HARDEST Golf Course EVER? | Adventures in Golf Season 8

Mother Nature is on the brink of reclaiming this notoriously difficult golf course in Hawaii. Erik Anders Lang returns to Oahu to play what remains of the hardest course on Earth on this Adventures in Golf, presented by United and @RandomGolfClubFilms.

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hi I’m Eric and this is adventures and golf it is said that the golfer’s main opponent is nature and in this episode she’s fighting back welcome [Music] aboard there’s a part of me that feels like this was meant to be a golf course I’ve always had that feeling here I will go play a few holes uh by myself and in the right lighting when the sun’s setting through these mountains you feel like you’re the luckiest person alive there is an element where you know nature wants to take it back and so there’s like a yin and a Yang um and there’s where my role is I’m like that Center trying to find that balance between nature and the golf course because if nature does take it back the golf course will be lost forever and so that’s my job to stop that in 1987 a Japanese Investment Company hired Architects dick newon in Jack Tut Hill to design coao Golf Club their mission to build a worldclass golf course inside of a 242 acre nature conservancy at the foot of the coala mountains in aahu after opening in 1992 it would go on to rank as a top 100 public golf course but it would also pick up a very different distinction as one of the most difficult courses in the world this is no longer that Golf Course so this is the 15th green right here how long did the back nine go without any care about 2 years yeah you can’t really put on that yeah I don’t think so this is Les Jeremiah the current Superintendent at coala and he’s giving us our first look around the course a course that has been closed to the public since 2020 why did the course close uh they had been through so many people uh trying to to operate this place and be profitable and uh no one was has been able to do that when the course was built Japanese investment in Hawaii was at an all-time high there was talk of million dooll memberships and lavish events to be held at the $20 million Clubhouse but in the early ’90s the Japanese economic Bubble Burst which forced Kau to be opened as a public course coupled with punishing rainfall and a 162 slope rating more on that later the course was sent into foreclosure just 2 years after it opened there’s a part of it that probably is not marketable to you know your average golfer if you’re just starting or you know you’re 20 handicapper 15 20 handicapper you got to bring at least 25 50 balls with you it’s one of those things they they need to get in as an experience but it’s not one of those courses where they go I want to play it again next to own the course was a Hong Kong Investment Group that was able to keep the course going by focusing on marketing local charity tournaments and a successful restaurant and catering business but the demands of course upkeep continued and in 2006 they jumped at the chance to sell to the current owner the First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu in what was one of the strangest sales of its kind first PR Ian became the first and only church in the world to own a golf course but unfortunately it wasn’t so that the congregation could quickly jump out for nine after Sunday service this sale gave them the 110,000 ft Clubhouse and 365 parking spaces needed for their growing congregation leaving the course as an afterthought so much so that the tea times were actually reduced on Sundays to create more parking for worshippers and if the third time was the arm for the owners it would be twice that for finding someone to run the golf course mostly due to the cost of Maintenance no one lasted very long the rain is is oh my God it’s we get like anywhere from 75 to over 125 Ines of rain here so this is a very high maintenance facility if you want to drive the quality to a different level so we’re doing things a bit differently here like we’ve grown out the bunkers so there’s no sand traps to maintain other than the turf on the faces we’ve Shrunk The Greens down a bit to reduce the square footage so on the front line on the front line to keep cost down only the front nine receives any detailed maintenance the back nine gets just enough mowing to keep the shape of a golf course it’s overgrown and wild with encroaching borders all part of a strategy the latest course operator hopes will keep Kau from disappearing altogether what is kmr what is this school of golf here this is uh Kevin’s initials Kevin is the owner operator of the kmr school of golf for an annual fee you be can become a member and you can you can have unlimited range balls and you can play on the front line anytime you want and then he he offers uh for an additional fee lessons on the driving range or as you play he used to be a golf professional years ago out of wildlife so he he is a pretty well-known golf professional in the islands and’s he’s taught a lot of great players seems kind of crazy to leave such a important position to come out here yeah I I think that one you need to ask Kevin about I think I’m I’m I’m a little bit of an outcast amongst teaching pros and golf Professionals in general why would you leave what’s what’s probably one of the best teaching gigs not only on the islands but I mean you’re teaching at a PGA Tour golf course I started to teach these really special talented Junior golfers and they started to win the big events local events here in Hawaii and I became the Golf Digest best teacher of the state and so all of a sudden now I have a tremendous amount of demand and I couldn’t control my lesson rate that was controlled by the club I mean I was giving I gave 2,000 lessons a year at Yi uh which is outrageous I might have been the most busy teacher in the world two fingers give it some Whip and at some point are you just like I’ve had enough or I have a new opportunity or what