A perfect drive, a Tom Fazio course and so much more in California

• The Santa Lucia Preserve is a 20,000-acre community in California with a focus on conservation and natural beauty.
• The Preserve features a Tom Fazio-designed golf course ranked among the top private courses in California.
• Amenities include an equestrian center, sports center, lake club and a Hacienda offering dining and accommodations.
• The Preserve emphasizes a relaxed lifestyle while also prioritizing wildfire prevention and environmental sustainability.

There are grand golf course entrances, and there is Santa Lucia Preserve. 

The approach to Preserve Golf Club begins some four miles inland of the Pacific Ocean, within half an hour’s cruise of golf heavyweights such as Pebble Beach and Cypress Point. From there, the private road’s tight two lanes wander away from town, topping ridges and skirting several microenvironments. Past redwood trees and wild animals. Along drop-offs with incredible views of valuable terrain that has, implausibly, been mostly left to nature. 

From the guarded gates at the northern edge of the sanctuary, this drive to the clubhouse is 9.5 miles and nearly half an hour of twists and turns – a perfect way to leave everyday worries in the rearview mirror. Don’t even try it in a hurry, because several turnouts invite you to pull over and take it all in.

That drive is a perfect introduction to the private 20,000-acre Santa Lucia Preserve, where conservancy is more than a word or just a fleeting nod to a big idea. Once home to the Rumsen Ohlone Tribe then a series of working cattle ranches for much of the 1900s, the 31 square miles came under the care of the Santa Lucia Conservancy and Preserve Community in the 1990s. Some 18,000 of the Preserve’s acres have been permanently protected as natural habitat. 

The remaining 2,000 or so acres of Santa Lucia Preserve haven’t exactly been overburdened by the hand of man. The Preserve offers just 297 homesites, with amenities including a ranch club, equestrian center, sports center, lake club, swimming pools, 100 miles of various trails, a timeless Hacienda servicing the club with old-school-cool accommodations and upscale dining. And for those so inclined, a Tom Fazio-designed golf course that is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as No. 17 among all private courses in California and No. 111 among all modern courses in the U.S.

Most residential communities would seem packed with such a wide array of offerings. At Santa Lucia Preserve, such lifestyle accoutrements are frequently overshadowed by the setting. This isn’t, in any way imaginable, a typical residential golf community. 

“The people who are drawn to the Preserve are drawn here because of this wild, natural beauty,” said Jen Anello, Santa Lucia Preserve’s senior director of sales, marketing and resident/member experience. “It is a place that just happens to have this incredible golf experience. It’s not a community that’s centered around the golf experience. The golf is a piece of what draws people here, but you don’t have to be a golfer. People are drawn here by whatever their interests are, and I think that is something that sets it apart from your typical golf community.”

Much more than golf

This is a golf magazine, and you surely want to know more about the golf course. Don’t fret. We’ll get there soon enough. To wrap your head around Santa Lucia Preserve takes time. 

Arriving late in the evening after a two-hour drive south from San Francisco International Airport, I checked into the nearly vacant Hacienda. Almost a century old, the building has been converted into a dining and accommodations oasis that serves members and guests of Santa Lucia Preserve’s Ranch Club. Members of the separate Preserve Golf Club have access to the dining, and national golf members are able to stay at the Hacienda depending on availability. 

My room was one of those lost-in-time affairs that was bigger than any golfer needs, perfectly appointed for the Hacienda motif with a sitting area and fireplace. I was just upstairs of the main bar, where I returned each night to chat with various members before turning in early. Every conversation included at least one tale of that unforgettable entrance drive to the property. 

My trip coincided with the Preserve Golf Club Collegiate, a top-tier event won by UCLA. I wouldn’t play for two days, first watching 13 men’s teams tackle what looked to be a most difficult golf course in absolute prime condition. In the afternoons I cruised the property, checking out as many amenities and natural wonders as possible. 

A favorite was the stand of redwood trees visible from portions of the golf club. Several specimens rise more than 300 feet, rare to be so tall in the Santa Lucia Mountains. One tree is estimated to have sprouted sometime around 1300, nearly 200 years before Christopher Columbus arrived in North America. Walking the grove with Anello was a quiet experience, our voices set to almost a whisper so as to not disturb the scene, not that such trees should care what we have to say. They’ve experienced it all – fires, droughts and other natural stresses are marked on the trees, which tower over other adjacent species. To stand among them, the light dappling their crowns so far above, is humbling. 

