Pelican Hill: Two Courses Falling to the Sea

Newport Coast is fifty-five to seventy-five minutes from downtown Los Angeles, a run down the 405 that ends in canyons opening onto the Pacific. Pelican Hill sits on that hillside: thirty-six holes by Tom Fazio, Ocean North and Ocean South, dropping some three hundred and fifty feet from the clubhouse toward the water. Donald Bren’s long vision for this coast produced the resort around the golf—Palladian lines, olive trees, a Tuscan idea of a village on a California bluff. Fazio first drew the courses in the early 1990s, then closed them for a two-year “re-perfection” while the resort rose, and returned them in 2007 with wider landing areas off elevated tees and greens that still ask for nerve. The land itself is the architecture: ravines cutting the slopes, native scrub, ocean holes where a whale can show if the season is right.

The golf is beautiful and it is not easy. Canyons collect the ball that is only slightly wrong. Club selection changes with the drop. The South and North both play near seven thousand yards from the tips, with slopes that punish the player who aims at the postcard instead of the number. Fast greens and ocean wind finish the argument. Late spring and October are the seasons that show the courses as Fazio intended—clear light, firm ground, less heat. Summer is playable if you start early. Winter rain can close a window. A major bunker-and-tee refresh under architect Brian Curley has been underway to keep Fazio’s lines honest; ask the shop which eighteen is in its best clothes the week you come.

The interior of the club is a full resort day: range, short-game lawns, a shop, dining with the same view as the eighteenth, lockers, the option to stay in a bungalow or villa if the round should become a night. Lessons exist for the guest who wants the day to include instruction. Nearby, Crystal Cove’s preserved coast, Fashion Island’s shops, and Newport Harbor give the afternoon a second act. Comfort is the old resort kind—time, a cart, a table that does not rush the nineteenth hole.

The graceful cons are distance, price, and the fact that a resort calendar can fill. Guests who wanted a raw public canyon without a valet will prefer Rustic Canyon. Guests who wanted two championship oceanside eightsens with service to match will be glad they left the basin.

Pelican Hill is a Citywide Spotlight Diamond Destination because it is the other great coastal golf day inside the radius: not a cliff stacked over a landslide, a pair of Fazio courses falling through protected canyons to the sea, hosted as a complete outing. Choosing it is choosing terrain, finish, and a hillside that still looks like a painting when the marine layer lifts.