how does that I saw a documentary on uh PBS about the juliard school of music and um the teacher was being interviewed like we’re doing now and they talked about when she met um Isaac Pearlman fous violinist for the first time and she said that at that moment she knew you know she would just dedicate her life for that kind of talent right seeing something that special and I kind of felt that way with I without with what I had with my junior golfers and so 2003 I kind of put all my playing on the on the back burner and my goals and I and I really wanted to you know give these talented Juniors a chance to train you know properly which was basically every day so Kevin picked up his clubs and moved his school into the Kau Clubhouse and that was when 2003 of the two Bukowski which was your favorite you know that’s a good question because it changes for me I wanted to share that with the junior golfers so I put those in my office as a daily reminder there is a light somewhere it might not be much light but it beats Darkness beyond the watch I want those kids to know if you’re going to play this game of golf it’s not going to be an easy Road there’s a lot of fight a lot of perseverance you got to give up a lot and then in the end it’s going to be worth it this group has like six Pros you know so all of them had different Journeys in their lives some some of them have gone on to be doctors and lawyers and some of them were were um tour Pros so Lawrence Chan played the corn fairy tour and Tad fujikawa almost won the Sony Open at age 16 Marissa Chow is still playing she’s been on the Epson tour and then next to her Stephanie koono she played on the LPGA you know it seems like yesterday that they were right here right in this room so yep that’s a part of they’re a part of this place we started with just five kids in 2003 and then we ended up with about 30 kids in 2008 then 2016 I got my last four go off to college and then I wanted to get into teaching the adults again and that was fine until Co hit the economic downturn of 201 20 would prove to be too much for the hospitality group running the course and just 3 years into a 10-year lease they terminated their contract without an operator once more the church announced that on September 30th 2020 the course would be permanently closed so I have to now um work with the church and uh basically they said well we’re happy with you you can stay here and you know and do your thing until we decide what we’re going to do and uh so I said all right and now I’m going to be a golf course operator and make it an amenity to the golf school and here I am have you ever heard of anything like this no no I haven’t heard anything like this and you’ve been soaking in golf for decades yeah oh yeah yeah I mean it’s yeah my whole life really so how long when they when they proposed you you run the golf course how long did you think about it before saying yes so so that I had about a month to think about it right and so um yeah I didn’t realize what I was you know what I was getting [Music] into it’s a very small operation that we have here we got a couple of walk mowers a couple of zero turn rotary mowers that we use I had to buy a lot of equipment mowers and you know gosh pretty much everything flag sticks hole Cutters t- markers a full 18 course would have twice as much stuff or yeah three times I thought well we just mow it fertilize the greens everything will be fine right doesn’t it doesn’t have to be Wily right it just has to be you know decent how many hours of your week does uh coow take a right now I I’m in a uh in a part-time capacity here so uh I’m contracted to do around around 16 to 20 hours a week here so which is which is fine for this size of an operations just to make it decent it just it takes uh yeah it takes a lot of effort a lot of people a lot of equipment a lot of expertise I’ve come from some real top-notch operations and uh so this is a bit of a step back but that’s what makes this one fun we’ve had one challenge after another you know just with like getting the irrigation system working getting the water back on the greens right yeah simple things like this they they took weeks and weeks of problem solving it’s a very uh limited budget at the moment but we’re working to build it up as we can increase in in membership we do have plans to increase the the maintenance uh budget here hey I want to take a quick second and thank United Airlines for allowing us to travel the world these last eight years and make this show it’s truly been an adventure so for your next adventure consider booking your trip on the airline with more International destinations than any other on united.com Kevin is definitely not your average course operator but he’s not your average golfer either pretty much all my life golf has been sort of my spirituality I got into yoga because I wanted to prepare myself for the champions tour and get flexible and strong and balanced and then having this connection to the mind the body the breath this has all helped me a lot staying calm and control my emotions on the [Music] course and handan was just a challenging pose that just called to me just amazing sense of freedom and meditation you’re on this weird precipice of danger and Stillness and calmness and yet you have to focus and constantly be aware of your legs and your and your center of gravity and and your alignment so in some ways there are a lot of similarities between the golf swing and doing the handstand practice and so that’s probably why in yoga that probably most drew me to it 200 16 I decided to work back with adults again I had to get away from junior golf because at any given moment the parent can pull the plug and I never see that child again and I’ve spent six days a week with that child for six years and then all of a sudden they’re gone that’s tough it’s like that’s that’s real loss so I became a yoga teacher to learn more about the anatomy and how to make people more flexible so that they could learn the golf swing that