Mauna Kea Resorts

Mauna Kea opened in December 1964 as Hawaii Island's first resort course, the golf half of Laurance Rockefeller's pioneering Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the Kohala Coast. Robert Trent Jones Sr. carved the layout from a barren field of black lava, famously crushing rock to help build soil for turf and proving destination golf could thrive on the island's volcanic shore. The course announced itself with a televised exhibition pairing Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player, and quickly became a template for the resort-golf era that followed across Hawaii. Its signature is the over-the-ocean par-3 3rd, a tee shot launched across a Pacific cove that ranks among the most photographed holes in the game. Decades later, Jones's son, Robert Trent Jones Jr., led a major renovation, reopening in 2008 with rebuilt greens, bunkers, and fairways while preserving his father's original vision and routing.