Kapalua Resort, the Hawaii course where the PGA Tour has started every year since 1999, is shutting down for two months as it tries to save its water-starved courses during a dispute over the handling of a century-old water system on Maui.
The 60-day closure, which starts Sept. 2 for the Plantation and Bay courses at Kapalua, has raised concerns it might not be able to host The Sentry to start the tour’s 2026 season.
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“The golf course has been damaged with no water for months,” Alex Nakajima, the general manager of Kapalua Golf and Tennis, said Tuesday. “I proposed to the owner that we need to shut the golf course to increase our chances to save the golf course and the tournament.”
He feels the best hope is to use what little water Kapalua gets for a slow-releasing fertilizer and to keep customers off the course while the staff removes dead grass.
Kapalua, known for the contrast of lush green fairways and the Pacific blue horizon, is more a blend of yellow and brown these days as the grass dies. Nakajima said the course has not had water since July 25.
Tadashi Yanai, the Japanese billionaire who owns Kapalua and who founded the apparel brand Uniqlo, Kapalua homeowners and Hua Momona Farms filed a lawsuit last week against Maui Land & Pineapple, alleging it has not maintained the water delivery system.
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At the center of the dispute is the 11-mile Honokohau Stream and Ditch System that runs from the West Maui mountains and supplies irrigation water to the Kapalua area.
“MLP has knowingly … allowed the Ditch System to fall into a state of demonstrable disrepair. That disrepair, not any act of God, or force of nature, or other thing, is why users who need it are currently without water,” the lawsuit says.
Maui Land & Pineapple said it has made “certain repairs and improvements to the ditch system” as directed by the Commission on Water Resource Management and that all its actions are “consistent with the agreements between MLP and the golf courses.”
It said the problem was low flows, not inefficiency in the system.
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“During this time of record low stream levels, it is in the best interest of the community that all parties remain focused on facts and solutions,” CEP Race Randle said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Collaboration, not litigation, is the best path forward to addressing West Maui’s water needs.”
The lawsuit claims Yanai entered into “water delivery agreements” when he bought the Kapalua properties that would allow the courses to be kept in good condition. The filing says these agreements stipulated Maui Land “will at all times exercise commercially reasonable efforts to manage, repair and maintain” the ditch system for a reliable delivery of irrigation water.
The PGA Tour said only that it was monitoring “the ongoing water conservation requirements affecting Kapalua Resort.”
The tour said it has been in touch with the title sponsor,