The Preserve Golf Club Santa Lucia

The Preserve Golf Club opened in 2000 as the private course within the Santa Lucia Preserve, a roughly 20,000-acre conservation community and nature reserve in the mountains above Carmel Valley. Tom Fazio designed the layout after studying detailed maps of the property's ecological and archaeological features, threading a 365-acre course through oak woodlands, grassy meadows, and streams on the southern ridge of the valley. The guiding principle was restraint: less than ten percent of the vast property is given to golf and homes, with the remainder held as protected open space in perpetuity. The result feels grown from the land rather than imposed on it, with holes that follow natural contours and framing borrowed from the surrounding Santa Lucia range. Deliberately low-profile and member-focused, The Preserve has earned recognition among America's finest modern courses while doubling as a model for conservation-minded development.