CABO SAN LUCAS, MEXICO | On a Thursday in 2004, American golf course and resort developer Ken Jowdy was driving to an airport in Mexico when he got a call from his real estate agent. Jowdy had been looking for land on which to develop a new resort in Cabo for the past year without much success, but his real estate agent told him there was an 89-year-old Mexican man who had 1,500 acres of land on the Pacific Ocean in Cabo San Lucas.
“I said, ‘I’m going to leave now and come back on Tuesday,’” Jowdy said. “He said, ‘No, if you get on that plane, that building won’t survive until Tuesday.'”
Jowdy was intrigued. He still had to explore the area where there was not much development yet. So he turned his car around and when he arrived at his destination, he found it took his breath away. He saw the clear view of the ocean, combined with huge sand dunes. Jowdy felt like he had been transported to Ireland. This was what he was looking for.
“I met a guy who didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Spanish,” Jowdy said. “Somehow within 15 minutes we shook hands on the deal that became (Diamante).”
Jowdy closed the deal in 2006 and Diamante Cabo San Lucas officially debuted to the public in 2009 with the opening of Davis Love III’s Dunes Course. Now the resort is a premier tourist destination with Love’ courses and soon three Tiger Woods-designed golf courses. Woods’ El Cardonal, opened in 2014, hosts the PGA Tour’s World Wide Technology Championship, the oldest PGA Tour tournament outside the United States and Canada.
Jowdy closed the deal in 2006 and Diamante Cabo San Lucas officially debuted to the public in 2009 with the opening of Davis Love III’s Dunes Course. Now the resort is a premier tourist destination with Love’ courses and soon three Tiger Woods-designed golf courses. Woods’ El Cardonal, opened in 2014, hosts the PGA Tour’s World Wide Technology Championship, the oldest PGA Tour tournament outside the United States and Canada.
“Hosting a PGA Tour event is not only a validation for the entire region and Cabo, but a validation of everything we’ve done here,” Jowdy said. “To be able to organize a tour event you have to have a pretty nice place.”
Before Diamante, people came to Los Cabos on vacation, but not really to play golf.
“A few small courses had been developed since the 1980s, but never really grew to the size of what we have now,” said Rodrigo Esponda, CEO of the Los Cabos Tourism Board. “When courses like Diamante came into being, the golf really positioned the destination in a unique way.”
“There are very proud people here and they want to make sure that the people who come here enjoy it because they want them to go home and proudly talk about what they saw here.” – Ken Jowdy
Jowdy says much of Diamante’s success is due to the locals of Cabo San Lucas, who have embraced increased tourism.
“There are very proud people here and they want to make sure that the people who come here enjoy themselves because they want them to go home and proudly talk about what they saw here,” Jowdy said.
After the success of the Dunes Course, a friend of Jowdy approached him and asked: would he be interested in working with Tiger Woods?
“The answer was clearly yes,” Jowdy said.
That began a five-month process of Jowdy getting to know people on Woods’ team, culminating in a meeting between Jowdy, Woods, Woods’ good friend Byron Bell and Woods’ former caddie Joe LaCava. Jowdy and LaCava immediately hit it off when they discovered they were both born at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.
“It turned out we were playing sports against each other,” Jowdy said. “So for the first 30 minutes of this big meeting with Tiger, me and Joe were talking about Danbury and Newtown, Connecticut. And Tiger says, ‘Wait, I thought this was going to be about my meeting with you.’ ”
The rest is history and El Cardonal opened in 2014. The course has wide fairways, making it not too difficult from the tee. But strategically placed bunkers, small landing areas and challenging winds make it a memorable second-shot course.
And in 2023, a new opportunity arose for Diamante. The year before, the WWT Championship was held for the last time in Mayakoba. The future of Mexico’s oldest PGA Tour event was uncertain without a home. But Diamante went a step further and hosted the tournament at El Cardonal, the first time a Woods course has hosted a PGA Tour event.
“Finding a place like Diamante, which was spectacular and such an incredible location, works so well for us here with Cabo as a golf destination,” said Joe Mazzeo, tournament director of the WWT Championship.
“When you first get to the site, the first thing you see is the incredible views here at Diamante. And when the wind starts to pick up on the course, it’s going to be a really good test.” – Austin Eckroat
PGA Tour players play some of the best golf courses in the world week after week, but 2024 WWT champion Austin Eckroat says El Cardonal is one that stands out from the jump.
“When you first come to a property, the first thing you see is the incredible view here at Diamante,” Eckroat said. “And when the wind starts to pick up on the course, it will be a very good test.”
And Diamante continues to grow. The Legacy Club at Diamante, designed by Woods, is expected to open in late 2026. Jowdy compares the course to Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, with five lakes, a stream system connecting them all and waterfalls. It’s a huge undertaking
“That’s a completely different animal,” Jowdy said. “Here (at El Cardonal) we moved 350,000 cubic meters of earth and there we are moving 3.5 million cubic meters.”
Jowdy hopes The Legacy Club will one day host a PGA event, but in the meantime, El Cardonal will continue to host the WWT Championship, which will be played Nov. 6-9 this year.
Photos: Everett Munoz
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