Golf Course Architecture - Issue 60, April 2020

65 areas, but you may have to look for this symphonic transition to recognise it. Costa Palmas does not begin and end in the same place. Golfers will ride from the clubhouse past length of the eighteenth to the first tees, located alongside a substantial practice area, which includes a range, a 30,000-square-foot putting course with lighting for night play, a six hole short course and its own restaurant, Bouchie’s. The eighteenth will take golfers back to the main clubhouse, close to the hotel development. The opening hole sets the theme for the course. It is effectively bunkerless, yet surrounded by sand. These huge areas of exposed sand are the dominant visual experience at Costa Palmas, and they have an important role in how the course plays, because finding aiming points is very tricky. The par three third takes golfers close to the Sea of Cortes. A very pretty hole with the green set next to a lagoon – which appears almost to be an extension of the sea from the tee. A quite wonderful little trip for the walking golfer, I measured the back tee blocks at nine paces off the previous green. Everything on the green slopes quite steeply from left to right, down to the lagoon. Missing to the left might seem the obvious bailout, but it will put a premium on your chipping game. Skull the shot, and you’re likely to be dropping out of the lagoon for your fourth. I think this is the best par three, and one of the best holes, on the course. The fourth hole is a very long par five, with a split fairway created by a long, sinuous bunker in the driving zone. Going left of the bunker is the shorter route home, but to the right offers a much better view of what is to come. It is intensely strategic, although normal golfers may need to choose their tee box carefully for any chance of getting home in two. The green is a severe potato chip and will reward precise short game play. Moving on to the sixth hole, we find a long, slightly uphill one shotter. The best option appears to be to run a ball into the green up the left side; a little strip of bunker at front right is very scary – especially from the tee. The back right corner of the green is extremely steep: the hole is at its most challenging when pins are placed there. Vast expanses of sand on the opening hole (left, alongside the club’s practice facilities). The course routing takes golfers through three distinct ‘movements’, starting in a linksy dunescape, transitioning via the seventh to the upland holes, then another transition at the fourteenth into the marina area, for the closing holes Photo: Evan Schiller Image: Robert Trent Jones II