Costa Navarino Golf Guide

Costa Navarino: Why Greece Belongs on Your Golf Bucket List
Greece is not the first country that comes up when guys start talking about a buddy trip. Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal. Then a long pause. Then someone with good information says Greece, and everyone else looks at him like he just suggested teeing it up in Antarctica. Then he explains Costa Navarino, and the trip gets booked.

This is the project that a Greek shipping magnate named Captain Vassilis Constantakopoulos spent decades building in his home region of Messinia, in the southwest corner of the Peloponnese. The result is a 1,000-square-kilometer resort destination with four signature golf courses, five-star hotels including a Westin, a Romanos, a Mandarin Oriental, and a W, plus a stretch of coastline that has somehow stayed off the mass-tourism radar despite sitting in one of the most photogenic countries on earth. The Westin Costa Navarino was named World's Best Golf Venue at the 2023 World Golf Awards. That is not a typo.

The four courses do not repeat themselves. The Dunes Course, a Bernhard Langer design that opened in 2010 as Greece's first signature course, plays through dunes and olive groves with sea and river views. The Bay Course is a Robert Trent Jones Jr. layout perched on the cliffs above Navarino Bay. The Hills Course and the International Olympic Academy Course are both Jose Maria Olazabal designs at Navarino Hills, looking out over the mountains and villages of inland Messinia.
The setting is biblical. The food is olive-oil-and-fresh-fish good. Kalamata airport is 45 minutes away. The whole place feels like a secret that is about to get out.