Grand Reserve Golf Club: A Favorable Venue for the Best Golfers

The Grand Reserve Golf Club of Puerto Rico opened for play in 2006, approximately a century after the inauguration of the first golf facility on the island at El Morro Castle in Old San Juan. It’s a venue that has since hosted 14 PGA Tour events, the 2022 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship – the first USGA competition in a U.S. territory – and, come January, the 2023 Latin America Amateur Championship (LAAC).

Grand Reserve Golf Club was the first project outside the United States mainland by architect Tom Kite, whose design includes four distinct nine-hole layouts featuring the sea, mangroves, lakes and mountains of the scenic property on Puerto Rico’s northeast coast.

The Championship Course is a blend of those layouts which covers the four landscapes - from tees with views of the sea to greens overlooking the El Yunque rainforest and surrounding lagoons.

“The biggest defense of this course is the wind coming through the mountains and the sea,” explained Jason Matos, the course superintendent with two decades of experience on the grounds.

Since the Puerto Rico Open’s inception in 2008, Matos, who assisted with the maintenance of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics golf course, and his crew of around 40 people have been praised for the quality of the fairways and bunkers at Grand Reserve during the annual PGA Tour stop on the island, where several golfers elevated their careers.

Three-time major champion Jordan Spieth, winner of the 2015 Masters Tournament, 2015 U.S. Open, and The 146th Open in 2017, finished T-2 at the 2013 Puerto Rico Open. Tony Finau (2016) and Viktor Hovland (2020), who are each inside the top 15 of the current Official World Golf Ranking, won their first PGA Tour titles at Grand Reserve Golf Club.

The site of the eighth LAAC has also been a favorable venue for the best golfers in Latin America. Venezuelan Jhonattan Vegas holds the record for the lowest 18-hole score (62) since his last round in 2020, when he finished runner-up. Argentinian Andres Romero holds the lowest 36-hole score since 2013, the same year his countryman Fabian Gomez finished tied-second with Spieth.

Two years later, another Argentinian, Emiliano Grillo, lost in a five-man playoff to Alex Cejka at Grand Reserve. Grillo went on to win his first PGA Tour title at the Fortinet Championship later that year.

“I feel more comfortable than most with the course because I have had the chance to play the Puerto Rico Open four times,” said Erick Morales, who is the only Puerto Rican amateur to make the cut at the Puerto Rico Open and has competed in every edition of the LAAC since its creation in 2015.

The 39-year-old Puerto Rican amateur agrees with Matos on the importance of managing the wind at Grand Reserve, particularly in the middle part of the front nine and the last stretch of the back nine, which have been reversed for the LAAC and include holes more exposed to wind gusts and weather conditions.

At the 2023 LAAC, hole Nos. 3-5 are a sequence of three of the toughest holes on the course, particularly the fifth hole, where players must be prepared to use a wood for their second shot and celebrate par as a great score. The tee shot on the par-5 sixth is also into the wind to a fairway flanked by bunkers and waste areas.

The Caribbean wind normally accompanies the players during the final stretch, with two par 3s (Nos. 15 and 17) and two par 4s (Nos. 16 and 18) leading to some of the most treacherous and undulating green complexes of the course.

During the final round, these last four greens will test the concentration of the leaders going from the breathtaking view of El Yunque rainforest at the 15th to the nerve-wracking sight of fans, teammates and family members by the clubhouse on the 18th, awaiting the coronation of the next Latin America Amateur Champion.