# The Best Golf Courses in Hawaii County, Hawaii Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-hawaii-county-hi/ [The Course Rankings](/) County Rankings / Hawaii A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Hawaii County is the Big Island, and the Big Island invented a genre: golf routed across lava fields to the edge of the Pacific. The county holds 20 courses, most of them strung along the dry Kohala and Kona coasts, a few on the wet Hilo side, one up a volcano. The ranking problem here is separating the genuinely great from the merely gorgeous, because on this island the scenery tries to do the ranking for you. We score the golf first. Black lava, ocean frontage, and a famous par three earn their place only when the course behind them holds up. This is the county that feeds [the Hawaii state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-hawaii/), and its top five would headline most states. ## 1Nanea Golf Club David McLay Kidd designed Nanea in 2003 on volcanic rock, on a high exposed plateau beneath Mount Hualalai, three and a half miles from the ocean with Pacific views anyway. It is private and invitation only, developed by Charles Schwab and George Roberts, and it plays par 73 at 7,464 yards through black outcroppings and native grass meadows. Golf Digest ranks it No. 1 in Hawaii and No. 59 on America's 100 Greatest, and the detail that explains the mystique is this: it took Golf Digest over a decade to collect enough ballots for the course to even qualify. The clubhouse carries five copper domes echoing the island's five volcanoes, and the short par four 14th splits its fairway around a mini crater rim. The private courses below it are excellent. Nanea is the one the others get measured against. ## 2Mauna Kea Golf Course Robert Trent Jones Sr. built Mauna Kea in 1964 for Laurance Rockefeller, the first resort course on the Big Island, and Jones ground up the site's volcanic rock to use as sand on which to grow grass. Let that sink in. The course that started Hawaiian resort golf was grown on pulverized lava. The par three 3rd plays across a lava lined inlet of the Pacific and is among the most photographed holes in America. Resort and public access on the Kohala Coast means anyone can play it, and it has ranked among Golf Digest's best public courses in America. History, access, and the most famous hole in the county. Only Nanea's design ceiling keeps it second. ## 3Kohanaiki Golf Course The only Rees Jones course in Hawaii, private at Kailua-Kona, with six oceanfront holes along more than a mile of shoreline. Kohanaiki was built with SeaDwarf paspalum turf, around anchialine ponds and preserved historic structures, which gives it an ecological care that most resort development only advertises. Golf Digest listings put it No. 10 in Hawaii, and the 580 yard 12th is one of the longest holes on the island. A mile of shoreline is a real architectural asset, and Jones used the ocean as a playing boundary rather than a backdrop, which is the difference between this and the county's prettier postcards. ## 4Kukio Golf Course The lone Tom Fazio design in Hawaii, at a private golf and beach club in Kailua-Kona, winding through lava rock on the Kona Coast. Kukio is ranked among the top courses in Hawaii by both Golf Digest and Golf.com, and its position here rests on a simple logic: Fazio built one course in the state, the panels consistently rate it near the top, and the lava routing gives his polished style a ruggedness it does not always have on the mainland. It concedes the top three on public record and championship weight, and it would be first in most counties in America. ## 5Hualalai Golf Course Jack Nicklaus at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, routed along black lava fields above the Pacific, and home to the Champions Tour's Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. A course the senior tour chooses for its season opener has to present well and play fairly in January, and Hualalai does both. It appears on Golf.com's best courses in Hawaii list. Resort access puts it within reach of any golfer staying on the Kona Coast, which in this county of private clubs is a genuine ranking asset. ## 6Mauna Lani South Course The South Course at Mauna Lani, built in 1981 by Homer Flint, Raymond Cain, and Robin Nelson, plays 6,938 yards through 16th century lava flows. Its par three 15th, over lava to a green by the ocean, is one of the most photographed par threes in the world, and the course hosted the televised Senior Skins Game from 1990 to 2000, a full decade of the game's biggest names playing it on television. GolfPass named it the No. 1 public golf course in Hawaii in 2025. Public voters and television producers agreeing across 25 years is a sturdy credential. ## 7Mauna Lani North Course The North, by the same design team from 1981, plays 6,913 yards at par 72, and regulars rate it on par with or better than the South. That local verdict is why it sits seventh rather than lower. It has ocean views of its own and strongly designed holes, without a single photograph as famous as the South's 15th. Golfers who play both at Mauna Lani often leave arguing for the North, and a course that wins arguments against its own sibling has earned its place. ## 8Kings' Course Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish built the Kings' Course at Waikoloa Beach Resort in 1990, and its nine plays like a Scottish links, pot bunkers and wide rolling fairways routed through ancient lava fields. The par three fifth on the Kings' Nine plays to a lava island green. Links golf on lava is a strange sentence and an enjoyable round, and Weiskopf's feel for playable, strategic golf keeps it from novelty. In a county of resort courses, this is the one with a distinct playing accent. ## 9Hapuna Golf Course Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay designed Hapuna in 1992 as Mauna Kea's sister course on the Kohala Coast, resort and public access, in a lava field setting above the beach. Sister courses usually live in the shadow. Hapuna holds ninth on the strength of the Palmer and Seay routing and the Kohala Coast ground it shares with the county's best addresses. ## 10Makalei Golf Club The county's change of pace. Dick Nugent designed Makalei in 1992 above Kailua-Kona on the western slope of Hualalai, at elevations from about 1,800 to 2,850 feet. That altitude makes it one of the few Hawaii courses with bentgrass greens, and it plays up to 7,091 yards past lava tubes, cinder cones, and forested edges, with peacocks, pheasants, and wild turkeys around the property. Public, cooler, higher, and unlike anything else on this list. The rest of the county fills in honestly. The Beach Course at Waikoloa, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. design from 1981, lines its Beach Nine with palms above Anaeho'omalu Bay. The Ali'i Mountain Course at Kona Country Club climbs into foothills that were once a playground for Hawaiian royalty. Hilo Municipal serves the wet side as the county's everyday public option. Naniloa in Hilo is a nine hole par 35 from 1970. The Ocean Course, Sea Mountain, The Club at Hokulia, Volcano Golf Course up on the volcano itself, Waikoloa Village, and Waimea Country Club round out the 20. The back of this list is ordinary resort and local golf in an extraordinary setting, and we will say so plainly. But the top of it, lava by lava, is as strong as any county golf in America. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.