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 broker. Jowdy had been looking for land on which to develop a new resort in Cabo for the previous year without much success, but his broker told him that 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 leaving right now and I’ll be back on Tuesday,’” Jowdy said. “He said ‘No, if you get on that airplane that property isn’t going to make it until Tuesday.’”
Jowdy was intrigued. He had yet to explore the area in which there wasn’t much development. So he turned his car around and, when he got to his destination, found that it took his breath away. He saw the clear ocean views coupled with massive sand dunes. Jowdy felt like he’d been transported to Ireland. This was what he was looking for.
“I met this guy who spoke zero English and I spoke zero Spanish,” Jowdy said. “Somehow within 15 minutes we shook hands on the deal that became (Diamante).”
Jowdy closed on 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 premiere tourist destination with Love’ course and soon to be three Tiger Woods-designed courses. Woods’ El Cardonal, which opened in 2014, hosts the PGA Tour’s World Wide Technology Championship, the oldest PGA Tour tournament outside of the United States and Canada.
“Hosting a PGA Tour event is not only validation for the entire region and Cabo, but validation of everything we’ve done here,” Jowdy said. “In order to get a tour event you have to have a pretty nice place.”
Before Diamante, people came to Los Cabos on vacation, but not really for golf.
“Since the 1980s there had been a few small golf courses that had been developed, but never that had really ignited like what we have today,” said Rodrigo Esponda, CEO of the Los Cabos Tourism Board. “When golf courses like Diamante came, 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 down here enjoy themselves because they want them to go home and speak proudly of what they saw here.” – Ken Jowdy
Jowdy says much of Diamante’s success is a credit to the Cabo San Lucas locals, who have embraced the increased tourism.
“There are very proud people here and they want to make sure that the people who come down here enjoy themselves because they want them to go home and speak proudly of what they saw here,” Jowdy said.
After the success of the Dunes Course, a friend of Jowdy’s approached him with a question: would he be interested in working with Tiger Woods?
“Obviously the answer was yes,” Jowdy said.
That started a five-month process of Jowdy getting to know people on Woods’ team, at the end of which was a meeting between Jowdy, Woods, Woods’ good friend Byron Bell and Woods’ former caddy Joe LaCava. Jowdy and LaCava immediately hit it off when they discovered they were both born in Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.
“It turned out we played sports against each other,” Jowdy said. “So for the first 30 minutes of this big meeting with Tiger was me and Joe talking about Danbury and Newtown, Connecticut. And Tiger says, ‘Wait, I thought this was supposed to be about me meeting you.’ ”
The rest is history, and El Cardonal opened for play in 2014. The course has wide fairways, making it not too difficult off the tee. But strategically placed bunkers, small landing areas and challenging wind make it a memorable second-shot course.
And, in 2023, another opportunity arose for Diamante. The year prior, the WWT Championship was held for the final time at Mayakoba. The future of the oldest PGA Tour event in Mexico was uncertain without a home. But Diamante stepped up and hosted the tournament on El Cardonal, the first time a Woods course hosted a PGA Tour event.
“Finding a place like Diamante, which has been just spectacular and it’s such an incredible venue, works so well for us here with Cabo as a golf destination,” said Joe Mazzeo, WWT Championship tournament director.
“When you first come on property the first thing that you see are the unbelievable views out here at Diamante. And on the course when the wind starts to pick up it becomes a really good test.” – Austin Eckroat
Players on the PGA Tour play on some of the best golf courses in the world week after week, but 2024 WWT Championship winner Austin Eckroat says El Cardonal is one that stands out from the jump.
“When you first come on property the first thing that you see are the unbelievable views out here at Diamante,” Eckroat said. “And on the course when the wind starts to pick up it becomes a really good test.”
And Diamante continues to grow. The Legacy Club at Diamante, designed by Woods, is planned to open at the end of 2026. Jowdy compares the course to Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, with five lakes, a stream system that connects them all and waterfalls. It’s a massive undertaking
“That’s a completely different animal,” Jowdy said. “Here (at El Cardonal) we moved 350,000 cubic meters of earth and we’re moving 3.5 million cubic meters over there.”
Jowdy hopes The Legacy Club hosts a PGA event one day, but, in the meantime, El Cardonal will continue to host the WWT Championship, which will be played this year from November 6-9.