Expanded options — but reduced access — reflect the changing nature of a Los Cabos golf vacation.

UNQUESTIONABLY, with 18 championship courses and more on the way, Los Cabos, Mexico, and its Scottsdale-with-an-ocean setting is a genuine golf mecca. However, as Nobel laureate Bob Dylan once opined, “the times they are a-changin’.”

Certainly, none of Cabo’s enticements have vanished. The southern tip of the Baja Peninsula still beckons anglers, golfers and partiers with sun, sea and nightlife. So what’s different from five years ago? To paraphrase those long-haired British philosophers, the Rolling Stones, “You can’t always play where you want.”

In a nutshell, many of Cabo’s top-tier public-access courses have gone resort-private. You can still tee it up on most of your old favorites, but you’ll have to stay at an affiliated property to do so. Gone are the days — with limited exceptions — where you could camp at one hotel for the week and play six different trophy courses.

Expanded options — but reduced access — reflect the changing nature of a Los Cabos golf vacation. Nonetheless, if the golf destination of Los Cabos were a traffic light, it would still flash bright green. After more than 35 trips to the region, starting in 1992, here are my picks for the best of Cabo golf.

GREATEST COURSE YOU CAN PLAY:

DIAMANTE DUNES

Mexico’s top-ranked course, Diamante Dunes, sits northwest of Cabo San Lucas, fronting the Pacific Ocean. Architect Davis Love III, his brother Mark and lead associate Paul Cowley jabbed Paspalum tees, fairways and greens into massive, pristine dunes and loaded the finish with oceanside drama. Now 15 years old, encroaching real estate has altered the original aesthetic, but the playability and views remain outstanding.

Don’t sleep on Diamante Dunes’ sibling, El Cardonal. The first completed design from Tiger Woods doesn’t abut the ocean like its older brother, but its hillside routing provides stellar long views, wide fairways framed by desert flora and risk/reward options tied to serpentine barrancas. In November, El Cardonal hosts the PGA Tour’s World Wide Technology Championship for the third consecutive year.

Diamante’s “public” status doesn’t exactly mean “wide open.” Formerly available to guests of the on-site Hard Rock and Nobu hotels, Diamante’s courses are now accessible only to those who rent privately-owned units, with a minimum three-night stay required.

New and notable: On tap for 2026 is perhaps the future home of the Tour event, the Legacy Club, a Shadow Creek-like design concept from Woods’ TGR Design that will be the centerpiece of a small, exclusive private community.

WARM, WELCOMING & SERIOSLY WOW:

SOLMAR

In late summer 2022, Greg Norman’s nearly three-year-old Rancho San Lucas Golf Club transitioned to Solmar Golf Links. No matter the name, the course is a delight, full of revetted bunkers, ground-game options, ocean vistas and Cabo’s only island green, at the 191-yard, par-3 17th.

New and notable: Both the excellent on-site hotel, Grand Solmar Pacific Dunes Resort & Spa in Rancho San Lucas, and its in-town sibling, Grand Solmar Land’s End Resort & Spa, offer superior accommodations and access to Solmar Golf Links, but the golf course welcomes anyone, wherever they’re staying — a rarity these days in Los Cabos.

SWEETEST EYE CANDY:

QUIVIRA

Cabo’s ultimate showstopping course is the edge-of-the-Pacific Quivira, a 2014 Jack Nicklaus design that’s open to property owners and Pueblo Bonito Resorts guests. Ranked by Golf Digest as one of the world’s top-100 courses, Quivira dishes out cliff-top holes, rock-encrusted dune ridges, hairpin turns, dizzying descents and heart-pounding shot demands that will linger long in memory, notably at the drivable par-4 sixth and two vertigo-inducing par 3s, the seventh and the 14th. There are several head-scratchingly quirky holes here as well, but from start to finish, Quivira makes the short list of golf’s ultimate thrill rides.

New and notable: A long-planned second championship course designed by Jack Nicklaus has broken ground, with dirt moved and shaped. It will stretch 7,000 yards and unfold over less chaotically hilly terrain than its predecessor. The additional golf will accommodate three new developments, phase two of the Alvar community, the Rosewood Residences Old Lighthouse Los Cabos and the St. Regis Los Cabos at Quivira, which will offer residences and a resort hotel, all slated to open late in 2025.

Particularly distinctive is the 550-acre Rosewood Old Lighthouse development, which revolves around El Faro Viejo, the oldest standing structure in Los Cabos (1905) and the landmark lighthouse that gives the property within Quivira its name.

BEST TRANFORMATION:

CABO DEL SOL

Ranked in the world’s top 100 practically since its 1994 debut, the Jack Nicklaus-designed Ocean Course at Cabo Del Sol underwent several renovations before being rebranded as the fully private Cove Club in 2019. The Desert Course, a 2002 Tom Weiskopf creation that was draped atop higher ground further off the ocean, remains fully accessible to the public — for now. However, that layout is being gradually reimagined by one of golf’s hottest design firms, Fry/Straka Global Golf Course Design.

Known now simply as Cabo Del Sol, the Weiskopf course saw six holes abandoned: the first hole and holes 14–18, which sat south of the Transpeninsular Highway on land repurposed for real estate development and new holes for the Cove Club. Fry/Straka completed five new holes on a high plateau early in 2023 (now holes 11 through 16) and finished the new 17th, a par 3 of 170 yards, in December of 2023.

Dana Fry’s 17th skirts the Tiburon Arroyo, which snakes its way from the nearby Sierra Laguna Mountains and joins the new 12th and upcoming 18th holes, which are built on the edge of the arroyo. Dramatic grass-fringed bunkers with high faces, enhanced desert landscaping and rock features, small, quick greens and handsome Sea of Cortez views characterize the Fry/Straka holes.

New and notable: According to Director of Golf Erik Evans, clearing for the new 18th hole, a medium-length par 4, began in summer 2025, with an anticipated opening in 2026. To keep the majority of the Cabo Del Sol golf course open, work on the remaining old Weiskopf holes will be completed over the next three summers. Fry/Straka’s redesign will occupy the old Weiskopf corridors and will blend the features to match the new set of holes they created.

If the revitalized Cabo Del Sol course is taking its time to finish, the rest of the development has boomed. A new Four Seasons resort enjoyed a soft opening in May 2024, and it’s now hitting its stride with a combination of hotel rooms and ownership residences. Also on tap within the Cabo Del Sol community is a luxury retail area called Anima, which will open in December 2025 with 95 stores and eight restaurants.

Also expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2025 is a Park Hyatt hotel, and in 2026, a SoHo Beach House. With the on-site Hacienda del Mar hotel now part of Marriott International’s upscale Autograph Collection, plus guests staying at the Grand Fiesta Americana and Live Aqua Private Residences, it’s possible that there will be enough in-house play at Cabo Del Sol to close it to outside play. For now, Cabo Del Sol is open to all comers.

BEST OFF-COURSE EXCURSION:

WHALE WATCHING

SENTIMENTAL FAVORITE

PALMILLA

Jack Nicklaus began the transformation of Los Cabos with his original Palmilla design in 1992, comprised of the Arroyo and Mountain target-style desert nines. Seven years later, he added the Ocean nine. Recently, the Arroyo/Mountain nines became the exclusive domain of One&Only Palmilla hotel guests.

New and notable: The Ocean nine continues to greet green-fee golfers, though local chatter says part of the course might eventually be sacrificed to accommodate a private beach club.