Next comes Jack Nicklaus' Kiele at the Kauai Lagoons, which opened in 1988 and started the current boom that has added 20 new courses to the 50th State. And now we have the Links, which will be remembered as the first Hawaii course to be built through a nature preserve. Several new courses have been built with eco-touches, but few as thoroughly or dramatically as the Links. In addition to the usual signs with the hole's yardage, you'll see signs that show and describe several kinds of water birds that you're likely to see. They include the Hawaiian duck, stilt and gallinule, each of which is on the federal endangered species list.
Nobody ever does that.
Usually they encroach on nature. The golf course and its wetlands is certainly an improvement on what had been an overgrown swamp choked with mangroves and debris with a cracked and abandoned asphalt runway on the side. The front nine is wide-open with few trees and a definite links feel to it, especially when mist drifts inland from the nearby sea. You first encounter Punahoolapa Marsh on the the sixth hole and will play over, around and along its watery tentacles on every remaining hole. The par-5 18th is one of the great closing holes in Hawaii, with water lurking right, left and in front of the green.