Nanea Golf Club

Vivid green fairways slicing through fields of black lava rock on Hawaii's Kohala Coast — David McLay Kidd turned the volcanic landscape of the Big Island into something that looks like no other course on earth. The name means 'tranquility' in Hawaiian, and with an almost nonexistent membership and Pacific panoramas from nearly every hole, it delivers.

Nanea Golf Club was born from a bold vision: to create an authentic links experience on the volcanic slopes of Hawaii's Big Island, thousands of miles from the Scottish coastline that inspired it. The club was established in the early 2000s through a partnership between Charles Schwab, the founder of the brokerage firm bearing his name, and George Roberts, the billionaire co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Together they leased approximately 8,000 acres of land on the western flank of Mount Hualalai, roughly 15 miles north of Kailua-Kona, and set about hiring an architect who could translate the principles of British seaside golf to an environment of black lava rock, tropical sun, and Pacific trade winds. They chose David McLay Kidd, a young Scottish architect who had burst onto the international scene with his design of Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast and who carried in his blood an understanding of links golf that few could match. Kidd's father, Jimmy Kidd, had served as superintendent at Gleneagles in Scotland and had pioneered the use of paspalum grass in the Middle East, knowledge that would prove critical to Nanea's construction. The site presented extraordinary challenges. The property sits on a thick mantle of volcanic lava at elevations ranging from 700 to 1,300 feet above sea level, with the Pacific Ocean visible three and a half miles in the distance. The native soil was essentially nonexistent, composed of porous lava rock utterly unsuitable for growing turf. Kailua-Kona receives less than one foot of rainfall annually, making irrigation a fundamental concern. Yet these same obstacles created opportunities that Kidd recognized immediately. The lava terrain offered natural drama, with black rock outcroppings, ridges, hollows, and ravines that could frame holes with a starkness and beauty found nowhere else in golf. The persistent trade winds blowing off the Pacific would provide the atmospheric conditions essential to links play.

And the 8,000-acre lease gave Kidd the of choosing from over 1,000 acres for his routing and buffer zones, ensuring that each hole would feel isolated and immersed in the landscape. To make the site playable, Kidd's construction team capped the entire property in cinder sand, creating a growing medium atop the lava that could support turf. The grass they chose was paspalum, a salt-tolerant, drought-resistant variety that Kidd's father had championed in his Middle East work. Nanea became the first golf course in North America to use paspalum from tee to green across the entire layout. The grass proved ideally suited to the conditions, producing the firm, fast playing surfaces essential to links-style golf while requiring significantly less water than the bermuda or bentgrass alternatives common on Hawaiian courses. The decision was both environmentally responsible and architecturally critical, as the firm turf allows the ball to run and bounce in ways that activate the strategic options Kidd built into his design. The course opened for play in 2003 as an 18-hole, par-73 layout stretching 7,464 yards from the back tees. The routing forms a large figure eight, with the front nine occupying lower ground and the back nine ascending to higher elevations on Mount Hualalai's slopes. This change in elevation over the course of a round creates constant variety in both playing conditions and visual perspective. From virtually every hole, players are treated to panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean to the west, while the volcanic peak of Hualalai rises to the east. The interplay of green paspalum fairways, golden native fountain grass, and jet-black lava rock produces a color palette unlike anything in golf. Kidd's design philosophy at Nanea drew deeply from the links tradition.

Fairways are generous in width but shaped with deep hollows, crimped ridges, and subtle undulations that influence ball movement in unpredictable ways. The greens are large and boldly contoured, with slopes that pull putts toward the ocean regardless of the apparent read, a function of the mountainside topography. Grass-faced bunkers are integrated naturally into the landscape, appearing as organic features rather than imposed hazards. The course rewards the ground game above all, with running approaches and bump-and-run shots often proving more effective than aerial attacks, particularly when the trade winds strengthen in the afternoon. Several holes have earned particular distinction. The fifth is a driveable par four at 334 yards that offers an immediate risk-reward decision off the tee, with the green reachable for longer hitters willing to challenge the bunker complexes guarding the putting surface. The sixth and thirteenth are dramatic par fives that use the property's elevation changes to create holes of both length and strategic complexity. The seventh, at 441 yards, presents the most demanding tee shot on the course, with a central fairway bunker that forces a commitment to one side or the other. The sixteenth is a 386-yard par four that climbs uphill past white bunkers, golden fescue, and black lava outcroppings to a tiered shelf green. The seventeenth is a 236-yard par three played from an elevated tee, offering what many describe as the most spectacular view on the Big Island, with the Pacific Ocean stretching to the horizon behind a well-protected green far below. The eighteenth plunges downhill to a wildly shaped putting surface, providing a theatrical conclusion to the round. Nanea has maintained an intentionally low profile since its opening.

The club shuns publicity, does not maintain a public website, and limits membership to those invited by existing members. This privacy has only heightened its mystique within the golf community. Despite its discretion, the course's quality has been recognized through national rankings, including a position as the number-one course in Hawaii and a ranking of 55th in the United States, with Golf Digest listing it among the country's top private courses. The clubhouse, designed to evoke the silhouettes of the island's five volcanoes, complements the course's integration with its volcanic setting. Outdoor showers enclosed by lava rock walls and panoramic windows framing views of both the golf course and the ocean reinforce the connection between the built environment and the natural landscape. David McLay Kidd's achievement at Nanea lies in the audacity of the concept and the sensitivity of its execution. To build a links course on volcanic rock in the tropics required both technical innovation and deep architectural understanding. The paspalum turf, the cinder sand cap, the figure-eight routing that captures the property's elevation range, and the unwavering commitment to firm, fast, ground-oriented playing conditions all serve a single vision: to create a course that honors the traditions of Scottish links golf while belonging unmistakably to its Hawaiian setting. The black lava, the Pacific panoramas, the trade winds, and the volcanic terrain make Nanea an experience available nowhere else on earth. For its small membership, the course represents the rare intersection of architectural ambition and natural grandeur, a place where the ancient landscape of Hawaii and the ancient game of golf have been brought together with imagination and care.