Golfers rave about Kapolei course, its condition

Lydia Ko left Hawaii with her 16th LPGA Tour title and a new-found affinity for Kapolei Golf Club’s 18 holes.

“I love this golf course,” Ko said after Saturday’s final round of the Lotte Championship.

After a record-breaking performance over her four rounds on the West Oahu layout, why wouldn’t she?

Ko arrived in Hawaii coming off a second-place finish at the ANA Inspiration, the season’s first major, and spent more time enjoying Oahu’s features than previous visits — making time for hikes and relaxing on the beach along with preparing for her sixth Lotte start but the first at Kapolei.

Ko went through her first 18 holes on the Ted Robinson-designed layout the Friday before the tournament “and I thought the course was beautiful,” she said.

Once the tournament began, the LPGA Tour pros took advantage of prime scoring conditions in what fourth-ranked Nelly Korda termed a “birdiefest” early in the tournament. Ko led the field’s assault on par by going a career-best 28 under, three shots shy of the tour record, on her way to her first victory since 2018.

The tournament had been held at Ko Olina Golf Club for its first eight years. After last year’s cancellation, the event was moved to Kapolei about a month before the tournament’s opening drive and Ko was among the pros who came away impressed by the course.

“I know they had very short notice for us to come here,” Ko said. “Considering all that, the golf course was in great shape. Fairways are very nice and the greens were rolling great, too.

“I enjoyed it. It’s a great mix of holes. I know the wind direction plays a factor around here and yesterday there was a span of nine holes where the wind direction was different so it made the course feel a lot different.

“I think when you’re sometimes used to seeing one sort of golf course it feels like routine. But this week, it was nice to just see something different.”

Kapolei general manager Gordy Walker said the club received word in early March that the tournament might be on the move. After talks with Lotte and 141 Premier Sports and Entertainment, club ownership approved hosting the event, giving the staff a little more than a month to prepare to host a tour-level event.

“It was an opportunity to flip the switch and turn everything up a notch and make it that much better to tour standards,” Walker said. “The big deal was the course was in good shape to start with. It was already there, it was just tweaking it, fine tuning it a little bit.”

Walker started at Kapolei in March 2020, just before the pandemic shut down golf in Hawaii for the next few months, and had previously helped set up high-profile events at Pebble Beach Golf Course, Sherwood Country Club and Kapalua.

Walker said course superintendent Bill Lucena had been at Kapolei when it hosted the Pacific Links Championship, a PGA Champions event, from 2012 to 2014, “So he knew the routine of what the tour was looking for and knew what the standard was.”

Walker said Lucena and his staff worked on providing firm and fast fairways and speeding up the greens for the event. The pros’ distance off the tee allowed for more short irons into the greens to set up looks at birdie that they converted at record rates for the tournament — with the considerable aid of relatively low winds for much of the week.

Ko’s winning score was eight shots better than the previous Lotte record. When Kapolei hosted the Hawaiian Ladies Open from 1996-2001, the lowest score was a 64 by Nancy Scranton in 2001. There were seven such rounds last week and five rounds of 63. The field’s scoring average was 68.4 for the third round and 69.4 for the final round.

“I was telling my caddie and my boyfriend as well, because he grew up on this golf course, I said, ‘This is a public golf course, and to have this kind of condition on the greens was really surprising,’” Jenny Shin said after her round of 63 on Saturday.

“It’s fun to watch because so many players are going low. So I really, really enjoyed playing this golf course and the conditions were pretty immaculate.”

The site for next year’s tournament has yet to be determined and, Walker said Saturday the club was looking to finish off the weekend before looking ahead anyway.

“Our goal has been with the club and with ownership is just to focus on this year and provide the best product that we can for the LPGA Tour, for Lotte, make sure everybody’s getting their needs met,” Walker said. “Once we get done with the event, we’ll take a step back and a breather and then we’ll start taking a look at next year and see what the possibilities are.”

One significant element Walker and the Kapolei staff didn’t have to prepare for was having spectators on site. But he’s hopeful that’ll change by the next time tournament time rolls around, wherever it may be.

“Having the fans adds a really dynamic and exciting component to the game that you don’t get when they’re not here,” he said. “It’s very quiet when you go on the golf course now, for sure.”