For most of the twentieth century, Mexico meant beach resorts. The shift toward serious golf infrastructure began in Los Cabos in the early 1990s, when Jack Nicklaus opened the first Signature course in Latin America at Palmilla. What followed over the next three decades rewrote the map for golf travel in the Western Hemisphere: Tom Fazio brought Querencia online in 2001, Quivira went in on the Pacific cliffs above Cabo San Lucas in 2014, and Diamante became home to both Davis Love III’s Dunes Course and the first course Tiger Woods’ TGR Design ever built. El Dorado, Nicklaus’s private Sea of Cortez layout with six oceanfront holes, remains available only by member invitation — which is its own measure of the corridor’s depth.

Today the market for luxury golf travel in Mexico extends well beyond the Cabo corridor. The Riviera Nayarit, anchored by the private peninsula at Punta Mita, offers 36 Nicklaus holes that rank among the most technically interesting on any coastline. Puerto Vallarta’s Marina district has a walkable club integrated into resort infrastructure. And on the Yucatán peninsula, a Greg Norman layout outside Cancún completes a coastal arc that runs the full width of the country.

What follows is a property-by-property breakdown of where verified golf access, room quality, and on-site experience combine to make a trip worthwhile. Course access arrangements in this market are often more complex than resort marketing suggests — particularly around private clubs — so specifics are noted where they matter.

Montage Los Cabos

Montage opened on Santa Maria Bay in 2018 within the 1,400-acre Twin Dolphin master-planned community. The property covers 39 beachfront acres with 122 guestrooms, suites, and casas, plus 52 Montage Residences — a scale that keeps it deliberately compact relative to the corridor’s larger all-inclusives.

Golf access runs through the Twin Dolphin Club, where Fred Couples designed the Signature course with Todd Eckenrode of Origins Golf Design. The layout plays par 72 at 7,156 yards from elevation — routing takes the course roughly 180 meters above sea level, with ocean sightlines from every hole. Access is exclusive to Montage guests and Twin Dolphin community owners; this is not a course shared with neighboring resorts. A mandatory caddie accompanies every round.

A note on the private clubs nearby: Querencia (Tom Fazio, opened 2001) and El Dorado (Nicklaus) are both member-invitation-only with no confirmed resort partnerships. Guests expecting access to either through a hotel booking will not find it.

One&Only Palmilla

The original Palmilla hotel dates to 1956, predating commercial aviation service to Los Cabos by decades. One&Only relaunched the property after an extensive renovation and now operates 174 rooms and suites with 24-hour butler service across the grounds.

Palmilla Golf Club is the property’s anchor and the starting point for serious golf in the region. Nicklaus opened the original 18 holes — Mountain and Arroyo nines — in 1992, the first Nicklaus Signature course anywhere in Latin America. He returned in 1999 to add the Ocean nine, bringing the property to 27 holes played as rotating 18-hole combinations, each returning par 72. The Ocean nine drops roughly 600 feet in elevation from the first tee to the sixth green. Nicklaus has since returned for a renovation that converted greens to MiniVerde, rebuilt the bunker complexes, and added a 4,500-square-foot putting green alongside an expanded practice facility.

The Palmilla routing sits in the arroyos and on the ridgelines between San José del Cabo and the Sea of Cortez — terrain that gives the course a character distinct from the oceanfront cliff tracks further west toward Cabo San Lucas. Both are worth playing; they are doing different things.

The Ritz-Carlton Zadun

Zadun opened in November 2019 in Puerto Los Cabos, a development on the San José del Cabo side of the corridor that has attracted different infrastructure than the Cabo San Lucas end. The property is part of the Ritz-Carlton Reserve portfolio — a tier above the standard Ritz brand, with approximately 115 rooms, suites, and villas.

The adjacent Puerto Los Cabos Golf Course is the primary access point: a 27-hole facility with three nines designed by Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus. Residence owners in the Puerto Los Cabos development hold exclusive access to both Signature courses; Zadun guests access them through the resort concierge. For guests who want to play beyond Puerto Los Cabos, the concierge also arranges tee times at Cabo Real, Club Campestre, Cabo del Sol Desert, and Rancho San Lucas.

