A spirited long weekend of
golf and fishing in this booming resort destination at the tip of the
Baja
Peninsula It’s been 20
years since my first visit to Cabo San Lucas, then a laid-back fishing
destination at the end of a thousand miles of bad road. Grimy after five days of
fishing, camping and driving south from Los Angeles, I checked into the Palmilla Hotel,
which had what I considered the ultimate luxury: oceanfront rooms with no phones
or televisions. I was in heaven, and the world could not find me.
The only golf
at the time was a recently completed nine-hole track in San Jose del Cabo, an
historic, sleepy village just east of Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the
Baja
Peninsula. (Together, the
towns—and the region at large—are known as “Los Cabos,” or simply “Cabo.”) If
you’d tried to convince anyone then that Los Cabos would soon become one of the
hottest golf destinations in North America, they’d have suggested you get out of
the Baja sun and lay off the cactus juice for a few days.
Whether it was the
fishing (arguably the best in the world) or Palmilla’s frozen margaritas
(definitely the best in the world), I was clearly hooked on Cabo, as my nearly
two dozen subsequent trips to the area confirm.
Though fishing originally put
Cabo on the map, it is golf that has colored that map green—and I’m talking
about the color of money as much as the area’s lush fairways, which now number
144. That’s eight courses if you’re doing the math, including my three favorite
Jack Nicklaus tracks: Palmilla Golf Club, Cabo del Sol’s Ocean Course and
Eldorado Golf Course. Thanks to the constant procession of visitors—and to the
development of paspalum grasses that survive on salt water—southern Baja’s
course count may double in a few years.
How hot is Cabo golf? Despite green
fees of $295 at Cabo del Sol’s Ocean Course, you generally have to book in
advance to ensure a slot. That’s a far cry from the mid-’90s, when the course
was so empty that I often carried a two-piece casting rod in my golf bag and
stopped at the jaw-dropping par-3 sixth to fish from Shipwreck Beach.
Wondering
where it will all end, I made an investigative return visit. I was greeted at
the airport by my fishing buddy and fellow Texan Brad Wheatley. Having spent 15
years as the director of golf first at Palmilla then at Cabo del Sol, Brad is so
tightly bound with local goings-on that he is known as “Mr. Cabo.” Brad has a
habit of beating me by way too many strokes on the Ocean Course, despite a job
that often keeps him from teeing it up for months at a time. One of the reasons
I put up with this abuse is that he happens to be the best fisherman I know, and
is constantly teaching me something new when we’re on the water.
According to
our custom, Brad and I headed straight to Zipper’s on the Beach, a surfer
hangout run by a genial giant named Big Tony. Sipping our cold Micheladas—a
local concoction of Pacifico beer and lime juice served on ice—Brad and I laid
out an imprecise schedule of golf, fishing, cocktails, great restaurants and a
bit of nightlife. If that sounds like fun, then you know why yours truly and a
whole lot of people like me return to Cabo again and again. And again.
