Travel Guide: New Zealand Golf

Golf is a game that bedevils those seeking perfection. A beautiful drive, followed with a middling chip and a just-missed four-foot putt. A lovely summer afternoon, tarred by the slow-moving foursome out front who linger over every shot as if a green jacket is on the line. Even our generation’s greatest (and near perfect) golfer was undone by a series of unfortunate events. It’s a game of compromises.

Which is why the second hole of New Zealand’s Kauri Cliffs is so disconcerting. The ocean vistas from the 6,500-acre property stretch to infinity, and I have the course to myself. The ball is coming cleanly off my clubs. The sun is warm on my arms and a light breeze keeps me cool. After 25 years of fighting the battle known as golf, it feels a whole lot like perfect.

Golfing in Auckland

The road to perfection starts about 300 kilometres south of Kauri Cliffs, in the capital city of Auckland. It’s here that I get the keys to a shiny new SUV, stern instructions to stay on the proper side of the road and directions to get to State Highway 1, the Kiwi equivalent of the TransCanada. Our destination is the Bay of Islands, a popular North Island getaway favoured by yachters (a surprisingly large subset in NZ), but something is amiss. The road is modern enough in Auckland but, after ponying up for the tollbooth, it turns suddenly modest-an imperfectly paved and seriously windy version of modest. My wife, uncomfortably situated on the vehicle’s left side, repeats the refrain "you’re driving on the grass" so frequently that it becomes the trip’s mantra.

We plough on, the North Island’s lush scenery our warm comfort. I’d been told that NZ was just like British Columbia, our home, but it’s more like the love child of B.C. and Bora Bora, as if the road to Whistler was on the Tropic of Capricorn. By the time we arrive at Kauri, we’re late but nonplussed as we buzz the gate to be let in. I apologize to the attendant and explain how we couldn’t find the main highway, tackling instead some Mad Max-inspired road. "Oh, no, that was State Highway 1," he replies.

"We drove on the grass most of the way," my wife adds helpfully.

Some of the world's greatest golf courses

To be honest, I had high expectations. I’m not one to hop on a plane for nearly 14 hours just to swing a golf club, but the stories coming out of the North Island in the past few years have the hushed, reverential tones of those who discover a lost civilization. In the eight years since they’ve opened, Kauri Cliffs and its more famous sister course, Cape Kidnappers (located 10 hours south in Hawke’s Bay), have clawed their way to the top of every golfer’s dream rounds list. One of the few friends I know who’s made the journey put it like this: "You know Bandon Dunes," he said, name-checking the conventionally accepted greatest golf development of the past 50 years. "Well it’s like that-but warm, more beautiful and sees about a twentieth of the golfers."

But funny how 11 cottages set on 6,500 acres can shatter best-laid plans. I tee up a ball in complete stillness the following morning. No starter, no gallery hanging around watching your drives. Here everything-a walk to the main lodge, a solitary trip to a pink-shell beach-all are done in the absence not just of anyone, but anything. But it’s the course on which this solace meets the minimalist, ground-hugging design of David Harman that conjures the perfect. My wife and I see two other golfers in the three hours it takes us to play a full round. Not even our flailing can prevent it from entering the echelons of truly memorable rounds. We leave the course shamed by any sporting standards, but happy, serene, goofy…perfect.

Which makes our visit to Cape Kidnappers, two days later, all the more loaded. Both courses are owned by American Julian Robertson, whose early hedge fund, Tiger Management, was a major star of the 1980s and ’90s. Like Kauri, Cape Kidnappers occupies a promontory spanning 6,000 acres, has a minimal amount of accommodation (24 rooms) and a jaw-dropper of a golf course (this one designed by critical darling Tom Doak). It’s a mind-bending trinity of influences that makes it evident that whoever is behind these courses made a lot of money doing something else. Our round at Kidnappers starts in the same solo reverie with no one else around, and while we see about four times the number of golfers here than at Kauri, that’s still a mere eight souls with which to share the greatest golf course in the world. Cape K is a symphony: the front nine are a melodic, enchanting base that sets up the unrestrained drama and excitement of the back nine, which hangs perilously on the white cliffs, the ocean crashing below.

Golfing the perfect game

Unlike rounds at most courses, where a certain hole captures your eye or a particularly dramatic vista your fancy, rounds at Kauri and Cape K are so uniformly good that it’s all peaks and no valleys. Here it’s easier to remember the rare parts that weren’t as great-hole 17 at Cape K is a bit of a throwaway; at Kauri I honestly can’t choose one-than to remember the highlights you would on a normal course. The two rounds seemed the most natural I’ve ever played. No whirring golf carts, no jugheads yelling "You da’ Man." It’s more akin a nature walk than it is to playing most modern golf courses.

On the flight home I do some quick math and realize I spent 27 hours in the air just to spend a few hours on each of the courses-a crazy ratio for most people. But, for me, it’s a small price to pay for perfection.