Featured Golf Trip: Kapalua

Well, just because the PGA Tour is moving on from Kapalua doesn’t mean you should. Let’s explore the current challenges facing the wildly scenic former host of The Sentry, which continues to deal with water issues and an uncertain future.

Set on the northwest coast of Maui, Kapalua’s headliner is the Plantation course, the first ever collaboration between architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw that today sits at 25th on the ​composite top 100 U.S. publics​. It features dramatic elevation changes and famously massive fairways. Winds are frequent and a big part of what gives the course its character.

It’s a trip worth having on your bucket list, full stop. But travels to Kapalua are complicated right now. Water restrictions put in place after the 2023 wildfires have wreaked havoc on golf course maintenance. For a time last summer, the course was ​burnt out and brown​. That prompted the Tour to cancel its 2026 trip. And then, just this week, it ​announced​ it would shutter its Hawaii swing altogether.

Today, Plantation is back looking green and lush as it ever has, but it remains unclear what’s in store for the resort’s future. In an ​excellent feature​ published earlier this month, Golfweek reported that Kapalua diverted its water resources from the Bay course in a dire move to restore Plantation. The Bay—a 1975-opened Arnold Palmer design that has hosted plenty of its own professional events through the years—had been scheduled to get a renovation at the hands of David McLay Kidd, one of the biggest needle-movers in modern course design. Instead, it remains closed to this day as the resort struggles to get the water resources it needs to maintain both.

“There is still much to be decided about Kapalua Resort’s future,” wrote Golfweek. Water restrictions are ongoing, as are drought concerns, and ownership is trying to find creative solutions “for obtaining and preserving water that offers benefits not only to the golf courses but the entire surrounding community.”

Here’s hoping those solutions come to pass, that they produce the desired result, and that Kapalua remains a bucket list staple for many years to come.