Cape Kidnappers Golf Course near the town of Napier, on the east coast of the North Island, is the second course to be developed on the New Zealand coast by American financier Julian Robertson, whose Kauri Cliffs course 500 miles to the north has earned raves throughout the golf world. Robertson hired American golf architect Tom Doak for the project after playing Doak's acclaimed course at Pacific Dunes in Oregon the second day after it opened. Completed in 2003, Cape Kidnappers is Doak's first design outside the u.s. The setting is awe-inspiring, with the course laid out over a series of tilted ridges that spread like great green talons across the cliffs 500 feet above Hawke's Bay, with views stretching for 70 miles along the entire curvature of the bay. A pulled tee shot on the sixth or 15th holes will find the antipodean abyss, but it will take nearly ten seconds before the ball reaches the ocean below. Cape Kidnappers was named by Captain Cook in 1769 when Maori warriors attempted to "rescue" his Tahitian translator Tayeto by kidnapping him from the Endeavour. In Maori mythology, the point of land is the fish hook that the god Maui used to pull the South Island from the sea.