I [Applause] teach you’re Barefoot out here on the Range yeah oh yeah the shoe in golf can sometimes be like a cheat and so to hit balls with your bare feet you’re going to get better balance but to feel the Earth in your toes and the grass there’s a great feeling tell me about your mentors Ma so Mac comes in around right after I start at w maybe 87 I meet Mac for those that don’t who ma o Grady is yeah Mel Grady is kind of this he’s an enigma he’s got a reputation that is uh quite different difficult at times um I think he thought he had the perfect swing um biomechanically and anatomically how can I not be contented with with that expose of art sassan from the heavens he was promoting his methodology to young young Pros like myself it was very very interesting and of course very charismatic very easy to be drawn into his narrative and so yeah I started to learn from him and I teach that method in a very general filtered down version uh that people can understand it’s not open it’s a golf school just a golf school just a driving range and that’s it no no we have front line open so you’re not familiar with kmr school of golf no I’m not I I live in Seattle but I played here oh I want to say 20 plus years ago okay and was dying to play the course again I heard someone told me the back Nine’s closed and I’m like oh what’s going on we took it over so now the front nine is an amenity to the golf school so you join the golf school it’s a membership one year and then you can play as much golf as you like the front nine only yes front nine only well thank you it’s good to know all right thanks all right you’re welcome I probably join you but I’m not I’m only here for three weeks all right so like are you surprised that the course isn’t operational anymore yeah yeah I kind of disappointed I wanted to get out here and maybe play it again I I grew up in the east coast my father is a member of Pine Valley okay has a slope rating of 150 and I said I got to play a course it’s 160 slope and so I had to play it then and uh that’s what brought me back here this one has a very interesting history because it was rated at a 162 this is Zeke Schmo the director of golf and slope ratings for the Hawaii State Golf Association in the beginning they had a lot of uh number crunching that they had to do so when they finished the rating they came up with a 162 rating let the golf course know that that was their rating when they started looking into the slope they couldn’t find 162 155 was the highest so they called back to the usgaa and spoke to the guy who developed the system a guy by the name of Dean K and he said well it’s mathematically impossible to get there so he came out here and rated the course and it dropped to 155 in its simplest form ratings agents test what a scratch and bogey golfer would score on the same course the slope rating is based on a comparison between both of them there’s some multiplying involved but the theoretical minimum slope rating would be a 55 for the easiest course and the hard AR would sit at 155 was it easy to believe that this is the hardest course in the world yes so where are we going uh we’re going to number six wow I can see why you like this screen that’s your Landing Zone from the T and you got to hit over now there a lot of guys won’t they just won’t be or women won’t be able to make that shot and that’s what at the minimum perfect drive it’s 1 180m that’s that’s Cola yeah so that’s what makes Cola special and branded the toughest course in the nation I mean do you think this course was just too hard and that’s why it closed there is no question to that anybody that wants to pick play this just wants to play it to say I played the toughest course in Hawaii that’s it all right well let’s uh let’s play a home see how it goes I think the hole turns a little left that should be oh yeah it does dog legs be on the left side the biggest reason I wanted to keep this course alive for nine holes is to give people playing lessons there are some people that they only practice all they do is hit balls on the Range and hit balls at on the course and they don’t play golf in a traditional manner what do you think of that I think that’s fine yeah so maybe that’s their meditation their stress relief they want to master maybe hitting the golf ball and getting the ball in the hole for 18 holes and posting a score maybe that doesn’t interest them that much yeah I can associate with that do you play golf these days oh yeah I play every day where do you play I play here of course no but do you play for yeah I play with them but you play for you no no when was the last time you played 18 for you yeah I don’t know if I’ve ever done that probably practice rounds at tournaments I might do [Music] that oh that’s not as good as I can hit [Music] it D if I make an eagle on a course that was like closed maybe it’s an albatross that was very nice that was a good shot right I was impressed by that what’s the future with this property yeah I mean I’m not um it’s a transition period right now uh with what the church is doing what is coala to you seeing what it was in the you know during its peak time and then seeing it now it’s kind of like uh in Hiatus but uh we’re hopeful one day that there’ll be someone with a vision to come in and uh rescue us but in the meantime uh we need to shoot for a profitable operation lessons free range balls and unlimited golf for $1,500 a year and something dollars a month yeah yeah why doesn’t everyone join yeah what yeah I mean that really is the question I mean what would you say the quality of the course is well again I try to I try to make sure people realize that you know it’s a practice course and it’s a little rough it’s a little rustic it has a naturalistic feel which I think I which a lot of people like we’re not like overly manicured and with Les’s help we’ve revived it quite a bit when was the last time you walked around over here it’s been a while it’s been a while my focus is more on the front so yeah the amount of