The Plantation Course at Kapalua in Hawaii is green again

LAHAINA, Hawaii – It started as soon as I strolled into the open-air lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Maui, Kapalua. Ocean breezes pouring in from the patio at twilight, a long bar to the right beckoning after a day in airplanes, a band to the left playing island songs with fresh twists, a lei deposited around my neck – it’s an “aloha” sensation, without a doubt. This 54-acre retreat offers whatever might be needed to soothe body or mind, or to challenge them, depending on each guest’s ideal of a perfect vacation.

A concierge board advertised activities on offer in this Pacific paradise, everything from whale watching to rappelling down a waterfall. I was there for a too-short two and a half days for golf just down the beach at Kapalua Resort, home to one of the most eye-popping coastal courses ever constructed.

Advertisement

I considered the various hikes, swims, kayaking adventures and more, then retired to my room to rest up for my introductory round on the Plantation Course. The course has earned a great deal of acclaim as the site of the first PGA Tour event most seasons in recent decades, and it is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as the No 2 public-access layout in Hawaii, the No. 22 resort course in the U.S. and the No. 49 modern course in the U.S.

Still operating on East Coast time, I awoke early the next morning, sipping coffee on my eighth-floor patio as the sun turned racing clouds from gray to pink and finally illuminated the ocean. Perched to the east on stunning hillsides, the rises and falls of the Plantation Course slowly came into view. The course is steeper than it looks most years on television or in streaming coverage of the PGA Tour’s The Sentry tournament. There’s a rush of adrenaline in golf-afflicted travelers when that day’s course is so perfectly laid out before them, and I couldn’t wait to see how the whole scene unfolded from those tee boxes.

Best of all: The course was green. Surprisingly green, perhaps.

Advertisement

Plantation course has recovered

Climbing the slopes as it moved away from the ocean toward the West Maui Mountains and the volcanic peaks within, the Plantation Course on this February morning looked like nothing so much as an emerald postcard advertisement intended to tease all the snow-bound golfers back on the mainland.

All that green was a special relief, because this island paradise has been through the wringer. Tragic wildfires in August of 2023 consumed nearly 7,000 acres in western Maui, wrecked nearly 3,000 structures and took 102 lives. Golf – any tourism, to be fair – seemed trivial in the aftermath of the fires. Recovery efforts continue and will take years.

As Maui started rebuilding, the droughts that exacerbated the fires continued. Water became even more precious. Even so, the PGA Tour returned in January of 2024 with The Sentry, and the tournament raised some $735,000 for local non-profits, increasing its total charitable contributions to more than $9 million since 1999.

Advertisement

But Kapalua Resort wasn’t in the clear yet, as water issues loomed. In 2025, an irrigation ditch that supplied water to the resort’s two courses, Plantation and Bay, went dry. The Plantation Course, site of the PGA Tour event, was closed in September as it turned a dusty brown. The resort’s Bay Course was closed indefinitely as Kapalua Resort faced debilitating water restrictions. In October, three months before the 2026 The Sentry, the PGA Tour announced the tournament was canceled.

Lawsuits were filed between Kapalua’s operators and the uphill Maui Land & Pineapple Company, which controls the irrigation ditch as it travels down toward Kapalua. Confusion still exists as to where all the available water went, as Maui Land & Pineapple has asserted it has maintained the ditch in accordance to agreements. Kapalua’s operators say there is plenty of rain falling in the West Maui mountains in 2026, but that water isn’t reaching the Kapalua area. Restrictions limiting Kapalua to 40 percent of its usual water allotment remain.

It begs a question: With all that has been thrown at the resort’s operators, how is the Plantation course green again? It’s not out of the question to call the rapid recovery a marvel.

