Kuki’o Golf and Beach Club is a private club on the Kona-Kohala coast on the Big Is-land of Hawaii. Home to the Kukio Men’s and Women’s Invitational each February, the golf course hosts eighteen extraordinary holes of golf graced with distinct and memorable views of the Kohala Coast.
Varying approximately 400 feet in elevation, this challenging Tom Fazio-designed course winds itself through several diverse zones occurring naturally on the site – each specifically designed to increase variety, to strategically challenge, and to visually astonish Members.
It’s a long course at 7,419 yards from the back tees, though almost a quarter of that yardage is taken up by the four par fives on the card, each of which averages more than 475 yards in length. On the back nine, the sharp colour contrast of black lava rock against white bunker sand surrounding the greens at the 164-yard 11th and 225-yard 17th elevates both these par threes into the category of most memorable holes on the course.
The architect Tom Fazio said : “Kukio is one of the greatest clubs I have ever been to. It is my only design in Hawaii. It was a major commitment to commute from Florida to the Big Island. The execution of building over jagged lava was difficult. We had to ‘walk’ a bulldozer over the lava flow to evaluate where to situate the course in relation to the coastline. The resources afforded to me has produced a course that is as good as any in the world,”
