Punta Mita: A Whale of a Tale

It’s hard to get a resort just right. There are so many things one needs to appropriately mix into the batter, like accommodations, ambience, infrastructure, the little swords in your Piña Coladas, to come out with a great place to spend a couple grand on a vacation. How the food tastes, the perfect amount of water pressure in the showers, and how comfortable the beds feel are all variables that can make or brake a potential revisiting customer. Oh, and we haven’t even started talking about golf yet.

The balance between golf courses at a resort is a tricky subject. If one course is clearly better than the rest, or one clearly not up to par (pun intended), the resort has lost all efficacy of an all around, interesting experience. Tom Doak, not only being a natural talent in the design field, also has some experience when it comes to this business subject in particular. When making The Loop at Forest Dunes in Michigan, one of the world’s only full length reversible golf courses, Doak pleaded with the management to never tell the public which of the two was rated higher. For just a quick summary of this already confusing subject, there is one piece of property with 18 greens that holds two courses, the Black and the Red. On even days, the course play runs on the Black routing, which is clockwise. On odd days, the course play runs on the Red routing, which is the reverse, or counter clockwise. Even though ratings don’t really dictate a course’s worth as much as they did 20 or 30 years ago, curiosity sometimes seems to get the better of us. But knowing whether the Red or Black course is better would tarnish the experimental structure that is The Loop: making people stay a night and play the other one the day after in an attempt to bring finality to that curiosity. And at the end of the day, that’s where a resort starts to make leaps and bounds.

Even a place like Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia is going to have this problem. Resort guests know without a shadow of a doubt which course is rated better. Cabot Cliffs, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, overtook the original course, Cabot Links, like a fighter jet buzzing a Cessna. The land, the routing, the design, the strategy, and one of the greatest finishing stretches in the world of golf have people promptly leaving Cabot Links with open tee times. There is only one place in the world where favorites fluctuate without obvious answers: Bandon Dunes. One of the classic beauties of what is regularly considered the greatest golf resort in the world is the post-round debate. There has never been a question that identifies a golfer with such swiftness then, “What’s your favorite course at Bandon Dunes?” One’s answer gives quite the glimpse into the mind of that pilgrim. You may have found a new best friend or an hour long argument over whether Bandon Trails or Sheep Ranch has the better opening hole (the correct answer is Bandon Trails). With this new standard, comparison to other resorts might sound like a fool’s errand. There is no where else on the face of the planet that houses six of the top 100 courses in the world on a single piece of property. But that doesn’t mean that other resorts have to stay in the shadows of a by-gone era.

Punta Mita is a resort where this is painfully evident. The resort, which is located about an hour’s drive north of Puerto Vallarta, contains two, 18 hole courses. Its exclusive gates are high and intimidating in stature, commanding privacy for everyone who might enter and enjoy its amenities. The Pacifico and the Bahia, both designed by the Nicklaus Design Group, are routed through the resort’s property. Jim Like, a long time design associate for the Nicklaus Design Group, was tasked with renovating both courses over a four to five year period. The first step in this process was almost completely renovating the Bahia course. I can attest, from playing the Bahia before and after the renovation, it doesn’t seem like Nicklaus’ original design elements stood the test of time. It is 100 percent better in every area. The greens are bigger and wilder, the strategy off the tee dictates the approach into the green, the bunkers have a much better and natural looking shape, and best of all: there’s more short grass. When playing the Pacifico after the Bahia, it seemed like we accidentally took a time machine back to 1985, where rough was king and strategy wasn’t so much. Just imagine the 9th or 10th hole at Pebble Beach with palm trees planted on its beachside, blocking the view in which they routed those holes for. “The Jack Nicklaus Design Group, the design firm with the most real estate sold in the world”, makes its evidence clear in Punta Mita, and especially on the Pacifico course. The contrast between newly renovated and original was stark, and that is only natural. But even with outdated maintenance and stereotypically dull strategy, the Pacifico does have one thing that the Bahia can only dream of.

Whenever I thought of island greens, it always seemed gimmicky. There has been, in my opinion, two and only two island greens ever worth giving credit. The 17th at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, Florida, and the biarritz 11th at The Creek Club on Long Island. In order to test the very best players in the world, you have to build something that actually scares them. The 17th at TPC Sawgrass does that more than almost any other hole on the PGA Tour. It starts haunting the players before they have even eaten their Wheaties that morning. And for anyone that is a grade “A” golf course design nut, a biarritz green always seems to grab your attention, being one of the more wild of the classic templates. Even though on paper it might seem a bit silly to build an island green about 50 steps from the beach, this example checks out. The 11th at the Creek Club sits beautifully in the middle of a natural estuary that is constantly effected by the shifting tides of the Long Island Sound. It’s also surprisingly forgiving for an island green, being 87 yards long and about 40 yards wide. But both of these examples are man made, crafted by two of the greatest architects to ever play with dirt for a living, Pete Dye and Charles Blair Macdonald. But the God above opened an amazing door about 190 yards off the coast of Punta de Mita, Mexico, and Jack Nicklaus walked right through it. It’s hole 3b on the Pacifico Course, the only natural island green in the entire golfing world. There are technically two 3rd holes, both par threes. 3a is positioned directly adjacent to the par 5 2nd and is a sufficient enough hole by itself, but nothing in comparison to its big brother. “Why are there two 3rd holes?” Good question. When the tide is low, a rocky outcropping that somewhat resembles a bridge appears through the ocean spray. Actually, forget the term “bridge”, it’s practically flattened rocks that join the mainland with the island. But when the tide is up, the two options are either to forget finishing the hole out or to swim there with putter in hand.

