Punta Espada Golf Club

Overview: Punta Espada is Jack Nicklaus’s 18-hole course within Cap Cana, on the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic. The routing uses the natural contours of the coastal ground and repeatedly brings the Caribbean into view, with several holes playing beside or across the sea. From the championship tees it stretches to 7,396 yards at par 72, although the attraction is not length alone: the changing relationship between fairway, limestone coast and open water shapes the decisions throughout the round. It is a resort course with a genuinely maritime character.

History: The course opened in November 2006 as a Jack Nicklaus Signature design. It quickly became a tournament venue, hosting the Cap Cana Championship on the PGA TOUR Champions schedule in 2008, 2009 and 2010. That event brought senior professional golf to the Dominican Republic and helped establish Punta Espada as one of the region’s best-known resort courses. The course has also been recognized in regional rankings, but its most durable claim is the way the design follows the coast rather than treating the sea as distant scenery.

Did You Know? The official course description emphasizes that Punta Espada follows the land’s natural contours and the views of the Caribbean, while course materials note that eight holes play along or over the water. The stretch of coastal holes makes the sea a strategic feature rather than a backdrop, asking players to judge both line and exposure. Punta Espada also hosted three consecutive Cap Cana Championship editions, a brief but notable run that tied this resort layout to the PGA TOUR Champions’ early visits to the Dominican Republic.