Much has happened since then on Kauai and around Hawaii. At least 18 new courses have opened in the 50th State since 1990, bringing the total to 70. One of those is Poipu Bay on Kauai's sunny southern shore. If it wasn't the Trent Jones Junior Isle before, it is now, at least for golfers.
Jones has also added 54 new holes on Maui. With another 36 holes on the Big Island, he is the most prolific golf course architect in Hawaii.
How's this for a good working definition of prolific? Jones' creations include The Prince and Princeville Makai (27 holes) at Princeville, Poipu Bay and Kiahuna Plantation on Kauai; Makena (36) and Wailea (36) on Maui; Waikoloa Beach and Waikoloa Village on the island of Hawaii. That's 10 courses and 189 holes on three islands.
Even more impressive than the number of courses he's designed is their quality. I've played each of them -- as well as Jones designs at Keystone, Colorado and Spanish Bay at Pebble Beach. There isn't an unpleasant layout among them. There also isn't an undemanding one.
The lingering impression from a tour of his courses is that Jones Jr. is a thinking man's designer. Yes, there's the art -- a golf course is really a 200-acre canvas and the architect must blend color, form, texture, light and shadow, all of the things that an artist brings to bear in composition. And Jones is truly an artist. Witness his "zen bunker" at Princeville Makai.
But as visual as his courses are, they are also cerebral. Jones insists that you think and see. If you see but don't think, what you see may not be exactly what you get. He is a master of visual legerdemain and prestidigitation on a grand scale, the David Copperfield of golf design.
The seaside15th hole at Poipu Bay is a good example. I'd played the course at least four times before, even shot a golf show there with Pat Morita. And I distinctly remembered the 15th as a par-5. Standing on the elevated tee again recently, seeing the hole stretch out along an ocean cliff, it sure looked like a long five. Imagine my surprise, then, when I glanced down at the blue tee marker. It indicated the hole was only 401 yards away (366 from the whites). It's really a short four!
But Jones can use elevated tees for a quite different effect. The first hole at the new Wailea Orange plays dramatically straight downhill. You'd swear that you could drive the green. The temptation has been overpowering to hit the driver every time I've played there. And every time I've been reminded that the fairway narrows the closer you get to the green, which means there are a lot of ways to lose your ball. Plus, the green is elevated from the fairway, so it's all carry. The way to play it is with a fairway wood off the tee and a short iron appoach.
By looking before hitting, you'll see that Jones generally gives you a couple of options for playing the hole. The sixth hole at Waikoloa Village, for instance, is another shortish, downhill par-4. A large sand trap in the landing zone for the drive -- the bunker looks like a dove in flight -- provides the options. There's acres of room to the right of the bunker, but your approach to the green is longer and brings a greenside bunker into play. The approach is shorter and less dangerous from the left, but the fairway is much narrower and flirts with out of bounds.
Another lingering impression is that Trent Jones Jr. has created some of the most natural golf holes in these islands. He takes the land he's given and goes with it. That explains why each of his courses is so different.
The Prince, which has been ranked by various publications as the best course in Hawaii and is rated the state's second toughest, is a jungle gem. Fairways run through thick forest. A natural waterfall tumbles out of an ancient lava tube behind the 13th green. The air is sweet with flowers and greenery. Jones gives you lovely sightlines that alternate between lush mountains and blue Pacific. J.D. Ebersberger, the former director of golf at Mauna Kea, called the Prince "the finest example of a jungle course I've ever seen."
On the other side of Kauai is Poipu -- the name means "crashing," as in the crashing of waves on the shore. Jones was given land that includes a stretch of seaside cliff. But most of the acreage is just inland. The rolling terrain also happened to be utterly treeless -- on account of it having previously been a sugar cane field. So Jones did the logical thing and built a links course. Links, by definition, is the land that links the sea and arable land. It was on the linksland of Scotland that golf was first played. Today, though, you'll see links-style courses in the deserts of Arizona, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the plains of Indiana. So it's nice to actually see a links course beside the sea.
