Crafting the Greens in Fiji

From Scottish Green-Keeping to South Pacific Championship Golf Course-Building: David McLay-Kidd on why a course must have a sense of place.

Golf is a simple game that celebrates the landscape it finds itself in, and the people you encounter along the way. I’ve known that ever since I was a child. I grew up a world away from Fiji, in Scotland. I’m the son of a green-keeper, raised on a golf course. The sport was burnt into my DNA, from my family home, which was filled with golf books, clubs, balls and paraphernalia, to the early mornings I spent mowing grass and raking bunkers alongside my father. But I loved winter best, when the course was quieter. During those months, construction work began. Bunkers would be rebuilt, greens would be moved to different locations, trees would be chopped down. Essentially, the focus would be on how to make the golf course better. Over time I realised these adjustments had a label – golf course architecture – and that it could be a whole career.

I studied landscape architecture, then pursued a career in construction and design. It’s been 35 years or so now, and I’ve tried to keep my portfolio diverse, from the Scottish oceanfront, to the tops of mountains in the United States, and volcanoes in Hawaii. Along the way, I’ve experienced different genres, climates and landscapes, and had to work out how golf can be threaded through each.

I first came to scout out a golf course on COMO Laucala Island in 2005. It was my first visit to Fiji and I was in awe of the landscape, weather, ocean, birdlife – everything really. Back then, getting to the island was a challenge. I remember flying into the neighbouring island Taveuni, then taking a 45-minute bus drive down a bumpy road to the water’s edge. There was no jetty on the beach on Taveuni, so I had to wade out chest-deep to the boat, with my luggage essentially in a garbage sack. I had said no over and over again to designing the course – I was busy working in Scotland at the St Andrews Links at the time – but I’d found it impossible to resist the challenge. My first impression worried me a little, but then I arrived on the island and began to see its potential. The journey was worth it.

There was nothing on the east side of the island where the golf course is now. Just jungle. I hiked backwards and forwards, over and over again, trying to learn the different pieces of land, and parcel them together in my mind. There was one area with the mountains to one side, a mangrove swamp to another, a ridge to the back, and that glorious ocean stretching out in front of me – room for perhaps six holes, I thought. Then onto the next square of land – this one with gentle creeks running through giant hardwood trees that we needed to protect in whatever design I came up with. How was I going to figure out the holes here? And then onto the next. I knew there was something special here. With a landscape like this, how could there not be?

Of course the island’s greatest strengths also presented its greatest challenges: untouched, remote, private – all reasons to want to be here, but equally, very difficult to work with. A golf course requires thousands upon thousands of tons of sand. We didn’t want to strip the beaches, so we needed to source sand elsewhere. But the island is ringed by a precious coral reef which made it impossible for a deep-draft ship to dock. Instead, we had to source barges, sail them in during high tide, and beach them for unloading. It was quite an adventure. It took several years to pare the golf course out of the jungle – while retaining the island’s ecological integrity, which was very important to the ownership – to create what you see on COMO Laucala Island today. It’s one of the longest projects I’ve worked on.

The course we created begins in the saddle of the island between and works its way over the north side. When you finish the sixth hole, you drive through the beautiful mangroves, then along the water’s edge. You’re also by the water on the seventh tee, then again on the eighth green, the ninth hole and the tenth as well. The latter is a driveable par four, which plays parallel to the water. I think it’s probably the most fun golf hole on the entire course. It’s very visual, with lots going on. I think I’d happily go to that hole and just hit a bucket of balls all day. There’s no weakness to the course as a whole. The landscape is extremely dynamic and the course is the beneficiary. It’s really a vehicle for guests to explore half the island.

Ultimately, I want my golf courses to be memorable. I met someone once who told me he’d played the course every single day of his vacation at COMO Laucala Island. Of all the many activities he could have been enjoying, from snorkelling to massages, he picked golf. That felt like a huge win to me. As a seasoned golfer, he didn’t need my advice, but if I do run into a first-timer on COMO Laucala Island, I’ll always suggest that they play in the mornings, which tend to be cooler with a little less wind. And then there’s my positioning advice: for players who don’t hit the ball super hard, they should look for the slopes around the greens and hit the ball low. From there, instead of having to land the ball on the green and stop it, you could land it on the slopes, and it'll just roll down.

A course must have a sense of place. It needs to feel comfortable in the landscape it’s in. The only way to achieve that is to approach each project as unique. Because of that, it’s hard to pin down a favourite course I’ve worked on – hopefully there are no duds in the pile!  I love hearing from golfers who say they’re beating a path to try to play all the courses I’ve designed. I’m always amazed – there’s such a geographical spread it must take years to tick them all off.

Naturally, I have my own bucket list of courses I’d like to play on too. But there are 16,000 golf courses in the United States alone, and more than 30,000 on the entire planet. Even if only 10 percent of those were the best of the best, that’s still over 3,000 courses to play on. It would take me a lifetime. I’m not driven by the sporting challenge of a scorecard – you have to remember, it’s a game. It's not life and death, and there's always tomorrow. You just need one good shot to keep coming back.

In February, I came back to COMO Laucala Island for the first time in 20 years. This time, I left the golf to my young son. For my part, I brought my flip-flops, made an inspection of the course – still in phenomenal condition I was pleased to note – then settled in for a week of barefoot luxury.

It is complimentary to play any number of games on COMO Laucala Island’s David McLay-Kidd-designed Championship Course. Games include access to the driving range and putting green, as well as the use of golf clubs and buggies. For lessons with a golf professional, please book in advance of your stay by contacting your personal Tau service.