By Hal Phillips
Rosewood Cape Kidnappers, home to one celebrated Tom Doak creation and another that might have been, will host a special weekend event in 2025, where Doak will lead interactive course tours, play, dine and generally hobnob alongside fellow design aficionados high above sub-tropical waters of New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay.
Packages for this one-of-a-kind “Weekend with Tom” are now available. However, access to this “limited field event” will be granted on a first come/first served basis, according to Ray Geffre, director of golf at Cape Kidnappers GC.
Cape Kidnappers GC is located on the southeast coast of New Zealand’s North Island, a region best known for its wineries, food scene and Art Deco architecture, especially in the nearby city of Napier. Flight time from Auckland: 45 minutes.
Set high atop the dramatic landforms and rugged cliffs of its eponymous peninsula, Doak’s 2004 design here — his first in New Zealand — was just ranked #15 among all courses located outside the U.S. In a country that invented the luxury lodge experience, Rosewood Cape Kidnappers created and continues to maintain this rarefied domestic standard, along with sister properties also managed by Rosewood at Kauri Cliffs in Northland, and The Matakauri near Queenstown.
“It’s the nicest lodge in the country,” Doak has said of Rosewood Cape Kidnappers. “Maybe on Earth.”
Developed by American financier Julian Robertson and still owned by the Robertson Family, this extraordinary property remains a massive, working cattle and sheep farm. It’s also home to Cape Sanctuary, the largest privately funded wildlife restoration project in New Zealand. Yet, according to Doak, this peninsula is also home to “the project I most regret not having gotten the chance to design.”
Opening tee shot on The Farm course (Cape Kidnappers)
“The very first time I went to Cape Kidnappers was the end of 2001, and I was late,” the architect recalls. “They picked me up in a helicopter and landed me on the point down below. At that time, Julian wanted to build his lodge down there and, in my opinion — then and now — that would have been a superb place to build a golf course. It was flat enough, to go with plenty of acreage. From the moment the helicopter touched down, I was like, ‘Why wouldn’t we build it down here in this valley?’
“It didn’t take long for Julian to make himself clear: The clifftops were his first choice and it’s hard to argue. His vision for golf on those cliffs was inspired. It’s a setting like no other. But I thought then — and I still think — a very good golf course could have gone down there in the valley.”
Across this special weekend, Doak will lead course tours and discussion of the perennial world top 100 course he designed up above, at cliffside. “There is nothing quite like it in golf; it just sits so high above the water,” Doak explains. “This is a course fairly ranked among the top 50 in the world, but I’ve found people have difficulty classifying Cape Kidnappers in their own minds — because it’s so different and distinct from anything else.”
Guests in 2025 will also be treated to at least one intimate tour of The Farm, the 18 holes Doak routed next door, didn’t build, but has never forgotten.
“We would take picnic lunches down there when Cape Kidnappers GC was being built,” he recalls. “I think it was our second trip when we gave Julian and his wife Josie a tour of the place. We had spent a few days on site just sticking flags in the ground — to show what the golf course could be. I think I undersold it back then. Julian’s focus was always on building a top 100 golf course, whereas, at The Farm, Bruce [Hepner] and I were thinking more about a course with sheep and cows all over it. Which is what they use the land for now, of course. That’s what so many ‘country courses’ do, all over New Zealand.
“I don’t honestly remember when Bruce and I went back and tried to actually route something down there,” Doak continues, referring to his former associate. “It may have been 2008. We had played around with maps from the start, but that was definitely our impetus — to get Julian more interested in a second course down below.”
The architect returned to New Zealand in 2013, to design and build Tara Iti Golf Club. This private, seaside club debuted in 2015, but its principals had also acquired an adjacent parcel that stretched some 10 kilometers down the beach, north of Auckland. The South Course at Te Arai Links opened for play there in late 2022. The Doak-designed North Course debuted a year later.
Early in the 21st century, Doak’s idea of building a second course at Cape Kidnappers proved a bit fanciful. Today, however, New Zealand is arguably the most desirable luxury golf destination on earth — a reality he helped create. What’s more, pushing the limits of middle age, he is more focused on the dream projects that truly matter. To him.
“I’ve not discussed it with anyone there at Cape, not formally. But maybe the Robertsons would think differently about The Farm course today — because of what’s been happening up at Te Arai. I don’t lie awake at night thinking about it, but I can tell you we’d jump at the chance to design and build a course down there. I don’t know that there is the will to do it, today, but maybe what’s happening at Te Arai has upped the ante some.
“I’ve been spending so much time in New Zealand of late. It’s hard not to think about The Farm. One thing I want to do some day is go back and build it.”
Photo: The Farm course at Cape Kidnappers (Ricky Robinson)