The revival of the Plantation Course

The revival story starts with the determination of the resort’s owner, Tadashi Yanai, a Japanese billionaire who owns a home on the 18th fairway of the Plantation Course and is the founder of Fast Retailing, which operates the Uniqlo chain around the world. The story extends to Alex Nakajima, the golf resort’s general manager who has been stretched into roles and decisions well beyond any reasonable interpretation of his job description. The tale continues to Bryan Pierce, Kapalua’s golf course superintendent who has orchestrated an amazing turnaround of the courses. And it extends to the hundreds of workers, many of whom lost homes in the 2023 fires, who have brought Kapalua Resort back from the brink.

Advertisement

“There are so many things and emotions that we went through last year,” Nakajima said. “It was a crazy, crazy year.”

Pierce, who played Division I golf at California Polytechnic State University, said there is no college agronomy course that prepares a superintendent for watching a course die. “Emotional, or agronomic?” he said when asked about the toll of 2025. “You work your whole life to never get in this situation and prevent this from happening. Nobody teaches you how to bring back a golf course that hasn’t been watered for six months.”

Photos were distributed in August that showed a baked-out Plantation Course, and social media commentators responded predictably. Nakajima advised Yanai that the courses should close to prevent further damage, and the layouts were shuttered for 60 days starting Sept. 2. “These are not discussions you ever expect to be having,” Nakajima said.

Pierce and his crew shifted all attention to saving Plantation, sacrificing the Bay Course. Water supplies had been knocked down to zero by the county administrators, but those restrictions were eventually changed to allow for water use at 40 percent of normal. All the water normally directed to the Bay Course was rerouted to Plantation. Rainfall in the autumn helped.

Pierce – who lost his home in the 2023 fires – and his crews kept fighting to save Plantation’s turf. They tilled out dead grass, providing room for new shoots to flourish. Agronomic practices were shifted, fertilizing schedules were adjusted and money was spent on wetting agents and other treatments that better helped the reemerging grass hold onto water.

Advertisement

“Dig deeper,” became Nakajima’s mantra. He began lobbying efforts with the county and state while dealing with ongoing lawsuits against Maui Land & Pineapple, which he is not cleared to speak about in detail. All those challenges continue even as he fills new roles that include overseeing on-property temporary housing for locals who lost homes in the fires.

“It’s been difficult,” he said. “You know, a lot of these are skills I don’t have. And I hope that I’m doing a good enough job to find the solution or ask the right people to solve each problem, because each of these projects, or the issues that came about, I don’t think there’s a school for it.”

PGA Tour decision about The Sentry

The PGA Tour had to make an early decision about the January playing of The Sentry and in October opted to cancel the tournament, even as the turf started to show significant signs of recovery. There were discussions about moving the tournament, including shifting it to the mainland, but no courses were available on such short notice. The Tour’s decision was hastened by the fact that it would have soon needed to start shipping equipment to Hawaii for The Sentry, and all the tournament infrastructure would have needed to be installed.

Advertisement

Not knowing how all this might turn out, as he worked with management to devise a new road map back, was the toughest part, Pierce said.

“Professionally, it was a tough year for us, just so much uncertainty with the water situation, the tournament maybe being here, trying to keep the staff’s heads up through this whole process,” he said. “The uncertainty was the toughest part about it. Every day was different. We didn’t know what was going to happen each day. A lot of decisions had to be made on the fly.”

Still, the grass kept growing. With the Bay Course abandoned, recovery seemed more and more likely for Plantation. The course reopened in November, and despite it being winter – yes, even Hawaii has a winter with shorter days and less sunlight – the course has continued to improve. Workers from the Bay Course were shifted to Plantation, and outside employees such as cart attendants also joined recovery efforts that included improving cart paths and replacing guard rails in steep areas.

“The course is in really good shape,” Pierce said in February. “We’re very proud. It’s back to where we like. In just a few weeks, we could double-cut (the grass) and up our frequencies and have the tournament, in our opinion. …

Advertisement

“I’m just proud of them (the staff). We’ve been through a lot. After the fire was such a tough year for us – we lost grass in that process as well. And then to go through this, watching the golf course die before our eyes and just looking worse and worse each day. We just tried to keep them motivated and keep their heads up so that when things did turn around and we were able to start watering the golf course and bring it back … it was such a great time for us just to see green grass and then move forward getting to that opening date.”

