Doak completes renovation work at Cape Kidnappers

Tom Doak has completed a renovation of the Cape Kidnappers golf course, on New Zealand’s North Island, in preparation for its 20th anniversary next year.

Doak, the course’s original designer, worked with his associate Angela Moser and course superintendent Brad Sim on the project, which included regrassing greens and fairways with the aim of restoring firm and fast conditions.

“We rebuilt the putting surfaces from 10 inches down, and Angela put the contours back exactly as they’d been before,” said director of golf Ray Geffre. “Regrassing the greens at Cape and addressing our thatch problem was pretty straightforward. But the fairways were a huge undertaking – just an enormous volume of turf for an in-house crew to peel back and replant. And oh, by the way, that entire project was undertaken and completed under Covid conditions. I take my hat off to Brad and his crews. They did an amazing job.

“The renovation also substantially upped our game on the practice facility front. We expanded our range and built brand new putting and chipping greens. We also embarked on some strategic tree clearing, and we’re determined to keep that going. This is an incredibly diverse and lush ecosystem, and I doubt there’s another resort on earth that takes environmental protections more seriously than we do. But we need to protect our vistas, too, and preserve the original design here. For a while there, we had manuka creeping into the bunker and blocking the view of the fourth green. The kanuka and manuku we trimmed back all along the right side of fifteen: those are meant to be plants – they were head high!”

Cape Kidnappers is recognisable for holes that play along sheer, white cliffs that drop 150 metres down into Hawke’s Bay and flank thickly vegetated ravines and canyons. Inland holes are more heathland in style and feature natural swales, hillocks and dramatic bunkering.

“There is nothing quite like it in golf; it just sits so high above the water,” said Doak of his first Kiwi design, which opened in 2004. “This is a course fairly ranked among the top 50 in the world, but I’ve found people have difficulty classifying Cape Kidnappers in their own minds – because it’s so different and distinct from anything else.

“This is interesting to me, and I come at it from a pretty fair perspective, I think: some argue, ‘oh, Cape Kidnappers is not a links’. I understand what they’re saying. But whenever you talk about a world-class links, you have to compare it to Dornoch and all the great links on Earth. But when you look around and hold Cape up to the same kind of scrutiny, there is nothing comparable in terms of setting and scale. It really does stand alone and may always stand alone.”

Geffre said: “People are sort of amazed at how different it feels to play the golf course – and to see all these vistas and birds and ravines and amazing landforms. It’s probably because their only impressions of Cape Kidnappers, until they arrive, were those aerial photos looking straight down at holes fifteen and sixteen.”

Richard HumphreysRichard Humphreys

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