Kona Country Club - Ocean Course Detail
This writeup is from the white tees. The blue tees stretch it out by another 500 yards.
Hole #1 – Short par 4 -- I actually teed off with a hybrid, and it was plenty of club. Hit it down the center or even right of center. There's a pretty sharp dogleg to the left, and you don't want to bring the trees on the corner into play.
The second hole is a short par 5, with an uphill tee shot. It's also the first of the ocean holes -- as you approach the green, there's a great view of the ocean immediately behind it. There's plenty of room to hit pretty much anything you want, and you should be left with a short iron or a wedge into the green on your third shot, setting up an easy par. Somehow I managed to make a double here.
The third hole is a gorgeous par 3 running directly alongside the ocean. Spray it right at all and it's in the black lava rocks on the beach. Take an extra club -- the green is tilted forward and you can use it as a backstop.
The fourth hole is handicapped as the most difficult hole on the course, largely because of its length (415 white, 432 blue). It's pretty much straightaway, and wide enough to hit driver. The important thing is to hit it in the fairway. While the rough is not penal by any stretch of the imagination, it will keep you for reaching the green in two if you're having to play your second shot from it.
#5 is the second par 3 on the front. It also has a tilted green which you can use as a backstop, and I would recommend taking an extra club here as well. I actually took what I thought was an extra club because the pin was back, but I wound up on the front edge of the green after what I thought was a pretty good strike. Either there was some breeze up high, or I still wasn't acclimated to the heavier seaside air.
#6 is another par 5, a bit longer than the first, but downhill. There's an ominous looking bunker about 200 yards from the tee down the right side. I was focused so much on not hitting the bunker that I pulled my tee shot a bit, but I still came down short of the woods on the left. The moral of the story is there's plenty of room to miss the bunker. You can hit pretty much anything you like on your second shot, and pretty much on either side of the fairway, but there's a big swale and collection area that is going to have you playing your third shot into the green from the right hand side over a bunker. So hit a high soft shot.
Hole #7 says it's only 350 yards, but it's uphill, so you're going to need two pretty strong strikes to make it home in two. The tee box is crowded to the right, up against a row of junk. Take the hint, and aim at the left side of the fairway.
Hole #8 plays 393 yards from the white tee, and is handicapped as the second most difficult hole on the front. It doglegs to the right fairly substantially (again, don't get cute with the corner off the tee). Above the green is a second green, the purpose of which I don't understand. Some courses have summer and winter greens, sewn with different grasses for different weather conditions, but this was the only hole on the course with this setup. Who knows?
Hole #9 is a two-part hole -- uphill on the drive, and then it levels off. It's bunkered left and right, and I cleverly managed to chip into both of them, turning on otherwise easy par into an easy triple.
The back starts off with a blind tee shot up a hill. I hit my first tee shot in the junk on the right, and the second shot almost to the top of the hill, when it started rolling back down about 30 yards. I was still only a 110 yards out. It's pretty short (329 yards).
Hole #11 is a par 5 with a dogleg right. I wound up with my tee shot too far right, and smacked a tree trying to finesse a long iron around it on my second shot. Do the smart thing. Keep it down the middle or left side of the fairway.
#12 starts a very distracting sequence of holes. It's a par 3 running parallel to the shoreline. So while you're setting up for the tee shot, you constantly hear the surf pounding in behind you. I kept backing away from the shot just to be able to turn around and gaze at the ocean. And the palm trees. And the waves. See? There I go again... Anyway, it's 169 yards from the white tees. I hit a great shot, and it came up one club short again. (Still got up-and-down for par.)
The red teebox on #13 has a little wall built out of lava rock. It turns out that it was to keep you from falling into a lava tube. A little tunnel catches the incoming surf, pipes it underground about forty yards, and lets it spray up from the middle of this enclosure, all the while rumbling like a bass drum during a John Phillip Sousa number. The golf hole itself is ranked as the second most difficult hole on the course, for no apparent reason except possibly length -- it's 394 yards from the white, 424 from the blues. It's pretty much straightaway, and you just have to hit it straight (ah yes, the ever-elusive straight shot...).
#14 comes back the other way, parallel to #13. It's about the same length, and handicapped at 4. Same advice. Just hit it straight and you'll be fine. Even if you don't quite reach the green in regulation it should be an easy bogey.
As we wave a fond goodbye to the ocean holes, we move on to #15. #15 is not that long at 356 yards, but the green is elevated and surrounded on all sides by bunkers. So plan on landing a high soft shot in here. Pay attention to where the ocean is, because this is certainly an optical illusion setup.
#16 is a fairly short hole, and fairly straightforward. Hit any club that will go straight, and you should set up an easy par, even with the dogleg. (No, of course I didn't par it! I'm the Bogey Golfer!)
The seventeenth hole is a short par 3 over a lava rock chasm. The landscape is littered with balls that didn't quite make it. And there's no visible means to get in there and rescue them. The easier looking approaches are loose black gravel on steep slopes -- it's easy to imagine starting a landslide and winding up on your butt 100 feet down. The difficult approaches are more solid, but, well, vertical. Anyway, put the lava out of your mind and hit a good short iron shot and be done with it.
The home hole is a short par 5, playing only 452 yards. You can perhaps reach it in two. But you can certainly hit solid modest controlled shots, and get there in three. Yes, you can tell by the bitter tone that I bogied it. Oh well... There is a big tree at the bottom of the hill on the right side of the fairway, which screams "stay away from me!". So take a club with which you have some modicum of control (driver wasn't it for me, sadly), and give that tree the respect it deserves. Keep left!
This is a very nice course, one that is perfect for your first round of golf on the islands -- fabulous vistas, reliable weather, forgiving fairways. The twilight rate (after 12:30) is $107, and while pricey, is certainly not the most expensive course around. A real treat -- I heartily recommend it! | 
