Waikoloa Beach & Golf Resort

The Beach Course at Waikoloa opened in 1981, its debut effectively launching the Waikoloa Beach Resort on the Big Island's sun-soaked Kohala Coast. Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed the layout across ancient lava flows, setting emerald fairways in vivid contrast against the black volcanic rock and the deep blue of the Pacific. He came to the site with useful lineage: his father, Robert Trent Jones Sr., had earlier designed the nearby Mauna Kea course, giving the younger Jones a feel for building golf amid Hawaiian lava. Playing to a par of 70 at roughly 6,566 yards, the resort-style course balances approachable width with scenic, oceanfront drama, most memorably where holes brush the coastline. Set among the resort's beaches, shops and Hawaiian fishponds and petroglyph fields, it remains a signature Kohala Coast golf experience.