The Pacifico Course at Punta Mita encompasses a par-3 with the world’s solely pure island inexperienced.
Evan Schiller
For many years, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, has been world-renowned for its air of romance. Today, its enchantments embody golf.
Generally known as the Riviera Narayit, this scenic stretch, which extends some 200 miles alongside the Pacific Ocean, brims with memorable resort and public-access programs. As prime golf season approaches south of the border, listed below are 5 of the best spots to play in and across the Riviera Nayarit.
Punta Mita Golf Membership
There are a lot of methods to inform the story of golf at Punta Mita, a 1,500-acre resort and residential neighborhood set alongside an enormous expanse of white-sand seashores. A great place to start out is with the “Story of the Whale.” That’s the moniker for a one-of-a-kind par-3 that options the world’s solely pure island inexperienced. The opening, which requires a 194-yard carry from the tricks to a rock-ringed placing floor lapped by ocean waves, performs as gap 3B on the Pacifico Course. It’s, in different phrases, an ‘alternate’ gap on the scorecard. However it’s not an expertise you wish to miss (word: at excessive tide, the inexperienced is barely accessible by motorized boat). The Pacifico Course is one in every of two non-public Jack Nicklaus Signature designs at Punta Mita that makes tee instances obtainable to resort visitors, providing pristinely manicured golf on palm-fringed fairways with sweeping ocean views. Each programs additionally play host to one of the crucial widespread golf and way of life occasions in Mexico, the Punta Mita Invitational, a five-day food-and-wine stuffed gathering the place winners from the most important skilled golf excursions play alongside beginner individuals in an easy-going environment.
Courtesy of Punta Mita
El Tigre Golf Membership
At greater than 7,200 yards from the again tees, with a course and slope ranking of 75.4/144, this Robert von Hagge course has been described as one of many hardest in Mexico. It actually has lots of tooth. A menagerie of animals reside on property, together with crocodiles and monkeys. The par-3 seventeenth, which performs over water to a peninsula inexperienced, is all of the extra nerve-racking for the hazard simply behind it: a big enclosure inhabited by tigers, which had been rescued by the property’s director of golf.
Vista Vallarta Golf Membership
In Spanish, as in English, ‘vista’ means view. And, boy, are they eye-popping at this 36-hole facility, within the foothills simply east of Puerto Vallarta. The 2 programs right here, designed, respectively, by Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf, complement one another of their aesthetics and shot-making calls for. The previous, which ideas out as simply over 7,000 yards, bucks and rolls by way of thickets of palm and ficus bushes, its routing spliced by creeks and arroyos, whereas the marginally shorter latter makes ingenious use of elevation adjustments to ramp up its start-to-finish danger and rewards. What each layouts have in widespread are the gorgeous vistas, which sweep from the coast and Banderas Bay to the inexperienced ridges of the Sierra Madre mountains.
Courtesy Vista Vallarta
Vidanta Neuvo Nayarit-Vallarta
This sprawling resort, simply north of the Puerto Vallarta airport, spreads throughout greater than 3,500 acres, permitting room for dozens of swimming swimming pools, scores of bars and eating places, 9 miles of wood footpaths, and golf. A lot of golf, together with a Nicklaus Signature design and a Greg Norman course that hosts the Mexico Open. Each layouts might be bearish or benign, relying on the tees you choose, and there’s additionally a user-friendly 10-hole par-3 format that’s illuminated at night time, in addition to a golf academy to assist set you straight.
Flamingos Golf Course
Inbuilt 1970, this Percy Clifford design is among the OGs of the world, and it provides a standard tropical expertise. Its gently rolling routing winds by way of a backdrop of mangroves, lagoons and plush rainforests. Although coastal winds are a near-constant presence, the fairways are forgiving and the greens roll as purely as any round.
