Ask a longtime Cabo Del Sol resident which hole they play first and you will often get a pause before the answer. The person who bought here in 2015 remembers a first hole that no longer exists. The person who calls the pro shop today for a tee time gets a completely different sequence than the one printed on a scorecard from five years ago. Neither is wrong. The course itself has been the one changing.
That is the part of daily life here that rarely makes it into the glossy retellings of Cabo Del Sol's transformation. Everyone has heard about Ánima Village and the new hotel rooms stacking up along the corridor. Fewer people who actually live here have stopped to notice that the golf course at the center of the community, the one many residents treat as an extension of their own backyard, has spent the better part of five years being dismantled and rebuilt in pieces, and it still is not finished.
A course that keeps giving up its own holes
The layout most people know as the Cabo Del Sol Course started life in 2001 as Tom Weiskopf's Desert Course, a routing that wound through canyon-like arroyos with ocean views from all eighteen holes. For nearly two decades it played more or less as designed.
That changed on the other side of the property first. The neighboring Ocean Course, a Jack Nicklaus design from 1994 that had spent years ranked among the world's top 100 layouts, was rebranded the Cove Club in 2019 and closed to outside play entirely. It became members-only, tied to the residential community forming around it.
The Weiskopf course did not stay untouched for long. Six of its original holes, the first and holes 14 through 18, were closed and handed over so the land could be repurposed for real estate development and for new holes at the Cove Club. For a stretch, golfers here played a provisional 12-hole configuration out of a temporary clubhouse and a food-and-beverage truck while Fry/Straka Global Golf Course Design, the Ohio-based firm led by Dana Fry and Jason Straka, moved dirt on the mountainside above.
What actually got built, and when
By early 2023, five new holes had opened on a high plateau north of the original routing, now numbered 11 through 16. The new 17th, a 170-yard par 3, followed in December of that year. Erik Evans, Cabo Del Sol's director of golf, described the ambition behind the project plainly:
"We want the course to be one of the very best in Cabo."
Here is how the rebuild has actually unfolded, year by year:
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2001 | Tom Weiskopf's Desert Course opens |
| 1994 | Jack Nicklaus's Ocean Course debuts, later ranked among the world's top 100 |
| 2019 | Ocean Course rebranded the Cove Club, closes to outside play |
| 2022 | Six original Weiskopf holes (1, 14 to 18) close for real estate and Cove Club expansion |
| Early 2023 | Five new Fry/Straka holes open on the plateau (now 11 to 16) |
| December 2023 | New 17th hole, a 170-yard par 3, completed |
| Summer 2025 | Clearing begins for the new 18th hole |
| 2026 | 18th hole anticipated to open; remodeling of the remaining original Weiskopf corridors begins |
That is not a course that finished changing. It is a course in the middle of a plan that started before some current owners closed on their houses and will not wrap for a while yet.
The eighteenth hole nobody has played yet
As of this writing, that last hole is still not in play. Clearing for the new 18th, a medium-length par 4, began in the summer of 2025 with an opening anticipated sometime in 2026. Once it does open, the work does not stop there. The remaining original Weiskopf holes are slated for remodeling over the next three summers, reshaped to match the bunkering, elevation changes, and desert landscaping style of the newer Fry/Straka holes so the whole course eventually reads as one design rather than two eras stitched together.
For anyone who plays here regularly, that means the course you golfed last winter will not be the exact course you golf next winter, and the one after that will likely be different again. It is a rolling renovation, not a single event with a ribbon-cutting.
If you were planning to play this week
The practical piece of this for residents is simpler and more immediate than the design history: the course closes for maintenance on a schedule, and this year already had two such windows. The first ran June 11 through June 18 for greens and tees aeration, an eight-day closure. The second, longer window is the one worth knowing about right now: the course has been closed since August 10 for greens and fairway aeration and stays shut through August 31, a twenty-two day stretch, before reopening on September 1.
If you have been wondering why the pro shop keeps pointing you elsewhere this month, that is why. Anyone hosting guests who want to golf here should plan around the September reopening rather than last year's calendar.
A public course inside an increasingly private neighborhood
There is a quieter thread running underneath all of this construction. The Cove Club went from public Ocean Course to private amenity in 2019. Elsewhere on the peninsula, a similar pattern has already played out at Diamante, where courses once open to hotel guests are now accessible only to those renting privately owned units for a minimum stay.
Cabo Del Sol has not gone that route, at least not yet. The Cabo Del Sol Course remains open to outside play even as the resort roster around it keeps growing. Park Hyatt Los Cabos opened its doors here in December 2025. Soho House Cabo Del Sol is expected sometime in 2026. Add those to the Four Seasons, which arrived in 2024, and the Grand Fiesta Americana and Hacienda del Mar, which have anchored the property for years, and Cabo Del Sol now has enough in-house hotel play that closing the course to outside golfers becomes a real possibility rather than a hypothetical.
For now, tee times remain bookable by anyone willing to call the pro shop. Whether that stays true once the 18th hole opens and the last of the old Weiskopf corridors gets its facelift is an open question, and it is worth watching if golf is part of why you live here in the first place.
A course worth understanding, not just playing
What makes this story worth telling is not that a golf course is under construction. Golf courses get remodeled constantly. What is unusual is how long this one has taken and how directly its evolution has been tied to the real estate growing up around it: holes razed to make room for new Cove Club fairways and home sites, a members-only conversion next door, and a public layout whose future access depends on how many hotel guests eventually fill the rooms nearby. The course and the community were never separate stories. They have been the same project the whole time, just told in different currencies.
If watching Cabo Del Sol reshape itself, hole by hole and hotel by hotel, has you thinking about where your own place fits into what comes next here, Barrie Livingstone offers a private design-forward consultation for owners and buyers who want a clearer read on this corridor before the next phase of construction closes another door.
