Lihue is Kauai’s airport town and a natural base for island golf that ranges from the municipal Wailua Golf Course—often ranked among America’s best public tracks for its ocean holes—to Kauai Lagoons and Puakea closer to town. The common thread is Kauai’s dramatic greenness: rain-fed turf, mountain backdrops, and coastal exposures that feel wilder than many mainland resort courses.
Weather can shift quickly on the Garden Isle, so locals plan around showers the way desert golfers plan around heat. Visitors who land in Lihue often stack rounds with sightseeing, treating golf as one more way to read the island’s north-south contrasts—lush, humid, and always aware of the Pacific just beyond the next dogleg.