In the island’s slender center (I’ve always thought of it as Maui’s “neck,” since West Maui takes the shape of a head looking south towards the island of Kaho’olawe), in the foothills of West Maui Mountain, sit two of Maui’s most celebrated courses. And, if you’re lucky, you can play them both on your next visit.
King Kamehameha Golf Club is Maui’s most celebrated private club, with a Ted Robinson-designed course nestled 700 feet above the beaches below, and a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed clubhouse. (Wright based the clubhouse on a design for a home for actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller, which was commissioned in 1949 but never built.) Each boast views stretching all the way across the island — from Kahului in the north to Ma’alaea Bay in the south, with mighty Haleakala rising in between. If it’s views you’ve come for, you can’t make a better choice.
Of course, it’s not — you’re here for golf, and you’re in luck there, too. King Kamehameha offers limited public play at certain times of the year through its “Guest For a Day” program, allowing golfers of all classes and abilities to venture across Robinson’s tiered greens, numerous elevation changes and risk-reward delights. You’ll experience a course designed to challenge and thrill, with generally broad fairways, but plenty of bunkers and water features for those who wander astray. Fairways and greens are in impeccable condition, and the club’s private status means the course is never crowded, with a typical round played in under four hours. What’s not to like?
That said, you don’t have to experience King Kamehameha to get a taste of the King Kamehameha experience. Just down the road is Maui’s Kahili Golf Club (808-242-4653), a public track which shares ownership and management with the acclaimed private course. That means that Kahili receives the same quality of care, and shares many of the same design features and views, as its more famous — and more expensive — sibling, at less than half the cost. Routinely rated among Maui’s top values by locals and visitors alike (Golf Magazine once named it the No. 1 public course in the entire state), Kahili is a golfer’s delight, with memorable par-3s and numerous doglegs and elevation changes that wreak havoc with its supposed 6,500-yard length. Especially given the wind, it’s wise to move up a tee box and give yourself a chance to score well. If you do, you’ll want to come back — and unlike at King Kamehameha, a true, once-in-a-lifetime experience for non-members — you can, over and over again.
Turning west at Ma’alaea Bay takes you to West Maui, a picturesque coastline from Olawalu to Kapalua that has as its bustling center the history-rich town of Lahaina. Chosen by Kamehameha two centuries ago to be the capitol of his newly unified Hawaiian kingdom and home to his royal palace, Lahaina was once one of the busiest ports on the entire Pacific Ocean. Today, its streets are packed not with sailors, but tourists enjoying an evening walk along the seaside Front Street, home to dozens of restaurants (many featuring second-story deck seating with unbeatable ocean views), trendy shops and galleries featuring work by local artists.
There are also a number of businesses catering specifically to out-of-towners, including whale-watching tours (in the wintertime, the straits around West Maui offer some of the best humpback whale-watching opportunities in the world), professionally led snorkeling and scuba expeditions, helicopter tours into the Haleakala crater, and more.
Most visitors to West Maui choose to stay in Ka’anapali, centrally located between Lahaina and Kapalua, just a 12-minute drive from both. Though officially just five square miles in size, Ka’anapali is home to seven resort-level hotels and numerous rental condominiums and vacation villas, all located on one of the most famous beaches in the world. With its relatively calm waters and abundant sea life, the Black Rock, a large, lava-rock outcropping located roughly at the midpoint of the resort complexes, is considered one of the premier snorkeling locations on the island, with eels, sea turtles and Hawaii’s famous colorful fish — including the fun-to-say humuhumunukunukuapua’a — all common sights for even the most amateur snorkeler.
It’s also home to the area’s two premier courses, Royal Ka’anapali and Ka’anapali Kai, at Ka’anapali Golf Resort (866-454-4653). The current home of the Wendy’s Champions Tour Skins Game, the Robert Trent Jones, Sr.-designed Royal Ka’anapali is a challenging test of a golfer’s shot-making skills, combining classic oceanfront holes with others that wind up into the foothills to create a varied golf experience that showcases all that is beautiful on the West Maui coast. At a comparatively reasonable 6,700 yards, and with multiple sets of tees, the par-71 course allows golfers to play the course to whatever difficulty they desire, ensuring a fun and memorable round for everyone in your group.
The shorter Ka’anapali Kai is the more forgiving course, with generous fairways and more subtle greens surrounded by brilliant native flowers, coconut trees and lava rock formations, all backdropped by stunning ocean and mountain views at every turn.
The courses are also ahead of the game when it comes to making golf more affordable and less time-consuming, a key part of the USGA’s new, forward-thinking initiatives. The “Golf My Way” program allows golfers to play 18 holes over a seven-day stretch — three holes here, four holes there, whatever you have time for on any given day. It’s been a boon with golfers who can’t resist the lure of the courses, but also want to maximize time spent with the family. There are also FitClub programs (an afternoon golf fitness program, perfect for snowbirds in town for a while), FootGolf (unlimited play for just $15 after 3 p.m.), GolfBoard rentals, and multi-round packages that drive prices ever lower.
And, if you combine your stay with lodging at Ka’anapali’s premier hotels, the Westin Maui and Sheraton Maui, you can receive even further savings on both the golf and lodging than if you had booked separately.
In addition to granting you access to the terrific local courses, a stay in Ka’anapali also puts you within 15 minutes of the crown jewel of Maui’s golf enterprise, the Kapalua Golf Resort (808-669-8044). The 36-hole resort is Hawaii’s most famous, hosting the world’s best golfers year after year, plus thousands of other pleasure-seekers looking to trod the fairways annually ranked among Golf Digest’s “Top 100 You Can Play.”
The Crenshaw/Coore-designed par-73 Plantation Course, home to the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions and, in 2016, ranked Hawaii’s No. 1 course, winds 7,411 yards up and down the West Maui Mountain foothills and through Maui’s most active pineapple plantation, a remnant of the 18th-century Spanish explorers who brought the tropical fruit with them from their explorations in South America. It all leads up to one of the most famous holes in golf, the par-5 18th, a 665-yard monster played downwind to a fairway sloping away from the tee, a perfect storm of conditions for drives that carry 300 – even 400 – yards.
While less challenging (and less pricey) than its more famous sibling, many players find Kapalua’s Bay Course equally enjoyable. While the Plantation winds its way through the mountain foothills, the Bay stretches past the Ritz-Carlton to the coast below, offering players the chance to battle Maui’s famous trade winds during a short-but-challenging two-hole stretch along the coastline — including the signature 5th, the only hole on the entire island to actually play over the water — before returning inland.
Visitors to Kapalua can also take advantage of lessons from some of the country’s top teaching pros, including half-day, two-day and three-day intensive golf schools designed to tune up your swing just in time to come home and dominate your local tournaments next summer.
Standing at the peak of Haleakala in the pre-dawn hours of a late-summer morning, bundled up in layers against temperatures hovering just above freezing, it’s easy to think, “What on earth am I doing here?” Then, the first orange rays of the sun peek over the horizon to the east, bathing the mountain and the island below in a glorious golden light, and you stand, breathless, unable to recall a single thought besides one simple truth – this is why 1,500 years worth of civilizations have been drawn to Maui … an island unlike any other and, for golfers, an experience you’ll never forget.