As with Montage, the private clubs — El Dorado, Querencia — are not accessible through a Zadun booking. The corridor’s two members-only layouts operate independently of hotel partnerships.

The St. Regis Punta Mita Resort

Punta Mita is a gated peninsula 45 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta that has operated on a controlled development model since the late 1990s. The St. Regis opened here in 2008 and completed a $45 million renovation roughly in 2023, adding five beachfront villas and bringing room count to 120 suites. St. Regis Butler Service is standard throughout.

The golf is the reason to understand Punta Mita’s geography. Jack Nicklaus designed both courses on the peninsula: the Pacífico Course (par 72, 7,104 yards, opened 1999) and the Bahía Course (par 72, 7,035 yards). St. Regis guests access both, alongside Four Seasons guests and Club Punta Mita members — this is a shared facility by design, which keeps both courses staffed and maintained at a level a private members club would recognize.

Pacífico has eight oceanside holes and one feature that exists nowhere else in golf: hole 3B, called “Tail of the Whale,” a 199-yard par 3 to a natural island green on a Pacific rock outcropping. At low tide, a submerged stone path connects to the green; at high tide, an amphibious golf cart makes the crossing. It is the only natural island green on any golf course in the world. Bahía, the newer layout, plays five holes along the ocean with two more ocean-view holes and greens converted to MiniVerde.

Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit

Grand Velas opened on Banderas Bay in December 2003 and operates 267 all-inclusive suites at a price point that sits above most of the regional all-inclusive market. The property sits on a hillside above Banderas Bay, positioned between Puerto Vallarta and Punta Mita.

There is no on-property course, and the private Punta Mita Golf Club — the Nicklaus 36-hole facility on the peninsula — restricts access to Four Seasons and St. Regis guests and club members. Grand Velas guests who want to play arrange tee times at the public-access courses in the region: Vista Vallarta, approximately 20 minutes away, has two 18-hole courses designed by Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf respectively; Marina Vallarta Golf Club is roughly 15 minutes out. The resort’s concierge handles logistics. For golfers whose primary objective is Punta Mita access, the St. Regis is the correct base.

Casa Velas Puerto Vallarta

Casa Velas is an adults-only all-inclusive boutique property with 80 suites in the Marina Vallarta district. The hotel sits within the Marina Vallarta Golf Club — a Joe Finger design at par 71, 6,701 yards — which wraps around the property. Beach access runs through the Tau Beach Club a few minutes away via complimentary transport.

The golf here is more about integration than drama. Finger’s routing uses the marina layout’s water features throughout; the par-3 fourth hole plays to a near-island green. The intimacy of the property — 80 rooms, a course that is physically part of the grounds — suits a golfer who wants uncomplicated daily access over the kind of strategic variety the Punta Mita or Palmilla layouts provide. For a multi-night stay built entirely around morning rounds and afternoons on the bay, the logistics work better here than at larger properties.

ATELIER Playa Mujeres

ATELIER opened in 2019 north of Cancún in the Playa Mujeres development, an area that has attracted investment specifically because it sits outside the Hotel Zone’s density. The property operates 593 suites on an adults-focused all-inclusive model with an art and design program integrated throughout the building.

The Playa Mujeres Golf Club, a Greg Norman design at par 72 and 7,218 yards, sits directly adjacent. The routing uses the Chacmuchuc Lagoon and surrounding mangrove systems as primary features, with oceanfront holes on the Caribbean side. The juxtaposition — mangrove interior, open-water coastline — gives the course a visual range the Los Cabos desert layouts do not have. Norman’s design is one of the more technically demanding courses in the Cancún market, and the proximity to ATELIER means guests can walk to the first tee.

For LXV members whose itinerary includes the Yucatán — archaeological sites, the Riviera Maya, Merida — ATELIER with the Norman course gives the golf portion a legitimate anchor rather than an afterthought.

Keep reading

One network, dozens of destinations. These seven Mexico properties are part of what LXV members access when planning a golf trip along the Pacific or Caribbean coast — alongside reciprocal access to the world’s most exclusive private clubs. Apply for membership →