moss yeah I said you you get anywhere from 75 to 125 in of rain plus so and it doesn’t dry out it stays shaded yeah so and and I mean I’m sure like operationally if it was functional you would people be clearing all the stuff yeah that’s what was you know mentioning earlier right the the normal operations you got a lot of hand detail they got to cut this stuff back and keep it you know semi manicured uh and that costs money yeah cost money and people say well you know who who pays for the mowers who does who does the mowing who does all the maintenance you know it all comes from me and my le you know it’s all it’s there’s no million dooll billionaire owner it’s just me and then I have a staff so now you have a responsibility also you know to provide them with some kind of stability and income and so that’s another responsibility I never had what’s going through your head uh just thinking of the past how it used to be I feel that we are hanging on to hope that we can take this in a Direction Where We can revive this property to the way it deserves to be we’ll do the best we can to to um you know keep the legend alive I guess fourth hardest hole in the world that this is number four all right I got to think about this but here all right little left to right seems like they’re grabbing more than I think it’s going to be slow oh he did nice birdie thank you sir man let’s go Zeke we used to think that golf was a game for stuffy old dudes with Argyle pants or that golf courses were just a great place to make out but over the years we found that golf is actually an adventure whether you play in your backyard or thousands of miles [Music] away so when we set out to make a club we didn’t look around at what everyone else was doing we made it for us for everyone join random golf club for events tournaments and Golf Course benefits in your area you said yesterday people didn’t think you could pull this off yeah they still think my peers you know do you think you can do it I think I’ve already done it I mean I’ve already been here three years and it’s only getting better so using the golf course as an amenity to the golf school and creating memberships I could have easily just taken another teaching pro job somewhere else so there’s no part of you that just wished it was different I mean I wouldn’t consider myself like you know the king of a kingdom but it’s just me yeah so my vision can really you know come through um I don’t have an excuse Royal Hawaiian next door that’s fine why why are they fine what’s the difference in the business model I think they’re struggling too curious we travel just 5 miles down the road to the Royal Hawaiian Golf Club to see it for our elv so when did this course open uh it opened up in 1993 redesigned by Greg Norman and Pete d uh originally designed the course so opened a year after col out correct yes mhm I mean so my big question is like uh what’s the difference why is one now uh you know like a a crazy Garden that you can’t do anything on and the other is a beautiful golf course that people pay a lot of money to play so where the courses are located uh between the two mountain ranges as you can see the clouds just hang and rain is a big issue out here okay um massive amounts of rainfall especially during the winter seasons and do you get less than col drastically less than Co out interesting mhm already I can tell this course is different I don’t know if it’s the proximity to the mountains or it could be the fact that there’s no mths all over uh there’s no branches in the cart path all in all uh you know it’s a it’s an experience you can take for granted which is that this golf course is open for business how long have you been the head pro here six years okay so you were here before Cola closed yes I was [Music] all right oh work are you at all like scratching your head as to why they closed I mean I’m not really quite sure what happened uh why they closed but I mean it’s hard to get golfers to go out there and play even in the summer months too with the amount of rain that they get over there the conditions are they can be pretty pretty nasty have you gotten better here because the course is harder short game yes yes absolutely I’ve I’ve learned to not just grip it and rip it actually play the shot and maneuver my golf ball around the course oh solid roll good speed nice how different is the maintenance over there as compared to the maintenance here I mean it’s difficult to maintain a property as vast as this is um you got to know what you’re doing out here and the super knows what he’s doing and he’s doing a good job so I give him a lot of credit for what he does can cam live how many hoing ones you got long uh three let’s go get left it’s all right be all right easy up and down you chip that in for birdie what do you think is going to happen over there I mean a lot of locals would like to see it reopen um only time will tell you know I’m going to try my best to keep things as is but yeah I mean the course is like my life I mean this this golf school um the golf course my the staff my students not that I I don’t mind it because I love what I do so it’s not like you know it doesn’t feel overbearing or overwhelming at all um and again I look at it always as this amazing opportunity yeah yeah so I always remind myself of that but I’m here s days a week often times 12 hours a day um and you know for a lot of people that would be way too much but for me it’s just normal [Music] now no matter what happens to COA I know one thing’s for sure this could be my last chance to ever play The Back Nine and I’m not missing [Music] second as I weighed through the uncm fairways of of this golf course and wonder if it’s perhaps more of a golf corpse I am reminded of a line from Charles Bukowski’s poem hanging on the wall of Kevin’s office The Laughing heart you can’t beat death but you can beat Death in life sometimes your life is your life know it while you have it you are marvelous the gods wait to Delight in you [Music] [Music] for