It's a compound noun. Club: to belong, to share. House: a familiar and comfortable place.
We learn the concept as children: Meet me at the clubhouse. Whether it's a treehouse, a large cardboard box or just a safe and shady spot between fence and hedge, the neighborhood clubhouse is a special place.
And golfers, like children, not only get to play outdoors for hours at a time, we also get to have a clubhouse. Within it -- out of the sun, wind and rain -- you'll find the cheer of good friends, the latest game-improving equipment, professional advice and that greatest of golf traditions, the 19th Hole. But at several new golf clubhouses around Hawaii, you'll find more. A lot more. In fact, the new generation is to clubhouses rather what the Vatican is to churches.
Within these new clubhouses you'll find lap pools, weight rooms, spas, masseuses, beauty salons, parking valets, even traditional Japanese furo baths. The food has also improved dramatically from the traditional french fries and chicken wings.
The purpose of all of this is to enhance the "total golf experience." Of course, a clubhouse is just a building without a golf course. Happily, Hawaii''s new clubhouses are the product of a boom that has added two dozen good courses to the 50th State since 1989. Years from now they'll look back at the `90s as the golden age of golf course design in Hawaii. And these clubhouses will be venerated classics. Here's a look at some of them.
Architecturally, the new clubhouse at the Grand Waikapu Country Club (formerly Waikapu Valley CC) on Maui is significant beyond the world of golf. Plans for the building were purchased from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Wright, one of America's best-known American architects, originally designed it as a home for Marilyn Monroe, but she never got to build it. The story is that one of her Hollywood husbands didn't like the design. That could be because Wright threw in a few curves and a domed roof that looks a lot like Marilyn supine. "It reminds you of Marilyn," says head pro Fran Cipro.
And a stream flows out of the clubhouse to feed a waterfall and stream around the 18th hole of golf course architect Ted Robinson's delightful course.
Like Marilyn, the clubhouse is larger than life. It is the largest in Hawaii, 74,788 square feet. Three levels require an elevator. The pro shop affords an ocean-to-ocean view of both sides of Maui. Men and women have separate spa facilities that include lockers, massage rooms, saunas and whirlpools. The spa is staffed by the Spa Grande at the Grand Wailea Resort. The men's side has a furo and plenty of photos of Marilyn, including a stunning lifesize likeness in a red satin fown. There are two dining options, a Mixed Grill and Monroe's, fine dining with spectacular panoramic views from Kahului to Wailea and Haleakala. There are several meeting and party rooms, as well as parking valet service. Photos of Marilyn adorn several wall, and a painting of Wright working on plans for the clubhouse looks down from the koa stairwell.
It has another unique feature for golf clubhouses -- an observation deck for star-gazing.
For all its pedigree and history and size, the brown and beige stucco clubhouse at Waikapu is tucked rather unubtrusively on the flank of the West Maui Mountains, as if Wright had planned all along on putting it there.
Three stories of glass and brass and black marble make the clubhouse at The Prince Course at Princeville one of the most dramatic anywhere. Australian architect Desmond Brooks designed it in the same style and with the same materials he used for the nearby Princeville Hotel.
The 60,0000-sq.-ft. facility includes a lap pool, workout room, beauty salon, massage rooms, an expansive pro shop, a lounge, restaurant and ballroom-meeting room. Interior design is by Cheryl Saltzman of Los Angeles.
The black marble staircase is so grand, you half expect a starlet -- Marilyn? -- to make an entrance any moment.
Combined with Robert Trent Jones Jr.'s challenging course -- rated the second-toughest in Hawaii -- the clubhouse makes The Prince a most attractive golf experience.
From the inside, you have a panoramic view from Mt. Namalakoma to Bali Hai to the blue Pacific.
"And looking back at the clubhouse from the course," says Princeville's director of golf Bob Higgins, "when the late afternoon is sparkling of all that glass, it looks like huge, dazzling gem."
It is that indeed.
The clubhouse at the Plantation Course at Kapalua is one reason that the Lincoln-Mercury Kapalua International tournament was moved from the Bay Course to th new Plantation.
"The Bay is a great course, but it doesn't have the kind of clubhouse with lockers you need to host a PGA Tour event," says Mark Rolfing, ABC-TV's top golf analyst, as well as the man who created the Kapalua International and developed the Plantation Course. "The Plantation clubhouse was designed with the tournament in mind."
