10 Most Underrated OAHU Golf Courses Totally Worth Playing

10 Most Underrated OAHU Golf Courses Totally Worth Playing

so with Hawaii hosting the Sony Open this week I thought it would be relevant to talk about my favorite golf courses on aahu I really had the privilege of playing most of the golf courses on aahu and throughout the state especially when I was younger during junior golf time but since having kids I really haven’t played in years but I still love the game so I just wanted to talk story about the 10 best golf courses on aahu at least according to me they’re the ones that I love so I hope that you hear me out because they probably aren’t the courses that you’re thinking of or even that make most top recommendations and sorry I wish I could show footage of me golfing at these courses but like I said kind of busy with two kids so if you’re interested in these golf courses after hearing me talk about them you can check them out online and let me know what your favorite golf course on aahu is in the comments below hello from Hawai go golf course I know that Turtle Bay gets all the attention but what I love about kuku’s course is that it doesn’t look like any other course here on the island if you go there and you see how it’s designed you you know what I’m talking about it’s very rural I don’t know howse to describe it it’s only nine holes but that’s okay the views are amazing because the ocean is right there but what I love most about the golf course is that they support their local kids when I was in high school I think the golf golf coach for Kahuku High School also worked at the golf course so that they had some kind of special Arrangement where the kids could play for free but I think that that’s great I think that it’s always nice that the local courses support the junior golfers because of how expensive it can be and I know it can be expensive to play golf even at that young age but thinking back what I remember about the course most was that it’s very Sandy and windy but that there’s just no other course like it number nine is Hawaii country club now this is my dad’s home course when he was younger and he used to play there a lot it’s way out in Kunia in kind of the middle of nowhere when I think back about Hawaii Country Club I just remember it being really dry and the balls kept rolling like right off the tea because it’s just dirt and there’s kind of a lot of hills and I used to play there quite a bit when I was younger and thinking back I always found it to be a challenge because there was a lot of elevated greens and it was so C that the greens were often pretty hard not hard as in hard to put but hard as in just physically they’re hard so the ball will continue rolling if you play golf you know you know what I’m talking about number eight is alaw golf course I think it was it could still be the busiest municipal golf course in the country I’m not sure but back when we used to play it was definitely crowded I remember when they started rolling out the golf IDs the county ones I got my my ID there as a kid and I remember standing in line in the alaw golf course parking lot to get my picture taken and I haven’t lost that ID and I haven’t replaced it yet and so if you look at my golf ID that’s what I used to look like when I was like 10 years old it’s a horrible picture now but good memories I used to practice there a lot after school at the driving range and I think they’re redoing the driving range right now but it’s a great course just based on location it’s one of the few courses that are in town and I remember thinking that it was always an easy course but there were some challenging holes because it was so busy the wait times were pretty long especially on that second hole everyone seemed to be stuck on a second hole I think it was because it was a part three and they would wave you up to tea off and then you would go so that would hold up the line and you see like four or five groups just waiting on the second hole but of course it would eventually spread out once you got past that number seven is Olana Golf Links I took golf lessons there when I was younger and we used to play there maybe two or three times a week at least practice at the driver range every day I even remember playing with Michelle Wii several times there when she was younger we mostly play nine holes after school so I got to know the front nine really well I remember lots of water and streams and I remember the third hole where you could chance it and try to carry that little stream if you could hit the drive if not you’re G to have to like lay up with an iron and of course the eighth hole which is the signature hole was this short par three that reminded me of the island green at TPC Saw Grass even though it wasn’t quite an island but there was still plenty of water and if you hit it in the water splash number six is ply golf course now if you want to play a tough golf course in Hawaii to me ply golf course in the rain is got to be one of the hardest it’s on the windward side it’s fairly hilly and mud and it is just really nasty to play when it’s wet I used to play there a lot after school with my brother