Mauritius
Heritage Golf Club (main image, photo: Jacob Sjöman), hugging the southern shoreline of Mauritius, is the Indian Ocean’s only 45-hole golf resort. Its two championship golf courses are contrasting in nature: the lush, parkland Le Chateau and the linksy La Reserve Golf Links (right). The latter, which was codesigned by past Open champ Louis Oosthuizen, is built upon former sugarcane fields and relies on native grasses to promote ecological diversity. It also offers a unique playing experience, with five par 5s, five par 3s, and a couple of drivable par 4s. While the club is home to a pair of luxury beach resorts (Le Telfair and Awali), guests can take an ultra-exclusive journey into 19th-century French elegance by staying in the private suite at Le Chateau, which overlooks ornamental gardens and its namesake golf course.
Mexico
Home to two sprawling beach resorts—and soon to welcome one more, the St. Regis Los Cabos—Quivira is a gated Mexican retreat set just outside of Cabo San Lucas. It is perhaps most famous for its semiprivate golf course, which itself is known for a handful of dramatically positioned cliffside holes.
Take the par-3 seventh hole, which the course’s designer, Jack Nicklaus, once described as “awesome, spectacular, picturesque” and “a monster.” Carved into a cliff and playing downhill to a green with the Pacific Ocean crashing on the rocks hundreds of feet below, the hole remains a beautiful beast, 10 years after Quivira Golf Club first opened its doors. Lately, the club has been tinkering with other holes, making the course feel both familiar and fresh for those who have played it in the past. Most notably, Quivira now opens with a medium-length par 4 (previously the 18th hole), which plays out to an infinity-edge green perched not far from the beach and the Pacific.
Australia
Australia may be one of the world’s most-hyped golf destinations, but it hides a few secrets that only the well-informed are likely to know. Cape Wickham Golf Links, just about an hour outside of Melbourne, is one of those secrets. Set on King Island in the Bass Strait, midway between Tasmania’s main island and the Australian mainland, this 6,150-yard Mike DeVries design takes full advantage of its location. The course boasts wide fairways carved between large dunes and offers firm and fast playing conditions. Simply put, the golfing experience is as authentically “links” as you’ll find anywhere in the world, with all 18 holes offering ocean views.
Canada
This Canadian resort course’s origin story boasts some notable names in golf architecture. It all started in 1911 when Bill Thomson, a Scottish expatriate who apprenticed under Old Tom Morris in St Andrews, built a nine-hole layout. A little more than a decade later, Donald Ross arrived to expand the course to 18 holes; however, it was Stanley Thompson—Canada’s most decorated golf architect—who molded the final iteration of the course in 1928.
Wedged between the Canadian Rockies and the Bow River, the almost-7,000-yard routing is teeming with scenic golf holes, none more captivating than the famous par-3 fourth, which is guarded by the majestic Rundle Mountain. “The hole is called the Devil’s Cauldron, with a glacial lake between the back tee and the green,” explains golf photographer Jacob Sjöman. “The setting is hard to beat. Rundle Mountain is huge, and it feels like the mountain hangs over you.”
Dominican Republic
For decades, Casa de Campo has enjoyed a place among the pantheon of golf resorts in the Caribbean. Shortly after its now-famous Teeth of the Dog course (shown) was completed, in 1971, the Pete Dye design was deemed by many pundits to be the region’s best course. Earlier this year, the seaside course closed for a comprehensive, Jerry Pate–led restoration, one that not only regrassed the entire property with Dynasty Paspalum (a varietal that’s ideal for seaside conditions) but also expanded and reshaped greenside bunkers and returned the putting surfaces to their original sizes. With the course reopening in November, it joins the Dominican Republic property’s new Premier Club (a standalone wing of butler-enhanced luxury suites) and state-of-the-art destination spa to form a trio of amenities that is certain to reestablish Casa de Campo among the Caribbean’s leading golf resorts.
Fiji
It sounds like a fantasy, but there really is an 18-hole David McLay Kidd golf course on a private island set in the middle of the South Pacific. The place is Fiji’s Como Laucala Island, where DMK’s design features verdant, narrow fairways laced between hills landscaped with lush palms; a signature par 5 extending right onto a white-sand beach; and very few golfers. In fact, it’s quite possible you could play an entire round at Laucala and never see another player. Beyond its golf course, Laucala is one of Earth’s most remarkable destinations, with just 25 villa-style accommodations scattered across more than 3,000 acres. The largely undeveloped expanse offers ample opportunities for hiking and horseback riding, while underwater explorers enjoy access to some of the world’s best dive sites.
Costa Rica
Arnold Palmer preferred walking rounds of golf, but he had to adapt when presented with a 125-acre site on Costa Rica’s rugged Peninsula Papagayo. Stretching nearly nine miles from first tee to 18th green—with constant ups and downs along the way—Palmer’s Ocean Course set a new standard in Costa Rica when it debuted in 2004. It remains the lone layout and a primary attraction at Peninsula Papagayo, a 1,400-acre swath of luxury resorts, residences, hidden beaches, and tropical dry forest that juts into the Pacific in the country’s Guanacaste province. Navigating a cart on the Ocean Course can feel like a safari drive, as howler monkeys and myriad bird species frequent the forest that lines the fairways and long paths that link one hole to the next. Each hole offers a distinct environment, from thread-the-needle layouts in jungle-shrouded valleys to wide-open par 5s with ocean views all around. The Ocean Course completed a two-year renovation in 2023, led by Thad Layton of Arnold Palmer Design Company. More recently, it welcomed a new neighbor—Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, an exclusive clifftop resort near the Ocean Course’s Ronald Zürcher–designed clubhouse.
Mexico
When it opened a quarter of a century ago, Jack Nicklaus’s “Tail of the Whale” hole (shown) helped put Punta Mita on the map. Billed as having the world’s only natural island green, the optional par 3 on the Pacifico Course is open for play only during low tide, when the island is accessible via an aquatic golf cart. But even those who miss their shot at the Tail will find no shortage of thrills at the now-famous resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast. The 1,500-acre property has become a model for luxury resort communities in Mexico and beyond. Set on a hammerhead-shaped peninsula about 45 minutes north of the Puerto Vallarta airport, Punta Mita comprises two Jack Nicklaus–designed championship golf courses, 18 residential communities, beach clubs, restaurants, and a pair of luxury resorts from Four Seasons and St. Regis, the latter having recently emerged from a $45 million renovation.
Barbados
Barbados’s prestige as a golf destination got a boost in 2022 thanks to a Ron Kirby–led redesign of the almost-7,000-yard golf course at Apes Hill. Trundling through tropical forest about 1,000 feet above sea level, the resort and private residential community’s crown jewel delivers striking vistas—much like Kirby’s most famous design, Old Head Golf Links, in Ireland. In fact, along certain stretches of the course, golfers will enjoy simultaneous views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Although Apes Hill originally operated as a semiprivate club, these days (following its acquisition by a Canadian businessman in 2019), it’s far more exclusive. Most rounds are reserved for members who have purchased real estate—such is the only way to gain membership. However, the club also doubles as a boutique resort, where guests can book stays in a variety of villas that owners make available through a rental pool.
CONTRIBUTORS: Robin Barwick, Shaun Tolson & Bruce Wallin
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