There's no other place on earth for golf like Hawaii's Big Island.
One course is located on top of a lava-spewing volcano; several are carved literally into ancient flows of brown and black lava, looking like green ribbons curling through the dark rock; two or three are played on the slopes of Mauna Kea Mountain; several others nuzzle down to the beach.
And these are not just any courses -- these layouts are good.
You'd have to trek a bit to play Volcano Golf and Country Club, some 90 miles south of the Kona airport. This unique course is at the 4,000-foot altitude, high atop active Kilauea Volcano, but the experience is worth the effort. Of course vulcanologists call Kilauea's issue "friendly flow"-meaning you can walk faster than it can crawl down a slope-and the golf course is nowhere near any active rift. But your friends back home don't know that.
And besides, you'll get a chance to stay at Kilauea Lodge in the heart of the wonderful little village of Volcano, where cozy cottage rooms come complete with fireplaces and the dining room in the main lodge serves surprisingly good meals.
That is an experience many choose to do. Others prefer to luxuriate on the gentle shores of the Kohala Coast, where the best full-service golf resorts are located. Just north of Kona, your choices include Mauna Kea Resort, Mauna Lani Resort, Waikoloa and Hualalai. Any one is the right choice.
Mauna Kea is where you'll find the Hapuna Beach Prince hotel and golf course, as well as the landmark Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and golf course. Now managed by Prince Resorts Hawaii -- which boasts 99 holes of golf and four hotels on three islands -- Mauna Kea offers visitors a distinct choice: classic or modern.
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Mauna Kea is where golfers find one of the most picturesque par-3s in all of golf, hole No. 3, which requires a tee shot over a wide ocean cove. But the green complex is large, so best to be long, because short is a snorkel dive.
Next door is Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel. This is the modern choice, providing all the technological requirements of the vacationing businessperson. Here, guestrooms face a long stretch of white sand beach, and a gentle measure of ocean that beckons one to have a morning swim before heading out to the golf course. It's a perfect way to start the day.
When you do get on the golf course, you'll find that Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay did a magnificent job grooming the wild kiawe scrub hillsides into manicured fairways. There are some carries to contend with off the tees, but recently the course has been softened at the edges from its early days (it opened in 1992) when some golfers thought it too severe. Now, if you do hit your ball off one of the fairways, chances are good you'll find it and play it again.
Something else golfers will notice: Homes being built along some of the fairways. Real estate sales at Mauna Kea Resort have been solid in the past several years, and now owners are constructing their dream homes overlooking Hapuna's fairways and out to the Pacific. If Hapuna Beach Prince is your choice, do take the time to walk around the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and enjoy the vast Pacific/Asian art collection as well as the lighted manta ray pool. This property is a special treat.
A few miles down the highway toward Kona, the welcoming entrance of Waikoloa Beach Resort appears. This development prides itself on being "where the action is" on the Kohala Coast, and it's hard to argue. Two hotels-the Waikoloa Beach Marriott and the Hilton Waikoloa Village-are beachfront, with two golf courses, a shopping center and some real estate opportunities rounding out the package.
The courses are both very enjoyable. The Beach Course is a Robert Trent Jones Jr. design that plays through the lava fields and down to the water at Nos. 12 and 13, an extremely scenic section of the course. The Beach Course is a fun, playable design that everyone will enjoy.
The Kings' Course is also a pleasure to play, although it can be a bit more challenging for those who wish to play a longer course. This Tom Weiskopf/Jay Morrish design doesn't find the ocean, but it does present some very interesting golf holes, made more so by creative use of the terrain.
One such hole is No. 5, a short par 4 with a classic risk/reward element. It's only 327 yards from the very back-293 from the blues, 277 from the whites-but between the tee box and glory is a vast bunker in which lie two meteor-sized hunks of lava rock. It's possible to drive the green, but the penalty for a mis-hit short is often an amusing lie behind the lava boulders.
Waikoloa is planning to open a Cultural Gardens in the near future, a visual and performing arts center/amphitheater/museum that will offer up concerts large and small, as well as pay tribute to the many cultures that make up the population and history of Hawaii. A new shopping center is also in the planning stages.
A good accommodations selection is the Waikoloa Beach Marriott, where an extensive renovation over the past few years has made this property-formerly the Royal Waikoloan-one of the Big Island's best medium-priced options. Between the hotel and the Pacific, just on the mauka (mountain) side of a long and scenic strip of beach, visitors can explore an historic Hawaiian fishing pond once used by Hawaiian ali'i (royalty). The Marriott is a good choice for families.
At Hualalai, where the PGA Champions Tour makes an annual early-season stop for the MasterCard Championship, a new course will be fully open in late spring. The existing Jack Nicklaus course, where the tournament is played, will be joined by a Tom Weiskopf design, nine holes of which are already open for play.
Both courses play through the lava fields and both feature wonderfully creative use of the lava rock. In one instance on the Nicklaus, golfers play through a small valley walled by lava stone; elsewhere, one is playing to a green in a lava bowl. The most scenic view on the course is at No. 17, a par 3 that looks first at the green down at the waves, then out to the Pacific and finally over to Maui's Mount Haleakala poking up across the channel. One of the preferred hotels in Hawaii, The Four Seasons Hualalai, is the accommodations choice here.
But no one goes to Hawaii simply to golf. Among the many off-course opportunities are helicopter tours of Kilauea Volcano, nature adventures with Hawaii Forest & Trail (hiking, Mauna Kea Summit observatories tour and star adventures, trail rides) and lots of excellent choices for dining. Two of the best restaurants are Canoe House at Mauna Lani Resort (fresh seafood preparations, beachfront location) and Amy Ferguson-Ota's Oodles of Noodles in Kona, where you'll find tasty and creative preparations with noodles.
One quickly sees it is true: With its lava-covered landscape, brilliantly designed golf courses, luxurious beachfront resorts and wide variety of off-course activities, there really is no place on earth like Hawaii's Big Island.
Editor's note: George Fuller contributes regular travel pieces to PGATOUR.COM and GolfWeb. He can be e-mailed directly at gfuller@earthlink.net .