I used to pick him up and then we would go down and looking back it’s sad because during that time I didn’t really want to play golf most of the time we didn’t even finish the front nine in Twilight play you know so we’d go out and then we’d stop after six holes we’ just walk off and go home so I got to know the first six holes pretty well but what I remember most about poly Golf Course was when me and my dad would go there to practice in that open area it’s on the left side when you drive into the golf course there’s this whole left side where it’s just like open grass and it’s kind of scary because there’s no like rules or like boundaries or even directions you just hit the balls and you got to go shag them yourself and if you don’t know what shag means it means you got to go pick up the golf balls after yourself now we practice there a lot because the grass there was thick and it was the only place that you could practice hitting from that kind of thick grass for me to prepare for tournaments in Hilo number five is Ted makalena golf course this was the only course I shot under par and I happened to do it twice I consider makalena an easy course so it’s not that great of an accomplishment but I am proud that I broke par twice in my life a lot of times I came close but there I did it twice and I remember both times coming down the 18th hole I was nervous I thought I’d double bulgy and then screw it up but thankfully I didn’t now if you don’t know about macalena what makes the course easy is that it is dead flat and that there’s a lot of dirt in the fairways so that means that your drives are going to roll and it makes the golf course that much shorter I also remember that I tried putting left-handed for the first time at macalena I went through this phase where I thought I was like Phil Michelson or something so I just started to putt left-handed and my dad bought me this $100 left-handed putter I think I used it two times and then I went back to putting right-handed a lot of good memories at macalena especially because for a lot of the par FS You’ probably be able to reach it in too number four is bayew golf course now as a kany boy it’s my home course so I have a lot of memories there especially the Old Bay View before they redid everything my earliest memories of golf were at Bay View Golf Course the old first hole used to be this drop- down par three I think it was maybe about 120 yards or so and I still remember the night where the starter let us go out and play for free so we played the first hole two times and it was a first first time I’d ever been on a golf course no lessons just me and my dad and my brother and it was amazing I also remember the old practice putting green and the old driving range where it used to wrap around and then they were the covered stalls and then at the Far Far In by the trees there were uncovered stalls like just open and then of course when they upgraded everything I remember they used to have that launch system where the golf balls used to come out of the ground on the tea and that was real nice and we know that broke pretty fast I haven’t been back there in a while but I heard that they have a new driving range system that tracks your stats which I think is kind of cool but I always remember the summer that I worked at Bay View Golf course I picked up golf balls at the driving range every morning I remember that 5:00 in the morning tough job sweating no days off but I learned a lot I think I won a tournament there once but I mostly remember it being close to my grandma’s house so there were times where I used to walk walk from her house with my golf bag in the neighborhood just to go all the way around and go practice yeah those are good times number three is Milani golf club now I have a lot of fun memories at Milani golf course I didn’t play it a whole lot though maybe once or twice a year but every time I went there I always thought it was special because the course just looked nice I don’t know what it was like a lot of golf courses here in Hawaii they seem like the trees and the rough they just seem kind of like like eh you know but whenever I played at Milani I always felt like it was like almost like a country club kind of feel the fairways were lyed with these trees that I think I don’t know if they’re paper trees or what but the bark would come off and it seemed like it was paper and again this is coming from someone who would play at py and I don’t know what kind of trees they use over there but it was just very clean cut and nice I don’t remember winning at all or doing very well whenever I played there but I just felt like it was a nice golf course and I enjoyed it a lot and if I had to pick one normal Golf Course to play at here on aahu it would be Milani number two is well I’m G to call it hium Par 3 but kohi golf course this is a military golf course on the base but this was the first golf course that I officially played in as a kid for a tournament when I look back my first round was 45 so not so great but hey I was 8 years old I didn’t know what I was doing and double bogey golf when you’re that young and you don’t know what you’re doing