At the coastal resort, an exacting golf course revamp is a preview of what’s to come at the world’s first St. Regis Estate, arriving in 2027
Words by BRYAN WHALEN
Photography courtesy of THE RESORT AT PELICAN HILL
Pelican Hill’s South Course was already world class: 18 holes of premier oceanfront golf, rolling fairways that seem to disappear into the Pacific Ocean, one of two Tom Fazio–designed championship courses on the sprawling 504-acre coastal resort in Newport Beach. Restoration was always going to be like working on a vintage Porsche. Key words: precision, restraint, and reverence.
“Our vision for the South Course,” says Robert Ford, Pelican Hill golf operations general manager, “was to honor what has always made Pelican Hill Golf Club so extraordinary while thoughtfully enhancing the overall golf experience.”
The revamp was led by renowned golf architect Brian Curley, and for golfers this means bunkers with a custom seaside sand blend inspired by natural coastal dunes, leveled and expanded tees, and greens reclaimed from decades of slow shrinkage.
The most dramatic stretch of the renovation runs along the Pacific Coast Highway, where holes 11 through 14 now pull the eye toward the water, the reworked sand drawing the landscape closer to the ocean and deepening the sense that you are playing at the very edge of California. But at a resort where luxury lives in the details, even the tiniest improvements matter.
More than a mile of cart paths were repaired and widened, more than 2,000 fairway sprinkler heads were raised for more consistent conditioning, and extensive tree work has reopened sightlines that have narrowed over the years. None of which are things guests necessarily notice from the clubhouse — which is the point. Invisible excellence is the highest form of luxury.
“Our vision for the South Course was to honor what has always made Pelican Hill Golf Club so extraordinary.”
The South Course is only the beginning. Curley runs it back on the North Course this fall, closing out all 36 holes as Pelican Hill heads toward a 2027 transition into the first St. Regis Estate, a new, ultra-exclusive tier of heritage-rich properties inspired by the Astor family’s storied country retreats.
With The Resort At Pelican Hill chosen to set the tone for the collection, the rebrand introduces a renovation of the property, with reimagined villas, a renewed Coliseum Pool, and a reinvented bar inspired by the legendary King Cole Bar, famous as the birthplace of the Bloody Mary. The same obsession that just reshaped a golf course, now turned loose on everything else.
June 2, 2026.
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