Is the Plantation Course better than ever?

Four months after the shutdown, the Plantation Course in February played as well as it ever did, maybe better. Kapalua’s operators didn’t want to lose The Sentry, but that weeklong tournament takes a toll on the turf during the busiest season of resort play each year. With the tournament having been canceled, Pierce’s team was able to keep the pedal to the floor on recovery.

Advertisement

The Plantation, opened in 1991, was renovated by original course architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 2019. Greens were rebuilt with TifEagle Bermuda, fairways were adjusted in places and replanted with Celebration Bermuda, and the bunkers were updated. The Plantation Course was Coore and Crenshaw’s first course built together, proving the value of their concepts of wide playing corridors and low-to-the-ground, minimalist features in an era of narrowing fairways and frequent overshaping by some other architects. The now-famous design duo wanted the ball to roll at Kapalua, and they gave it plenty of room to do so across tremendous slopes.

Right from the start at the par-4 first hole, Plantation offers delicious complications for players choosing what club to hit – the fairway tumbles down a steep hill toward the ocean, with a strip of rough and native grasses before climbing back up to a big green. The course continues to confound in the best possible ways, especially in the wind, and there are no throwaway shots. Frequently playing partially blind off the tees, the Plantation offers the chance to hit some of the longest tee shots of many players’ careers – it’s not uncommon to see Tour players hit the ball more than 400 yards downhill and downwind during the Sentry.

The theme continues all the way to 18, the famous downhill par-5 that begins with 90 yards of tilted fairway width before narrowing and turning left across a chasm on the way to the green, all with a stunning ocean backdrop. It’s an audacious hole originally designed with a fresh way of thinking about classical golf architecture, in which the ground encourages a golf ball to keep rolling. Plantation has earned a spot on every golfer’s bucket list.

There is still much to be decided about Kapalua Resort’s future. The Bay Course remains closed, a planned renovation by architect David McLay Kidd put on hold. Kapalua has shifted some play from the Bay to Plantation, even as the driving range and pro shop of the Bay remain open. Kapalua is operated by Arizona-based Troon, which also manages two courses at Ka‘anapali – much of the play from the Bay course has shifted to those nearby layouts, Royal Ka‘anapali and Ka‘anapali Kai.

Advertisement

Water restrictions remain in place at Kapalua. Lawsuits rumble onward. The return of The Sentry tournament is rumored to be in doubt, too, as the PGA Tour plans seismic shifts to its schedule in the coming years. Sentry has committed to sponsor the event through 2035, but there is no mandate to return to Kapalua. Nakajima said he is in frequent communication with tournament organizers, but he also asked if my group had heard anything from the Tour.

The resort ownership’s commitment is unwavering, though, and Nakajima said Kapalua has pitched several new methods for obtaining and preserving water that offer benefits not only to the golf courses but the entire surrounding community – repair of the ditch, holding ponds, pipes to bring in reclaimed water, wells, desalination plants and other methods to ease drought have been mentioned. Nakajima said owner Yanai has offered to help cover costs that extend far beyond the golf courses.

Efforts continue on the course, as well. Part of the renovation was the reduction in manicured turf by six acres. Pierce is currently working to take out another 10 acres of turf, replacing it with stretches of hardy native grasses. Combined with the new state-of-the-art sprinkler system that was installed in 2019, these reductions should continue to save water.

To this point, the recovery of the Plantation Course is a tremendous success story forged by determination and effort, much like the rebuilding in neighboring communities after the deadly wildfires. Kapalua Resort is a big part of its community, providing jobs and luring well-heeled tourists to the island to spur on the local economy. You can see a glint of relief in the faces of Kapalua’s operators when they discuss the recovery. Best of all, you can see that the Plantation Course is green again.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: The Plantation Course at Kapalua in Hawaii is green again