Featured Golf Trip: Baha Mar

What if your next golf trip looked more like a Caribbean getaway?

That’s the deal at Baha Mar, a luxury resort complex sitting right on Nassau’s Cable Beach in the Bahamas. Three high-end hotels, a casino, more than 45 restaurants and bars, a water park, a wildlife sanctuary, pristine pools, and one white-sand beach after another. And tucked into the mix is a golf course with some serious pedigree.

That course is Royal Blue, the only Jack Nicklaus Signature design in the Bahamas. A tale of two nines, the front side winds through dunes and water features, with broad fairways and native sand edges giving it a more typically resort-y feel. But around the turn, the back nine rises into limestone ridges and jungle terrain, with dramatic elevation changes you might not expect on an island course. Nicklaus has called it “two golf courses in one.”

It’s some rare character in a destination where pure resort golf is the norm, and it crescendos at the island-green par 3 16th.

As for the trip itself, Nassau is one of the easier Caribbean destinations to reach, with plenty of direct options from U.S. hubs. Greens fees at Royal Blue run in the neighborhood of $250 – $300 for resort guests, which, while not cheap, feels aligned with the broader Baha Mar experience.

Nothing wrong with a swim-up bar as the 19th hole.

This piece originally ran in the GTG newsletter. Subscribe here for free and get pricing details alongside the weekly featured stop—plus news on openings, redesigns, and more—in your inbox each Thursday afternoon.