Lanai is the smallest of Hawaii's inhabited islands — a former pineapple plantation, still mostly wild, reachable only by small plane or ferry across the channel from Maui. On its dry southern shore, above the turquoise curve of Hulopoe Bay, the Four Seasons Resort Lanai rises over a protected marine reserve where spinner dolphins run the mornings. It is an improbable setting for a golf course, and an unforgettable one.

Jack Nicklaus took the site's brutal terrain — a shelf of volcanic rock dropping straight into the ocean — and built the course into it rather than around it. Opened in 1993 and christened The Challenge at Manele, the routing climbs and drops across the lava headland in a sequence of blind crests and sudden reveals, each turn framing another slice of open Pacific. It plays as much like a walk along a coastline as a round of golf.

The course's signature is the par-3 12th, which asks players to carry a jagged ocean chasm — waves breaking on lava rock far below the tee — to a green perched on the far cliff, with nothing but sea as a bailout short. It has been called the most dramatic par 3 in golf. In January 1994, Bill Gates was married on that same 12th tee, the ceremony timed to the sunset over the very carry the hole demands.

Since 2012, most of Lanai — the resort included — has belonged to Larry Ellison, who has kept the island quiet and largely undeveloped by design. Manele remains what it was built to be: a course for guests of one hotel on one small island, remote enough that reaching the first tee already feels like an accomplishment, and dramatic enough that the round stays with you long after the flight home.

Museum-quality Manele Golf Course map art, traced from real course data — every bunker, green, and fairway. Jack Nicklaus's clifftop par-3 12th carries across a wild Pacific chasm above Hulopoe Bay. Four designs, six sizes, or personalized with your own round photo.

Course data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)