world.Illogical and expensive,but that is how I feel.

[Jason Topp]

Going in April. It looked unusually soft for the tournament this year. I assumed it was due to the grey skies and lack of wind vbut it did not seem to firm up much on the last couple of days.

I thought in past years Rolfing did a pretty good job of describibg the architecture but not so much this year.

[Tim Leahy]

I stayed there at Kapalua in October about 15 years ago and the weather was awesome. The views are even better in person than what you see on tv. Great bombers course, wide fairways and great rolls on drives. I accidentilly cut the corner on a par five on the front and had a seven iron in. Plantation House restaurant is great for breakfast and dinner. Great resort rates in October. They had three courses open when I played there. Anybody know what happened to the Village course?

[Tom Yost]

I played it once on a visit to Maui in 2008.  My companions were 3 strangers, all, like myself, first timers at the Plantation.  Luckily, everyone had a sense of humor.  Blustery conditions and the crazy breaks on the greens made for a lot of shots where we would watch, shrug and then laugh out loud.  Fun time!  Drop dead gorgeous vistas (although I have to agree with Cirba about those stupid looking pine trees).

I really like #6, the blind fairway disappearing over the knoll with blue ocean backdrop, the centerline bunker beckoning the bold tee shot.  Green site in a bowl with mucho room to miss left, but anything pushed or faded right is dead.

A couple of shots from my day:

First green:



#6 tee



Par 3 11th



Windy day!

[Jeff Evagues]

I stayed there at Kapalua in October about 15 years ago and the weather was awesome. The views are even better in person than what you see on tv. Great bombers course, wide fairways and great rolls on drives. I accidentilly cut the corner on a par five on the front and had a seven iron in. Plantation House restaurant is great for breakfast and dinner. Great resort rates in October. They had three courses open when I played there. Anybody know what happened to the Village course?

They closed the Village course about 4 years ago in order to build a private course but the economy put that on hold. There 3 or 4 holes open now by the golf academy that they use for a walking course. Its good if you don't have the time or money to play 18. When I visit I go there in the late afternoon for some practice.

[Scott Warren]

Played KP yesterday and have had a tough time reconciling my feelings about it.


It wasn't as good as I hoped, but that's on me. Expectation management.


Given that land was in no way created to become a golf course, what got built is probably pretty amazing, really.


Moriarty nailed my feelings about a few holes in describing the uphill as the slow climb on the roller coaster that gets you to the thrilling race down the other side, I guess I just felt some of those holes (4, 9, 13, 15, 16) were just a bit ho-hum and the use of blind drives on a really windy site was overdone.


Also a bit of a shame that 17 and 18 are not dissimilar, even though they are both good holes.


The really grainy Bermuda greens did my head in. You'd adjust to them, I'm sure, but coming from pure bent greens it was an adjustment that would taken more than 18 holes to make.


I would play it again next time I visit but a bit surprised by it.


It's certainly distinctive!