Tom, you and your colleagues were back at Cape Kidnappers in 2022, working on a variety of renovation projects. The course has never looked or played better. What struck you, spending extensive time on site for the first time since the course opening in 2004?
When I worked on this golf course 20 years ago, what struck me most was the scale of it, the way it sits so high above the bay. And this is still true, of course: There is nothing like it in golf. There are a lot of seaside golf courses and a lot of varied seaside settings, but nothing else offers that sort of perspective. You’re just so high above the water. From that high up, it looks like someone threw a rock in a pond and those waves on Hawkes Bay are just ripples. It doesn’t quite compute.
Those cliffs rise straight up, some 135 metres above sea level. To put it further in perspective, the seaside holes at Pebble Beach sit only 30 metres above Carmel Bay. How did those cliffs affect the design at Kidnappers?
Cape is sort of famous for its holes hanging
