Cape Kidnappers

Cape Kidnappers occupies a piece of land that most architects would have considered unbuildable, a series of narrow promontories separated by steep ravines, dropping to the ocean more than a hundred meters below in places. Tom Doak routed the course along the spines of these ridges rather than around them, so several holes play with a chasm on one or both sides and nothing but sky and sea beyond the green. The par five fifteenth plays straight down a ridge toward the horizon, arguably the most dramatic tee shot in New Zealand golf.

The design restraint that made Doak’s reputation is fully on display. Greens are firm and subtly contoured rather than tricked up, and the course asks golfers to manage the wind and the width of the fairways rather than to overpower the yardage. It is a walking course in the truest sense, and the movement between ridgelines is as memorable as any single hole.

Hawke’s Bay, the wider wine region surrounding the course, has quietly built a reputation to match its Bordeaux-style reds and its Art Deco architecture in the nearby city of Napier, rebuilt after a 1931 earthquake in a style now protected as a heritage district. A Cape Kidnappers visit pairs naturally with a few days of cellar-door tastings and long lunches among the vineyards.

The course sits a significant distance from New Zealand’s major international gateways, and the journey south, by road or short domestic flight, is very much part of the experience rather than an inconvenience to route around. The North Island’s late-spring and summer months offer the most settled weather for the cliff-top holes.