Hapuna Golf Club

If you’ve been reading my blogs for any length of time, you know there are certain places on this planet that have a permanent hold on me. The Kohala Coast is one of them. No matter how many times I return, it never feels familiar in the ordinary sense. It feels elevated—visually, emotionally, and spiritually.

This photograph was made at Hapuna Golf Club, a course designed by Arnold Palmer Design that rises gently from the Pacific shoreline toward the Kohala Mountains. It’s a routing that allows you to feel the full scale of the island as you move inland, hole by hole. The fairways wind naturally through ancient black lava flows, their deep green edges sharply defined against volcanic rock that feels both harsh and beautiful at the same time.

I remember standing on a fairway high up on the hill during one of my visits, looking southeast and taking in a scene that felt almost impossible to process all at once. Snow capped the summit of Mauna Kea in the distance. Out beyond the coastline, five pods of whales breached in the deep blue Pacific. Between land and sea, several rainbows arced across the sky, appearing and disappearing as the light shifted. In that moment, I had a very clear thought: why does anyone live anywhere else on earth?

Hapuna has that effect on you. The scale is immense, yet the experience feels personal. The air is clean and moving, the light constantly changing as clouds slide across the mountains, and the colors—greens, blues, blacks—are saturated in a way that feels almost unreal. The course doesn’t fight the land; it follows it, allowing elevation, wind, and views to shape both the golf and the experience.

What I love most about this part of the island is how many worlds coexist in a single frame. Ocean and mountain. Lava and turf. Snow and surf. Few places remind you so clearly how small you are, and at the same time, how lucky you are to be standing exactly where you are.

I was never quite able to pull the trigger on moving here, though the idea crossed my mind more than once. But visiting has always been enough. Each return feels like a reset—a reminder of what beauty looks like when nature is allowed to lead.

This image captures Hapuna as I remember it most clearly: bold, expansive, and quietly humbling. It represents the kind of place that stays with you long after you’ve left, not because of any single hole or shot, but because of how it made you feel. If it brings back your own memories of Hawaii—or fuels a dream of standing between volcano, ocean, and sky—I invite you to explore it in the Golf As Life Signature Collection, where moments like this are meant to live far beyond the round.