Credited with putting Los Cabos on the international golf map when it opened in 1994, the Ocean Course at Cabo del Sol, renamed the Cove Club, reopened in 2019 with several new holes, restyled bunkers, upgraded playing surfaces and new landscaping. Occupying what course designer Jack Nicklaus once described as “the best golf property I’ve ever seen,” the layout, centerpiece of a 1,800-acre master-planned community, stretches across a stunning desert landscape framed by tall rugged mountains and touched by the Sea of Cortes.

Among the new holes crafted by Nicklaus is the short par-3 seventh. Tucked into recreated dunes a stone’s throw from the beach and faced into the prevailing breeze, this oceanfront hole offers two different angles of attack from a wishbone-like set of tees. To make way for a new resort entryway, a new par-4 ninth hole was built in a corridor adjacent to the previous ninth hole.

The new creation, robust at 461 yards from the tips, mimics the original with its broad saddled fairway but has bigger, bolder fairway and greenside bunkers. With the seaside par-3 17th hole converted to a private beach club, Nicklaus designed a new ridge-to-ridge par-3 17th hole that drops from a set of elevated tees to a well-defended green backdropped by the sea. The previous 16th hole, a thrilling par 4 that plunges 100 feet down the side of a mountain, has been remodeled and now serves as the 18th hole. Its peninsula-style green, protected by a deep U-shaped bunker on the left, clings to a cliff and appears to float on the ocean.