Compton's Multimedia Gol…ifornia & Hawaii Edition)/Compton's Multimedia Golf Guide - California & Hawaii Edition.iso/articles/hipast.har

Text File | 1992-12-10 | 16KB | 291 lines

Almost exactly halfway around the globe from golf's conception on the
sandy links of Scotland, the old game has taken root
in the volcanic soil of Hawaii and flourished. Like most imports-from
coots to coconuts, from bats to bananas, from gobies to grass-golf
has adapted to the environment of the most isolated islands on earth,
evolving into something quite unique. The game is now so ingrained in
Hawaii, so much a part of life here, that if you didn't already know that
it sprang into life in wide alluvial deposits between dunes along the
North Sea, you'd think that golf and Hawaii were eternally preordained
to go together.^
^
In 1414, the year of the first written record of golf at St. Andrews,
Hawaiian culture had been well established for about 400 years. The
Hawaiians, then and now, enjoyed the bounty of the land and of the
sea, with seasonal taboos to protect their resources. Their thriving
culture included many games, but none resembling golf. Like the
ancient Scots, most of their first games were related to battle skills-
archery for the Scots, spear-throwing (and spear-dodging) for the
ancient Hawaiians and tests of raw strength. But Captain James Cook
"discovered" the Hawaiian islands in 1778 and named them in honor
of the Earl of Sandwich (a name just begging for a tuna on whole
wheat at the turn). That opened the flood gates for all sorts of
imports and influences that forever changed these islands and their
native people.^
^
Precisely when-and in whose steamer trunk-golf crossed the
Pacific to Hawaii is not known. But it was within 10 years of the
founding of the first golf club in the United States in 1889. There are
records of the descendants of missionaries playing golf at a makeshift
course in grassy Manoa Valley in the mid-1890s. And by 1898, the
game was so well established here that Samuel Mills Damon felt the
need to build an 18-hole golf course on his Moanalua Valley estate.
Coincidentally, 1898 also happens to be the year that the United
States annexed Hawaii, forever overthrowing the rule of native
Hawaiian royalty.^
^
In any event, Damon, part of whose estate also became Honolulu
International Airport, shortened his course to nine holes in 1901.
Today it is the Moanalua Country Club, thought by many to be the
oldest golf club west of the Mississippi.^
^
Damon's little course began the first of several booms in golf course
construction in Hawaii.^
^
Moanalua was considered "country" at the turn of the century. A round
of golf required a full day, including the dusty trip via train, mule-
drawn streetcar or horse-drawn carriage. As Hawaii golf historian Bill
Gee tells it: "Golfers living in upper class Manoa solved the
inconvenience of trekking to Moanalua by creating a course in their
own back yard in 1904. But when land for an 18-hole links became
available in Nuuanu, the Manoans moved across a couple of ridges
and established Oahu Country Club in 1906. It was a 9-holer until
1912."^
^
Following World War I, the Army built courses at Schofield Barracks
(Kalakaua Golf Course) in 1918 and at Fort Shafter in 1919, which set
off the building boom of the 1920s. For Hawaii golfers, it was definitely
a roaring decade.^
^
Volcano Golf and Country Club, Hawaii's highest course at 4,000-feet
elevation, opened in 1922. Maui Country Club at Spreckelsville
opened in 1925. Waialae Country Club, home of the PGA Tour United
Hawaiian Open, and Mid-Pacific Country Club at Lanikai both began
play in 1927. It's hard to imagine, but in those days you had to drive
past the pungent pig farms of now pricey Kahala to get to Waialae.^
^
And plantation bosses on all of the major islands began building their
own courses in the '20s. You can still play many of them: Kahuku on
the North Shore of Oahu, Ironwood Hills on Molokai, Hamakua
Country Club on the Big Island and the back nine at Wailua on Kauai.
Cavendish on Lanai followed. With the exception of Wailua and Maui
Country Club, these plantation area courses are rather rough-hewn.
They're not for everyone. But they do provide a glimpse of golf from
another era, not to mention a budget-balancing alternative to $100
resort courses. Kahuku, despite a semi-goofy layout of four par-3s,
three par-5s and just two par-4s, is one of my five favorite courses in
Hawaii. It is a classic seaside links course, with ocean views from
eight holes, spongy turf, and wildflowers blooming in the rough, just
like Royal Dornoch in the Highlands of Scotland.^
^
Honolulu's municipal Ala Wai Golf Course (1931) and Maui's
municipal Waieheu Golf Course (1930) come from the same era. With
its full schedule of play 12 months a year, Ala Wai is considered the
busiest course in the world.^
^
Other once-popular courses at Haleiwa and Palolo Valley, like the
one at Manoa, simply disappeared. The Palolo course, for instance,
was plowed under for a housing project in 1940.^
^
Hawaii's first great player came from this boom period. Francis I'i
Brown, a native Hawiian for whom the original course at Mauna Lani is
named, won the state match play championship, the Manoa Cup, nine
times between 1920 and 1934. He  won the All-Japan Amateur in
1929 and a year later won the prestigious California Amateur. During
a practice round for the 1924 British Amateur, Brown shattered the
course record on the Old Course at St. Andrews with an astonishing
67!^
^
The next course-building boom came after World War II. Like the
plantation owners before them, generals and admirals now had
courses built-for "the men," of course. The difference is that the
military brought in top architects. The legendary William P. Bell, for
instance, created Navy-Marine in 1948 and Kaneohe Klipper in 1949,
the same year that the Army's Leilehua course opened. They're all
terrific courses. Klipper is sometimes called "the Pebble Beach of
Hawaii" for its stretch of three oceanside holes on the back nine. Also
notable is the big monkeypod tree to the right-front of the green on the
par-3 fourth hole at Klipper. Then General Dwight D. Eisenhower had
so much trouble with the tree that he declared it should never be cut
down. The still-vexatious tree is known as Ike'sTree.^
^
Although the only significant new course on Oahu during the 1950s
was the municipal Pali Golf Course, it was a golden decade for golf in
Hawaii with players such as Guinea Kop, "the Mandarin Stylist,"
Jimmy Ukauka and Ted Makalena taking turns winning the major local
championships. Makalena, a native Hawaiian, would later win the
PGA Tour United Hawaiian Open in 1966. (David Ishii, a Kauai native
who was an All-American at the University of Houston, would
continue the tradition by winning the 1990 Hawaiian Open.) Jackie
Liwai Pung won the 1952 U.S. Women's Amateur. She would later
lose a playoff to Betsy Rawls for the 1953 U.S. Open and cost herself
the chance to win the 1957 Open by inadvertently signing an incorrect
scorecard.^
^
And then Laurance Rockefeller came up with the utterly revolutionary
idea of building an exclusive resort-Mauna Kea-out in the parched
lava fields of the Big Island's Kohala Coast. Naturally, the resort
needed a golf course. The problem, as architect Robert Trent Jones,
Sr. said, was that he'd never seen land less hospitable for a course.
Jones came up with the equally revolutionary idea of crushing solid
lava, bringing in topsoil and planting fairways between the lava flows.
Completed in 1964, Mauna Kea forever changed Hawaii golf. The Big
Island's resort courses, as well as many courses on other islands,
since then have all been planted over lava, which until Jones came
along had been unthinkable. Mauna Kea is still the standard against
which new courses are judged. Consider that Jones, who has
designed more than 2,000 courses over the world, considers Mauna
Kea among his five favorites.^
^
What it adds up to is an incredible diversity of golf experiences. One of
the pleasures of Hawaii for residents and visitors alike is th