Los Cabos has been riding the crest of an unprecedented golfing boom for close to three decades now. Since the first modest 9-hole course appeared in San Jose del Cabo in 1987, championship-level loops have been premiering on a regular basis. Jack Nicklaus kick-started the local boom in the 1990s with memorable courses at Palmilla, El Dorado, and Cabo del Sol; but other major champions soon followed, including Tom Weiskopf, Greg Norman, Davis Love III and Tiger Woods.

As of April 2018, there are 15 courses operating in Los Cabos, and four of them – an astonishing 27% – made Golf Digest’s recent list of the 100 best international courses. Love’s Dunes Course at Diamante sits at 38th overall in Golf Magazine’s ratings, which encompasses courses from every country on earth. Nicklaus’ Ocean Course has been rated among the top 100 for 15 consecutive years, and his spectacular course at Quivira cracked the elite rankings after being open for only three years.

Amazingly, there are no signs that the pace of new courses in lessening. Quite the contrary. As many as a half-dozen new courses are slated to open in the next few years, including challenging new layouts from Woods, Nicklaus, Norman, Fred Couples and Robert Trent Jones II.

Here are the top 5 new courses expected to open by 2020…

The First Fred Couples Design in Los Cabos

Fred Couples only captured one major championship – the 1992 Masters Tournament at Augusta National – but his sweet, seemingly effortless swing and consistent play translated to over 60 total wins, and better than two decades of stardom on the PGA Tour. Now he’s coming to Los Cabos, designing the highly anticipated Twin Dolphin Golf Club. If the name Twin Dolphin sounds familiar, it’s because it is:  it was the name of a pioneer resort which originally opened in the Los Cabos tourist corridor during the 1970s. The reincarnated version will accompany Montage and Maravilla, two new resort and residential projects overlooking Bahia Santa Maria. Play is expected to begin later this year.

A New Greg Norman Course at Rancho San Lucas

Solmar Group is not only one of the premier Los Cabos hospitality brands, but a legacy company whose history is inextricably tied up with the growth of tourism in Cabo San Lucas. The group’s founder, Don Luis Bulnes Molleda, was the manager of the Land’s End community’s cannery before he partnered with Luis Coppola on Finisterra, and then opened his own Hotel Solmar in 1974. Rancho San Lucas is Solmar’s ambitious new resort and residential development on Cabo San Lucas’ Pacific Coast. It joins a portfolio that already includes Solmar Resort, Grand Solmar and Playa Grande, and will be centered around an 18-hole golf course from Norman that is expected be open by late 2018 or early 2019.

A Second Jack Nicklaus Course at Quivira

When legendary champion Jack Nicklaus kick-started the Los Cabos golfing boom in the early 1990s, his natural canvases were found at tourist corridor properties like Palmilla and Cabo del Sol. Now, with the success of Diamante and Nicklaus’ first magnificent effort at Quivira, the golf focus has shifted to the Pacific Coast. Quivira Golf Club opened in 2014 and has climbed the world rankings in near record time, so reports that Nicklaus is returning to design a second course for the Pueblo Bonito affiliated development counts as big news. Groundbreaking on the new layout is expected to happen next summer.

A Second Robert Trent Jones II Course in Los Cabos

Robert Trent Jones II is one of the least heralded Los Cabos course architects. There’s no secret why. He’s one of the few that has never won a major championship. Then again, he is the son of the most prolific designer ever, and a man who has designed over 270 courses around the world during his own acclaimed 50-year career. Jones helped put Los Cabos on the golfing map when television cameras caught whales breaching near a seaside green during a 1996 PGA Senior Grand Slam event at his Cabo Real course. Now he’s returning to design a second local loop, this time for luxury brand Four Seasons at their new Costa Palmas resort on Los Cabos’ gorgeous East Cape. Expect the new golf course to open in mid to late 2019.

A Third Tiger Woods Course at Diamante

Diamante ushered in the second wave of the Los Cabos golf boom with Davis Love III’s majestic links style Dunes Course, which has been showered in accolades ever since it opened in 2009. The Dunes may be the showpiece, but the star at Diamante is now 14-time major champion Tiger Woods, who has already designed two courses for the resort and residential development north of Cabo San Lucas – the parkland El Cardonal and the 12-hole Oasis short course – and has another in the development stages. Woods, who has made news recently with a return to form following years of back and knee-related injuries, will be a favorite at next month’s Masters Tournament. Groundbreaking on his third Diamante offering, a lush layout in the style of Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, is expected to begin in 2019.

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Saludos,

Chris Sands

The post Top 5 New Golf Courses Coming to Los Cabos appeared first on CaboViVO.

We telescope the region’s meteoric golf trajectory in this illustrated timeline.

1987

Golf in Los Cabos starts modestly with the unveiling of a 9-hole municipal course in San José del Cabo. The Mario Schjetnan designed layout at Punta Sur was later renamed after the nearby Mayan Palace resort, and is now managed by Mexican hospitality brand Vidanta.

