Cape Kidnappers Review

The ground at Cape Kidnappers does something no other golf site does. Ravines cut the headland into narrow fingers that run out toward the ocean and fall away hundreds of feet on both sides, and Doak laid fairways down them. The sixth is a 225 yard par three across a chasm to a green on the cliff edge. The thirteenth is a 130 yard par three, the only hole that runs along the coast rather than out at it, and it plays in a cross wind that turns a wedge into a guess.

The fifteenth, Pirate's Plank, sends a par five of roughly 650 yards straight down the narrowest finger with nothing on either side, and it needs no bunkers at all. Nobody forgets any of the three. Judge it as architecture rather than photography and the grades separate. The fingers are close to dead flat until the ground tips at the greens, so the drama is entirely vertical and entirely at the edges, and the holes that get you from one finger to the next cross ordinary sheep paddock.

The greens are excellent, the fescue is kept firm, and the gannet colony out at the point is worth the walk by itself. Access is the cost. The international green fee runs to 739 New Zealand dollars in the January to March high season before fifteen percent tax, a handicap is required, and the course sits at the end of fifteen kilometres of private road. Go once, in shoulder season, and take a camera.