If you’ve ever visited a private residential community owned and managed by Discovery Land Company—be it in the Bahamas, Hawaii, or on the outskirts of the Flathead National Forest in northwest Montana—chances are you’ve played golf on a championship layout designed by Tom Fazio. The revered golf course architect has created exceptional courses at more than a dozen Discovery Land properties across North America, and Chileno Bay is one of his most recent achievements, even though construction on the course began more than a decade ago.
Tom Fazio designed the par-72 golf course at Chileno Bay. While the course is operated by Discovery Land Company, it is available to guests staying at the Chileno Bay hotel, which is operated by Auberge.
The par-72 layout, which plays almost 7,300 yards from the championship tees, was almost complete when the economic recession of the late 2000s brought work to a screeching halt. The course sat dormant for the next several years, until Discovery Land took over the project and rehabilitated the grounds ahead of the course’s grand opening during the final quarter of 2016. In his design and subsequent construction of Chileno Bay’s sparkling, emerald-green course, Fazio preserved and promoted the terrain’s natural dramatic elements—deep arroyos, rugged ocean-front cliffs, and plenty of saguaro cacti. Because the course stretches over a hillside that gradually works its way up from the Gulf of California, every hole offers captivating ocean views, some as much as 350 feet above the water. Golfers who manage to avert their gaze from the sea can take in equally spectacular views of the Sierra de Laguna Mountains that rise further inland on the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.
The property has one of the region’s few swimmable beaches.
That Chileno Bay’s golf course can offer unobstructed views of the ocean, seemingly at every turn, is the result of limited real estate development in the works or planned for the site when Fazio first designed and routed the course’s layout. “We were allowed to route the golf course strategically,” the designer told Golf Course Architecture in early 2017, “to take advantage of the varying topography, natural features and landscape throughout the property.”
The property offers a mix of guestrooms and villas. The property broke ground last year on its final phase of development: 14 four- and five-bedroom villas.
Fortunately for golf enthusiasts who want to call this Mexican paradise home, plenty of real estate options exist now. Custom homesites, villas, haciendas, and casitas are all available through Discovery Land Company, but residential offerings are also available through the Auberge Resorts–managed Chileno Bay Resort & Residences. At the end of last year the beachfront resort broke ground on its final phase of real estate development, a project that will feature 14 four- and five-bedroom villas that start at $2.5M and offer as much as 5,554 square feet of indoor living space. The most superlative of those villas—the penthouse residence—includes 2,600 square feet of covered terrace space and a 1,000-square-foot, private rooftop swimming pool.
An infinity pool runs down the center of the property and has separate adult and kid pools.
“Our goal with these final units is to offer future buyers the most exciting new ownership opportunity in the market and continue to bring a new level of luxury to Los Cabos,” says Mark Cooley, managing partner of SV Capital Partners, the resort’s development firm. chilenobay.aubergeresorts.com
