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.”
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