Omni La Costa Resort & Spa
There’s nothing really like the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa, and that’s a good thing.
There are certainly newer places to stay, eat, swim, spa, meditate, and – for our purposes – play golf on two spectacular courses than this venerable and memorable 400-plus acre resort a half-hour north of San Diego in Carlsbad, but I dare you to find any place that’s more chill, or another spot where it’s still fashionable (hell, almost required) to be cool and flaunt that attitude with style.
When you are at La Costa, you just walk a little taller, with your hair wind-blown into its perfect place.
It’s a place where your best golf shots on the uber-demanding Champions Course feel an iota more pure, your blasts out of the bunker take just the right amount of sand, and the sound of the golf ball finding the bottom of the hole on the tough-but-not-too-tough Legends Course seems a little louder.
If that doesn’t get you in a mood to roll up the collar of your golf shirt and unbutton a few buttons, well, then you’re just not trying.
The Omni La Costa, founded in 1965, was once the getaway place for Hollywood royalty and the well-heeled in Southern California. It still has that vibe – but the experience has been updated and wrangled into the 21st century, making a stay here really a blast. This legendary resort, with its Spanish Mission-style village, has history echoing through its grounds and white-washed stucco buildings.
The main attraction for those reading this feature are La Costa’s two courses, Champions and Legends – originally designed by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee, respectively, and both renovated by the design team of Damian Pascuzzo and Steve Pate (with help from Jeffrey Brauer) in the early 2010s.
The legacy of the golf offerings at La Costa is well known. Shortly after La Costa opened, the original Wilson-designed course hosted the made-for-TV CBS Golf Classic. The PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions was held at La Costa from 1969 to 1998, and the World Golf Championships Accenture Match Play Championship in 1999 and 2000 and then from 2002–06.
The differences between the courses are most noticeable on their greens. Champions’ putting surfaces are larger and feature more subtle breaks while on Legends many are smaller and segmented with small mounds to bring sharper contours into play and emphasize chipping.
Omni La Costa’s Champions Course
Champions takes your complete conviction
The Champions Course is worthy of its name. It is a demanding inland layout with beautiful valley scenery. The Champions Course is an out-and-in layout carded at 7,151 yards with a turn house after the ninth hole.
There aren’t too many wide-open holes, as the routing is elegantly framed by haystack-shaped hills and homes on the hillsides. The Champions Course is one on which a golfer gains an advantage if they can move the ball both left and right from the tee and the fairway. There are lots of bunkers too, so navigating the sand is vital too.
Champions contains lots of great, subtle architectural features that make it a challenging and memorable course. For the most part, it’s a grip-it-and-rip-it test from the tee. However, there were a few notable holes where a sharp dogleg or a water hazard make discretion, or more aptly, caution, the better part of valor.
The best holes on the Champions Course are likely its final four, the ones shown most on television during the resort’s run on the PGA Tour. That stretch begins with the 317-yard, par-4 15th hole, which tempts the player to try to reach the green off the tee. However, the putting surface is surrounded by a devious collection of high-walled bunkers with a closely mown area and a lake hidden just off the back of the green.
The medium length par-3 16th requires an all-carry, downhill tee shot over that lake to a massive green containing multiple tiers. It’s the marquee shot for its scenic views, with the tee box elevated next to the La Costa clubhouse.
The par-4 17th hole has an impossible-to-escape, kidney-shaped bunker in the middle of the approach a few yards from the front of the green.
The Champions Course concludes with a difficult par-5 back up from the valley floor toward the massive La Costa clubhouse. There’s a long, forced carry from the tee to a narrow fairway with water short, left, right, and long on the left-hand side. That’s just the tee shot. The lake on the left side runs the length of the entire fairway, which ends in a deep creek about 50 yards short of the front of the green; the putting surface is massive, severely sloping, and multi-tiered.
The Champions Course lays everything out in front of the player; there are no hidden surprises, but playing it successfully does require careful consideration of each shot and the proper angles of attack.
In late 2020, the NCAA announced that Omni La Costa will host the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Division I Men’s and Women’s Golf Championships. Play will be conducted on the Champions Course following a planned renovation by course architect Gil Hanse in 2022.
Omni La Costa Resort & Spa
Legends is famous for its playability
If the Champions Course is a chess match, the Legends Course is more like checkers. And that was by design, both by Lee in the original design that opened in 1969 and by the Pascuzzo/Pate/Brauer renovation that debuted in 2013.
The Legends Course is more spacious than the Champions layout while providing a complementary set of strategic challenges and a variety of visual encounters. Legends has smaller greens and less penal bunkering. Those 59 soft sand bunkers are located along the fairways or greenside, and water comes into play in the shape of creeks and ponds on 10 of the holes. There are some interesting doglegs, and the terrain is quite rolling. Five sets of tees play to distances and slopes measuring 6,996 yards.
The renovation focused on keeping the closing stretch memorable but made it more fun.
Legends is more of a manicured parkland style layout in the shadow of the condos and houses that overlook the course. Large stately trees and lots of colorful flowers make for a refreshingly different look from the Champions Course.
Legends boasts “The Longest Mile,” the original finishing holes where from the 15th hole the course turns back toward the clubhouse into the prevailing ocean breeze for a stout conclusion. The par-5 17th has been shortened to 483 yards from the blues, and the green is narrower than before the renovation, producing a knee-knocking risk-reward challenge.
“With the Legends Course, we stayed with the Wilson routing but opted for a different style for the greens and bunkers,” Pascuzzo said. “We created a layout where golfers can get off the tee, find their ball, and move on to the green.”
That’s where Legends challenges golfers — around the green, with putting surfaces and green surrounds that create different kinds of recovery shots.
Legends is a more intimate journey through the tree-lined valley nestled at the base of the surrounding hills. The sometimes-hidden creeks, shrewdly angled doglegs and ponds bring character to a course where scoring opportunities are readily available for straight hitters and players who can be accurate on the approach.
The Legends Course is fun and interesting, with different visuals and some subtle nuances that asks golfers to use their imagination.
Plenty to do off the course
The Omni La Costa Resort & Spa is located within easy reach of area beaches and popular tourist attractions. The resort features more than 600 rooms, suites and villas and provides an idyllic setting for golf. The 43,000-square-foot Spa at La Costa includes a private pool, waterfall showers, cafe, and therapeutic reflexology pathways.
There are pools for adults and children, a tennis center with 17 courts and even the Deepak Chopra Center for Wellbeing, where golfers should be able to banish negative swing thoughts forever.