1992

Jack Nicklaus is the unquestioned godfather of golf in Los Cabos, with six magnificent courses to date on his Land’s End résumé. Developer Don Koll brought the Golden Bear to Los Cabos in the early 1990s, a move that first paid dividends in 1992, when Nicklaus crafted 9-hole Mountain and Arroyo courses opened at Palmilla.

1994

Nicklaus’ masterpiece, however, came two years later, when the Ocean Course debuted at Cabo del Sol. This stunning loop, which Nicklaus himself called “the best golf property I’ve ever seen”, has been rated one of the 100 best in the world for 15 consecutive years and counting.

The only course with views of the granite monuments at Land’s End also premiered in 1994. That was Campo de Carlos, a course designed by Roy Dye and his son Matt that was later rebranded as the Cabo San Lucas Country Club.

1996

Robert Trent Jones Jr. helped to put Los Cabo on the golfing map in 1996, when television cameras pick up whales breaching near seaside greens in a Senior Slam at his newly designed Cabo Real course. Cabo Real is now one of three local courses managed by Questro Golf.

1999

Nicklaus returns to add a 9-hole Ocean layout at Palmilla, bringing his portfolio there to 27 total holes; and, taking advantage of his time in Baja Sur, adds another full course at Eldorado, an exclusive private club in a residential oasis home to big-name actors and athletes.

2000

Tom Fazio’s superb Querencia is a creeper. For the better part of a decade, diabolical yet picturesque challenges like the dogleg, dual-bunkered, par-5 fourth were known only to millionaire members. That changed in 2016, when Golf Digest finally let the cat out of the bag, naming it one of the world’s 100 best in their annual rankings.

2001

Inevitably cast as the lesser of the two Cabo del Sol courses, former British Open champion Tom Weiskopf’s Desert Course nonetheless deserves, and has received, numerous plaudits. It’s currently rated by Golf Week as one of the 50 best courses in Mexico and the Caribbean. Those wishing to compare it to Nicklaus’ neighboring Ocean Course can do so at two yearly pro-am tournaments:  The Los Cabos Pro-Am, and the Jim Flick Invitational.

2007

Club Campestre was Nicklaus’ 4th Los Cabos loop, a 6,966-yard challenge that boasts all the master’s traditional touches:  forced carries, water hazards, loads of uneven stances, and even more bunkers. But that’s not all. So scenic is this downtown San José jewel that it has also served as an event venue, most notable for the Sabor a Cabo food and wine festival.

2008

The world’s only composite design from Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus opens at Puerto Los Cabos, a luxury development just outside San José del Cabo. Norman sculpted the front-nine Mission course, Nicklaus the back-nine Marina. Ask a local who prevails in the battle of the sport’s best nicknames, and the consensus is the Great White Shark narrowly edges the Golden Bear; thanks in large part to the incredible par-3 6th, where the tee box sits on the equivalent of a 10-story building, and features views of miles of gorgeous coastline.

2009

In Los Cabos, only Nicklaus landmark Ocean Course at Cabo del Sol has achieved the same sort of acclaim as Davis Love III’s links style Dunes Course at Diamante; and even that falls short when it comes to the opinion of the sport’s premier tastemakers. Voted top new international course in 2010, GOLF Magazine declared the Dunes Course the 52nd best course in the world in 2013, the highest ranking ever achieved by a Los Cabos golf course. It has since ascended, and now sits at 38. Greater glories are still to come.

2014

Jack Nicklaus triumphs again with a breathtaking cliffside layout at Quivira, a resort and residential development from Pueblo Bonito founder Ernesto Coppel Kelly. The 7,139-yard tour de force was voted the world’s best new international course in 2015 by GOLF Magazine, and has since earned additional acclaim for its on-course comfort food stations.

The biggest news of the year, however, was the first completed course from Jack’s closest rival for career major championships, Tiger Woods. Tiger’s parkland style El Cardonal at Diamante also made its debut in 2014, and although it lacks Quivira’s majesty, it continues to attract loyal adherents.

2016

Querencia designer Tom Fazio scores again with the long-awaited Chileno Bay, a seaside jewel nestled between the Sea of Cortés and the Sierra de la Laguna mountain range.

Tiger Woods also came back for a command performance, albeit an insouciant one. His 12-hole Oasis short course at Diamante is a fun-filled little lark, a one-of-a-kind golf experience that bucks the traditional model.

2018

A new course from two-time major champion Greg Norman is scheduled to open in Spring 2018 at Rancho San Lucas, a Solmar Group development on the Pacific Coast north of Cabo San Lucas; and the Twin Dolphin Golf Club, designed by former Masters champion Fred Couples, is expected to follow later in the year in the tourist corridor that connects the cape cities.

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