When we rolled up in our carts with a margarita in one hand and a Cuban in the other, it might seem like our group could’ve been easily astonished by the site. But even without the intoxicants, it was truly beautiful. Looking at the craggy spit of land, I started to think about how hard it probably was to build, and how delicate they had to be while constructing it. Were they able to lug actual machinery onto the island or did they have to painstakingly craft it by hand? But I didn’t have time to sit there forever and theorize, there were yardages to calculate and shots to hit. If one was able to look down on the island green at a bird’s eye view, then the hole’s nickname would become automatically obvious: “The Tale of the Whale”. With the green positioned in the middle and two rocky outcroppings to its immediate northwest and southwest, I have to admit it’s given name is surprisingly apt, which isn’t always the case for geological formations with cutely coined names. With large catch bunkers to the green’s back and left side, as well as a rock wall in front that’s reminiscent of the par 3-17th at PGA West, it’s not an inviting visual. It looks more like somewhere Captain Jack Sparrow would be banished to or marooned on, not somewhere where a flushed 4 iron is needed more than a pistol with one shot and a bottle of rum. There’s a sign at the tee of 3a that tells players whether or not the Tale of the Whale is open for play. Again, it all depends on the tide. It’s a moment that lived in my memory for years afterward when I came across that sign for the first time back in 2019: CLOSED. “I get at least some money back, right?”, was my first thought. It didn’t seem real that I had come all this way to play this one hole and for it to be closed. So close yet so unforgivingly far away. If we had teed off just an hour or so earlier, the tide would’ve been in an acceptable spot to be able to cross the jagged, rocky bridge. We made sure to make note for our next trip.

My father, brother, and I got up at 6:00 in the morning, promptly 2 hours before our tee time at the Pacifico that morning. A laissez faire, half hearted range session was a great way to insure dashed hopes of a quick start off the first tee, but there was nothing that we were focused on more than taking full advantage of the famed Tale of the Whale. That painful moment had been stuck in our memories for three, agonizingly long years. So when my brother and I both got on the green in regulation, I could almost feel tears emerging. Everyone wants to make the most out of a course’s signature hole; hitting the green on the 12th at Augusta National, or the 7th at Pebble Beach. 3b just so happened to be one of the most stunning feats of architecture in all of Central America. A little too stunning for my father though, who unfortunately wasn’t able to carry the forced hazard of crashing waves and jagged rock, resulting in an impressively high bounce off the front retaining wall, and then plummeting directly backwards and into the Pacific. But for even an unsatisfactory shot, the Tale of the Whale seems to conjure up feelings of childlike giddiness, regardless of what it looks like on the scorecard.

The sign said that the green was open. I have eye witnesses to account for the validity of my testimony. Should it have been closed? Jack and I were about to find out. Our dad went first over the flattened boulder bridge, giving us an indication of where the bumps and humps were to make our voyage a little less sketchy. As we looked down the bridge, we could see a little water starting to flow over it. I yelled over the loud belching of the ocean to Jack, “You have to film this.” He promptly took out his phone to record such a once in a lifetime moment. There was about 40 yards separating us and dad, and even more water had started to cover the bridge. “No problem”, I started to say to myself, “If I have enough speed then we’ll just soar through this.” The Indiana Jones theme song was being hummed, thoughts of draining a 30 footer for birdie were in mind, laughter was in the air. But not for long.

“Go go go!”, Jack said with alertness. The accelerator had stopped working.

“I’m going!”, was my response. I looked down to see if the cart had been accidentally switched to the neutral position. It hadn’t. The cart was dead in the water. “Abandon ship!”, were my last words before jumping out of the cart and knee deep into the shockingly cool water. In the back of my head, before Jack and I had even started to try and push the cart the remainder of the way up to the green, I knew that we couldn’t possibly do it by ourselves, especially shin deep with incoming waves. So I started looking for my dad, our only immediate life line. And in a moment of panic and need, we found him dry on the island, taking video of us on his phone looking like a pair of clowns. “You guys look like you’re screwed!”, yelled my dad whilst laughing uncontrollably. We ended up channeling our inner strength that only comes out when one is fuming with anger and fear, and pushed the dead cart up to dry land. With sopping wet shoes, making the proverbial, wet quacking sound, Jack and I both made triumphant two putts for par. Funny how that works. Our dad thought he was the real conqueror of that hole.

In summary, Punta Mita is paradise. The beach, the privacy, the sun, and don’t forget the little swords in the Piña Coladas. But until its golf evolves with the rest of the world, and makes it a little more of a priority, then it will never set itself apart. It has the land, it has the money, it has the potential. It just requires vision.