The equestrian center, sports center and Moore’s Lake amenities are just minutes from the Hacienda. Fewer than 150 of the 297 available homesites have been built out with some 30 more under construction – nothing ever feels crowded. Existing homes available for resale at the time of my fall visit ranged from $5.4 million to $16 million. Some 40 undeveloped lots were available for resale by owners. Those ranged from half a million dollars to more than $2 million, with the spacious lots well separated in various environments. 

“We were a best-kept secret for a long time,” Anello said. “We didn’t do much outreach until about five years ago. . . . It’s important to understand how special and different it is compared to other places, other communities with golf. Maybe we just think we’re cooler than we really are, but this really is a special place.” 

Anello said there also are holding costs to consider, as well as building-approval processes that focus not only on aesthetics but the prevention of wildfires and subsequent property damage, which of course is a rising concern in California. The Preserve addresses these very real worries with best-in-class risk-mitigation efforts that stretch beyond homeowners and include far-reaching land management efforts to remove natural fuels and other threats of flare-ups. A simple example: Even on the golf course, cart paths are edged with string trimmers because blade trimmers might cause a spark.

It all adds up to a seriously enviable lifestyle with an incredibly relaxed vibe, right up until you watch a golf ball land on one of those Tom Fazio golf greens only to be rejected by those devilish slopes. 

Tom Fazio at his finest

The nature of these greens was revealed early my first morning on property. One player in the college event was short-sided and out of position after two shots on the par-5 17th, the green of which is perched high above a run-off area to the right. The player tried a difficult flop and made a good swing, only to watch his ball bound across into native scruff beyond the green. He took a drop, then played ping-pong back across the green on his way to an 8. Counting the penalty drop, that snowman included six shots within 20 yards of the flag. 

So I knew what I was in for when I finally teed off two days later alongside a club member.

Fazio is a master of designing residential courses, with 43 of the top 200 Golfweek’s Best residential courses bearing his name. Few of his efforts, however, separate the golf from the homes as decisively as at Preserve. A smattering of houses overlook the course, but none are realistically in play. This is core golf through sometimes heaving terrain with long views meant for photographs. 

Which is good, because nobody had to watch from their patios as I kept missing greens. Fazio is known for building greens that reject substandard approach shots. The edges of the Preserve’s putting surfaces tend to turn down and away, forcing wise players toward the center of the greens instead of directly at tucked flags. 

Combining firm bounces with elevated green speeds, these superior playing surfaces presented by course superintendent Kyle Butler and his crew are among Fazio’s trickiest. Butler chuckled over lunch as I recounted the player who bit off more than he could chew on his way to an 8 at No. 17. 

“With the Fazio greens and how fun they can be when they’re a little quicker, the challenge of the golf course is in the greens and the false fronts and some of the pin locations we can set,” said Butler, who came to Preserve Golf Club in 2016 as an assistant after having worked at the nearby Links at Spanish Bay and Carmel Valley Ranch. “Having a little bit faster greens accentuates all the features.”

The Preserve converted to Bermuda grass fairways in 2016, which allowed for a 15-percent reduction in irrigation water needed for the golf course in the arid environment, Butler said. He and his crew have taken many other steps to save water, too, such as covering a holding pond with thousands of plastic discs that reflect sunlight and slow evaporation. “Every single drop matters,” he said.

The greens are bent grass, and the rough is predominantly rye and sticky. The Preserve doesn’t receive an overwhelming volume of play, just 12,000 to 13,000 rounds per year, and Butler has all the playing surfaces dialed in. 

The course begins with a downhill par 4 playing to what starts as a wide fairway that is later pinched by trees in the landing zone for longer hitters, making players think from the start. That strategic requirement of thought is repeated over and over: Where do I want to be in this fairway, and what club gets me there? In general there is plenty of room off the tee for a cautious play, and ample challenges for the aggressive line. Thoughtless approach shots, in particular, are penalized on this course that surely takes more than a few rounds to even begin to figure out. 

And that’s perfect for a residential layout. As the flags move about the greens, strategy shifts, always presenting a different challenge from the day before. In other words, you could play this course often and never feel that it’s repetitive. 

Many of the golf club’s members are also fortunate enough to play at the nearby and famous coastal courses such as Cypress Point and Monterey Peninsula Country Club. The Preserve is very different in conditioning, environment and challenges presented. It’s amazing how the whole scene changes from the coastal panorama just over the mountain range, and that’s not a knock on the Preserve. 

Here, among these 31 square miles of protected habitat with a scattering of extremely well-heeled residences, life is exceptionally good. Each day can begin with expectations as high as those redwoods, the opportunities rolling out in front of you like that grandest of entrance roads through the mountains.