It works, but with some twists. Ponds, for instance, are not a feature of Scottish links courses. But they're an integral part of coastal lands in Hawaii. And the ponds on the back nine at Poipu have attracted two native birds that are on the federal Endangered Species List, nene (goose) and koloa (duck).
And from the cliffs along the 15th and 16th holes, I've seen three other endangered animals -- monk seals sunning on the beach, green sea turtles swimming just outside the surf break and humpback whales spouting and splashing offshore. Throw in Jones' creative use of ancient Hawaiian lava rock walls and the remains of a fishing heiau (temple), and you have one of the most natural courses this side of Pebble Beach.
You'll also play past ancient rock walls and heiau at Makena and Wailea, where Jones uses lots of native wild grasses. At Waikoloa Beach, he makes use of black lava flows. The Beach Course, Princeville Makai and Poipu are relatively flat. The Prince, Waikoloa Village, Makena and Wailea run over and between hills and ridges.
I've tried, and it's almost impossible to pigeonhole Jones' work. "Our goal is the creation of a high quality course that appears to have been designed by its setting," Jones says. He aims for a course that has "the appearance of always having been there."
Jones and his company, the Robert Trent Jones II Group, "works closely with environmental and archaeological groups." In the process of building golf courses, Jones has worked on "restoration of sand dunes and reestablishment of native plants at Spanish Bay, preservation of Mayan temples at Cancun and, of course, protection of ancient burial sites and temples in Hawaii." He has been called "the father of environmental golf course design."
Of course, he got a great start in the business from his father, the legendary Robert Trent Jones Jr., whose 500 golf courses worldwide include Mauna Kea, Royal Kaanapali North and Discovery Harbor. Another brother, Rees Jones, is also a respected course architect. Bobby, as Jr. is known, studied political science at Yale and attended law school at Stanford, but quickly decided that law was not for him. He then convinced his father to open a West Coast office and worked with Sr. for a decade, then set out on his own in 1973.
"My name was a blessing in a way, it gave me a head start," Jones says. "But I still had to design good golf courses... It's like the priest who was asked about the golfer who crossed himself: Will that help him? And the priest replied: `It will if he's a good player.'"
Trent Jones Too has distinguished himself in building over 150 courses around the world. In fact, the sun never sets on all of his courses at once. Sites include the Rocky Mountains, a former rice paddy in Thailand, a French forest, Palm Springs desert, Russian parkland, Japanese hills, Australian and California coast. He spends about 275 days on the road annually. He got a message from his Palo Alto office to return our call while he was in Singapore and did the next day -- from Manilla.
And two of his courses are regular stops on the PGA Tour, Poppy Hills during the AT&T National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach and Weston Hills for the Honda Classic.
Jones has also distinguished himself in quite a different realm. A man of deep convictions, he has participated in politics for decades. As a student at Yale, he was an intern in the office of U.S. Sen. Stuart Symington. He served as a member of the California State Park Commission and was it's president in `83. He has a strong interest in human rights and was the U.S. delegate to the Helsinki Accords Conference in Spain in 1980 and to the Bi-national Governors' Conference in Mexico in the same year.
Jones was a close friend of the late Benigno Aquino and launched a campaign for his release from imprisonment ordered by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. They had met when Jones and his father were building a course in the town where Aquino was mayor. Jones' campaign intensified after Aquino was assasinated until the time his widow, Corazon, was elected president.
Jones calls his friendship with Aquino "a defining moment... Here's a close personal friend whose life was in danger because of his beliefs, and here I was in a country where I could say anything. His plight crystallized my beliefs as to what freedom really is."
Yes, Robert Trent Jones Jr. is an usual golf course architect. And that has a lot to do with why he designs such remarkable golf courses.
Back to Reading Room Home page