By Mark Rolfing

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Mauna Kea Golf Course and the birth of golf being built on stark, rugged lava fields, it’s time to reflect on the magnitude of what was accomplished back then and what it has grown into today. It was in the early 1960’s when legendary visionary and developer Laurence S. Rockefeller, challenged the premier golf course architect of the era, Robert Trent Jones Sr. to accomplish something that had never been done: build a world class golf course, on a barren lava field, on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When Jones succeeded in spectacular fashion, the opening of Mauna Kea signaled the beginning of an amazing five decades of the transformation of the jagged lava into jaw-dropping golf.

Today, some 50 years later, Hawaii Island sports the most dramatic and majestic array of golf courses to be found anywhere on the planet. In the decade of the 70’s, just ten miles down the road from Mauna Kea, the spectacular Mauna Lani Resort was conceived and lava golf began to flourish. In the 1980’s Waikoloa Beach Resort, with its two phenomenal courses alone with fantasy land type mega hotels sprang up, and Hawaii Island’s Kona Kohala Coast had now become one of the most sought after golf destinations in the world.

The rest of the story is history, and it’s a very intriguing one….one you have to experience in order to truly appreciate…brilliant contrasts of black, barren lava…velvet green fairways….sparkling white sand… And the shimmering blue Pacific… and it all began 50 years ago at Mauna Kea.