CLOSE YOUR EYES. Now imagine you’re playing golf on an idyllic island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Palm trees sway, the locals are welcoming and pleasure boats line a gently rippling bay fronting a sandy beach. Are you picturing Hanalei? Maui? Kona? Far from it. In fact, you can get there without ever leaving California. It’s Catalina, the only inhabited island of the eight-island Channel Island archipelago off the Southern California coast.
If you’ve never been, you’re in for a treat. For starters, the nine-hole Catalina Island GC legitimizes the term “best-kept secret,” but there’s also a chance to sharpen your putting competence at Golf Gardens Mini Golf or, for those in the know, flip frisbees at a secluded disc golf layout on the hillside overlooking Avalon, a tiny hamlet reminiscent of a European coastal village and the primary tourism hub for Catalina Island.
There are approximately 4,000 residents on 75-square-mile Catalina Island, 90 percent of whom live in Avalon. That number is dwarfed by the one million visitors arriving every year to embrace the island’s suspended-in-time charm.
Catalina Island GC was built in 1892 as a three-hole layout, and is now considered the oldest course west of the Mississippi. It was expanded to nine holes in the early 1900s.
With a boatload of bunkers and small, undulating greens, the course is no pushover, as the likes of Tour pros Phil Mickelson, Corey Pavin and Amy Alcott have discovered. Even a young prodigy, Tiger Woods, lost a couple of matches on this track.
The primary mode of transport to the island is a 70-minute ride on the Catalina Express (departure points from Long Beach, Dana Point and San Pedro) which often rewards passengers with up-close encounters with pods of dolphins or whales.
Fast food and stoplights are non-existent on Catalina, and a traffic jam consists of several golf carts converging at an intersection.