I this is pretty good I ended up winning that first tournament I was pretty much hooked on golf after that and we used to play there every Saturday as kids thanks to a wonderful woman named Mrs Gard she would invite Junior golfers to come in to the base and play and I remember when we were young kids we would line up in the middle of the Fairway so we wouldn’t tea off at like normal tees we’d have to go up to like the Fairway at like I don’t 100 yards or something and we would all tea up at the same time and blast all our tea te- shots at the hole and sometimes she would tea off with us and join us and it was really good fun I didn’t appreciate her enough at the time but looking back she was very special to be able to do that for junior golfers she didn’t have to you know but she did it for so many of us and if you look back at the golfers who used to play on those Saturdays you’ll see it’s quite an accomplished list and just really thankful and grateful for people like that we used to also play night golf there once a year which was always kind of fun and so to me it’s not the most challenging or accessible course for most people but that hium par 3 course very special and number one Haw Kai golf course but it’s the executive golf course now this is my absolute favorite golf course on aahu if there was only one golf course that I had to play for the rest of Eternity it would be Hawai Kai Executive Golf Course again not because it’s the best golf course or even the best golfing experience but just because of all the memories that I have there and the amount of time that I spent there as a kid even all these years later I can still picture every hole on that golf course I can visualize it in my mind there are just so many memories there on that golf course and in the parking lot and the old Clubhouse and the new Clubhouse good and bad a lot of lessons learned there like there was a time where I was disqualified twice actually because I signed the wrong scorecard I had to learn at the hard way or when I went head-to-head with some of oahu’s best players at the time and for whatever reason I was able to beat them in match play not stroke play they definitely dominated me but when I was able to play them in match play somehow it just worked out and of course the restaurant you cannot forget the restaurant right oh the locom MoCA is so good and when I was a young kid I used to collect the ball markers and I collected a lot of ball markers and at ha Kai you could just go into the Pro Shop and grab as many as you like so every time I went into the pro shop I grabbed like a handful when the starter wasn’t looking and there is this one time when I was upstairs at the restaurant and I brought this huge bag of ball markers and I was showing them to my friend and the head pro walks by and he says Hey so that’s where all my ball markers went and I was just smiling and laughing and yeah but just so many memories there at Hawai Kai I wish I could go back and play and show you and talk you through a lot of the memories that I had there it’s my favorite golf course and I hope that they never close it down like I mentioned I haven’t played golf in years I used to be a four handicap but now I’m probably like 20 plus I mean it’s hard to keep up with work and kids you just don’t have the time anymore sometimes I still have dreams where I’m golfing in tournaments and having fun and I wish that I could golf like I used to but for now it’s just not the right season for me but maybe one day I’ll be able to pick it back up again it was something that I really love to do and I have so many great memories of golf with my dad I wrote a manuscript for a book about growing up in Hawaii and playing golf I tried to get it published but there wasn’t any interest from local Publishers it just contains a whole bunch of memories of growing up in Hawaii and playing golf and a lot of lessons that I learned a lot of the struggles that I went through as well as some of the successes that happened in my little golf career and hey at least my kids have it so they can read it one day so I hope you enjoyed this video thanks for watching and aloh hello hello hello hello hello hello from haai

I used to play a lot of golf in Hawaii, especially in my younger days. I wanted to share my ten favorite golf courses on Oahu, since Hawaii recently hosted the Sony Open at Waialae Country Club (sorry, but it didn’t make the list). Most of these golf courses are probably not going to be in your typical top ten lists, but they are courses that I love and would recommend. These Oahu golf courses have character and I have so many wonderful memories playing on them. Let me know what your favorite Hawaii golf courses are in the comments below.

Intro to Oahu Golf Courses – 0:00
Kahuku Golf Course – 1:00
Hawaii Country Club – 1:58
Ala Wai Golf Course – 2:42
Olomana Golf Links – 4:00
Pali Golf Course – 4:48
Ted Makalena Golf Course – 6:02
Bayview Golf Course – 7:01
Mililani Golf Course – 8:39
Kealohi Golf Course – 9:35
Hawaii Kai Executive Golf Course – 11:10
Closing – 13:02

Filmed using the Canon Vixia G60.

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