Golf Course Architecture - Issue 60, April 2020

64 COSTA PALMAS continuous beach, it is hard to imagine a more idyllic location for a golf course. As at Twin Dolphin, but unlike say Diamante, most of the seafront land is reserved for hotels and housing, with the golf course set back from the beach, though given that most holes have a clear view of the water, it is arguable how much of a difference this makes. “We were given a spectacular site and shaped a golf course generous to the golfer that takes advantage of ocean views without being right on the water,” says Robert Trent Jones Jr. “The challenge will come into play as the contouring around the green complexes can either be forgiving or rejecting. It will take an imaginative short game to get the ball on the green.” Several of the Jones company’s staff were involved at Costa Palmas, with associate Mike Gorman, chief design officer Bruce Charlton and Jones himself all visiting the property on numerous occasions during construction. Jones describes the course as “a golf symphony composed of three movements and two transitions.” The first six holes, he says, are linksy, a dunescape, while the par five seventh, with its natural arroyo, serves as a transition to the course’s second movement – six ‘upland’ holes that include views of the Sierra de la Laguna mountains. These holes provide players with wide landing areas, but trees and bunkers mean golfers will have to choose club and shot selection carefully. The final section of the course are holes alongside the currently under construction marina so it is a little difficult, right now, to get a great feeling for what the environment of these holes will be once the building is complete. I’ve heard the ‘symphony’ analogy applied to golf courses before; if you consider the four movements of the typical symphony, they are connected thematically, but to a non-specialist listener, they resemble individual, separate pieces of music. A golf course, with eighteen holes moving through a landscape, can equally have varied themes that define sections. At Costa Palmas, the conclusion to the golf course, the marina section, will be quite different from the earlier parts, but the transition from dunes to upland is quite subtle. The vegetation changes, with more trees in the upland “We were given a spectacular site and shaped a golf course generous to the golfer”