The 33,000-sq.-ft. structure is very Kapalua -- elegant, confident and just slightly understated. The style used by architect Stringer, Tusher & Assoc. is plantation moderne. Construction is of wood and stone. Both are gray. The stone is from a nearby quarry.
Interior design is by Philpotts & Assoc. and uses Italian granite for floors. Paintings of the Plantation Course by local artists George Allen, Betty Hay Freeland, Pam Andelin and Arthur Andersen grace the walls in the entry hall and in the Plantation House restaurant and bar. Perched above the 18th fairway, it is one of the best 19th Holes in Hawaii with sweeping views of the course and the island of Molokai across the blue Pailolo Channel. The food is also first rate, from simple eggs and toast for golfers with an early tee time to gourmet dinners.
"With a course like this, your food has to be up to par," says Planatation House manager Chris Ka`iwi. The course, designed by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, plays to Hawaii's only par 73 for men, 75 for women.
Kapalua, under Gary Planos, has won several national awards for its pro shop operation including being named among the 100 best golf shops in America.
Downstairs, there are men's and women's lockers rooms and grilles. The art here is posters of past Kapalua Internationals and portraits of the tournament champions, including Greg Norman, Sandy Lyle, Andy Bean, Davis Love III and Fred Couples.
The same folks who run the Plantation House also operate the Sea Watch Restaurant at the clubhouse of the new Wailea Gold and Emerald Courses on Maui. The food here is also up to par. Surrounded by a pond with lilly pads, the open-air restaurant looks out the 18th and 10th holes of Robert Trent Jones Jr.'s Gold Course and across the sea to the islands of Kahoolawe and Molokini. During the winter, you'll see humpback whales splashing just offshore.
The clubhouse, designed by the Honolulu architectural firm of Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo, won the Award of Merit at the 1994 Pacific Coast Builders Conference. Constructed of gray stucco with gray and green ceramic tile roof, the 60,000-sq.-ft. structure is all on one floor. You enter through an actual port cochere. The lobby is an atrium with a 20-foot palm tree in the center. Interior design is by Design Masters, a Florida firm. Golfers will find comfortable men's and women's locker rooms and lounges.
Head professional Rick Castillo's pro shop is roughly the size of your basic Liberty House and offers nearly as much merchandise. In addition to a remarkable selection of golf fashions, clubs, shoes and accoutrements, the pro shop sells picnic baskets and non-golf attire.
Arnie's is unquestionably the best-named 19th Hole in Hawaii. The restaurant at the Hapuna Golf Course clubhouse on the Big Island is named for Arnold Palmer, who designed the course with Ed Seay. There are photos of Arnie on the walls -- tossing his cap in the air after winning the `61 U.S. Open, smacking a tee shot into a North Sea wind at the British Open, holding the Masters trophy, putting a ball in the hole with body English.
The 36,000-sq.- ft. clubhouse -- 2,700 sq. ft. of it Ron Castillo Jr.'s elegant pro shop -- was designed by Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo in the same style they used in creating the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel across the road. Lots of wide columns and curved walls.
The spa facility includes a dozen Nautilus machines and an exercise room with a 180-degree glass view of the course, men's and women's locker rooms with saunas and steam baths. The bag and cart storage area is also unique, saving time and steps between dropping off a bag and getting loaded onto a cart.
If you didn't know better, you'd think you were checking into a hotel at the Royal Hawaiian CC, not just checking in with the starter. Located in Windward Oahu's Maunawili Valley, the summer home of Hawaii's last monarch, Queen Liluokalani, the Royal Hawaiian clubhouse is appropriately palatial with 53,819 square feet under roof. This is also Hawaii's only golf course with a parking structure, not just a parking lot.
Just as Pete and Perry Dye's 18-hole course is cut from sections of jungle -- Hawaii's first pure target-golf experience -- the clubhouse is discreetly cut in the side of a hill. The best view of the clubhouse, a design collaboration by Pan Pacific Inc. and Projects International, is from the course.
Both men's and women's locker rooms have furo baths to soak away aches and bogeys.
Although the course is private, the restaurant and banquet facilities are open to the public. Jun Mochizuki, Royal Hawaiian's vice-president, says that several weddings and receptions have been held on a special 5,000-sq.-ft. "marriage green" that commands a view of Maunawili Valley and the Ko`olau Mountains.
Other courses with memorable clubhouses include Poipu Bay on Kauai, Ko`olau and Ko Olina on Oahu and Sandalwood on Maui. Others, such as Olomana on Oahu, have made dramatic improvements.
Golf clubhouses have always been special places. In Hawaii, they're extra special.
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