Cape Kidnappers Golf Club

Cape Kidnappers Golf Club is an 18-hole golf course set on elevated coastal ridges, featuring cliffside fairways, deep ravines, and ocean views that shape a strategic seaside layout.

Set atop rolling hills and rugged cliffs that give way to vast sea views and an ever-present horizon, Cape Kidnappers is home to the 18-hole golf course crafted by Tom Doak, and luxury resort Rosewood Cape Kidnappers.

In the words of course designer Tom Doak: Cape Kidnappers is not true links terrain, with the wrinkles of sand dunes; instead the land tilts toward the sea as a series of ridges jutting out toward the edge of the cliffs. Yet, the play is seaside golf at its finest. The surface is firm and fast, the conditions can be windy, and the player who can control his trajectory will be master of the course. You'll hit shots over the tops of the tea trees, and play along the edges of deep ravines. If you stray on your approaches, you'll actually hope to get caught up in bunkers hanging off the green's edge, some of them deeper than you've ever seen before. Three times, you'll have to make the perilous leap from the end of one ridge to the end of the next. And at the sixth and fifteenth holes it's possible to pull your approach off the very end of the earth, though it will take nearly ten seconds of hang time for your ball to reach the ocean below.

For myself and my associates, it was a great adventure to track up the hill every day and build a golf course in such a remarkable setting. We hope you enjoy your time here as much as we have. New Zealand is a long way from home, but Cape Kidnappers is never far from our hearts.