Joga Bonito

For years, Santapazienza Golf Club existed to me only in whispers. It sounded like some kind of golf fever dream: a course—one of the toughest tee times in the world, up there with Augusta National and Ellerston  Golf Club in Australia—carved into the Brazilian jungle. But, on a recent trip, I was fortunate enough to discover that the reality of Santapazienza is even better than the rumors.

While the debates over a region’s top course are never-ending fun, the pool of candidates for each is small and familiar. Pine Valley, Augusta National or Cypress Point in North America. Tara Iti or Royal Melbourne in New Zealand and Australia. Hirono or Shanqin Bay in Asia. The Old Course, Muirfield or Royal Dornoch in Scotland. But what about South America? Debating the finest there can stump even those with high golf IQs. Now I can confidently add Santapazienza to that conversation.

The only way to get on is to receive an invitation from Paulo Malzoni or his father, Paulo Sr., the club’s only two members. (You can also be a budding junior player in Brazil and qualify for the Faldo Series South America Championship—the club has hosted the event on three previous occasions and plans to do so again in 2026.) Fewer than 500 rounds are played there per year, and that number is inflated by Paulo Sr.’s regular game with a couple of buddies each Saturday. In some ways, it’s a shame that so few people will ever get to experience such an interesting course, but the Malzonis—who oversee a real estate and investment profile worth billions—didn’t build it for fame or attention. They just wanted a place to play the game they love with family and friends.

I met Paulo through his quest to play the world’s top 100 courses. I am a fellow quester, and I set him and his daughter up at Prairie Dunes. We hit it off immediately. Paulo completed the list in August 2024, becoming, as far as we can tell, the first South American to do so. Golfers are always happy to reciprocate a round at their club, but I never expected a Santapazienza invite. So, when Paulo graciously extended one, I had to make it happen. And, in an incredible bit of golf serendipity, I was already on my way to his part of the world.

After completing the world top 100 a few years prior, I told my wife, Melissa, that we should travel to parts of the globe we hadn’t seen, which generally meant places with no golf courses. I owed her some adventures where my Club Glove wasn’t the first bag packed. A few months before meeting Paulo, we had booked a trip to South America. There was just one snag: São Paulo wasn’t on the itinerary. The initial plan was to fly from our home in Chicago to Santiago and Rapa Nui in Chile, to see the Moai on Easter Island, then to Buenos Aires and Ushuaia in Argentina, and then go even farther south to Antarctica, to visit its thousands of penguins (and to see my seventh continent—I’m always on the lookout for a list to complete). Our final stop was Lima and Machu Picchu in Peru, to hike the Inca settlements.

São Paulo seemed roughly in the neighborhood of Peru—I mean, what’s another five-hour flight? Convincing Melissa to extend our monthlong sojourn to include a couple of rounds of golf after I had promised not to play took a bit of cajoling, but the charm and mystery of discovering Santapazienza won out, and we added the extra leg.

The story of Santapazienza is one of a true labor of love. The Malzonis have been working on it since 1989. They built it on property acquired by Paulo’s grandfather in the 1940s, approximately an hour northwest of São Paulo—if you get a good traffic day. Given the hectic pace of Brazil’s bustling capital, 

I can understand why the Malzonis desired a place to relax outside the city.

I’ve seen courses around the world in just about every conceivable ecosystem, from traditional tree-lined parkland sites to windswept duneland to rocky hillside properties to “sand left and water right” Florida tracks. But Santapazienza was a new one for me: This course wasn’t built near a rainforest; it’s in it.

From their golf travels, the Malzonis knew they were sitting on an exceptional piece of land. But they needed help to elevate it from their homemade layout, which meant bringing in a professional golf course architect. They set their sights on Tom Fazio.

To hear the Malzonis tell it, Fazio wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of traveling to South America. But Paulo connected with Fazio’s eldest son, Logan, who believed Santapazienza was an intriguing opportunity. Tom still wasn’t convinced. Ultimately, Logan persuaded his mom, Sue, to visit São Paulo, which meant Tom had to make the trip.

Once on site, the Fazios saw its potential and immediately took the assignment. They knew the renovation had to take advantage of the scale of the property, as everything about Santapazienza feels massive. They set about creating gigantic tiered bunkers, many featuring “upstairs and downstairs” levels, each offering a different look and requiring a different shot shape.

The resounding highlight of the course is its tremendous shot value, especially off the tee. So many modern designs are built with needless 100-yard-wide fairways, allowing players to swing as hard as possible without much concern about where the ball ends up. I have longed for a new layout where shot shape and accuracy off the tee still matter. Of course it’s fun to smash the ball, but Prairie Dunes wouldn’t be Prairie Dunes if the gunch wasn’t rustling between your ears on every tee box.

That’s not to say that huge fairways can’t coexist with great design. Take C.B. Macdonald’s gem, the Lido. “Judged as a battlefield for giants,” said famed golf writer Bernard Darwin, “[the Lido] is the best, not only in America, but in the world.” 

Robert Hunter wrote the following passage in his sacred 1926 golf architecture book The Links: “Some years ago Country Life, an English periodical, offered a prize for the best plan submitted to it of an ideal two-shot hole…which was drawn by Doctor A. Mackenzie [sic]. The eighteenth at Lido is said to have been modelled on the same lines. The plan is worthy of careful study, and the reader may choose for himself the route to the hole which he would feel able to play.…There are five possible routes to the hole, and the choice of the player must vary from day to day.”

That hole’s fairway was (and is today, on the reincarnated Lido at Sand Valley) approximately 160 yards wide, requiring the player to make a choice. The strategy on the 18th at the Lido is what makes it great. And this is where Santapazienza excels. The course poses strategic questions on nearly every swing, demanding the golfer to consider the type of shot and shape they must execute—starting with the very first one. 

I didn’t know the opening hole would transport me from this South American jungle to Scotland, but the dogleg-left cape design gave me a jolt similar to the one I had the first time I pegged it at Machrihanish, which is unquestionably the best first swing in the game. It wasn’t altogether comfortable—I stepped up to the tee with borrowed clubs, needing to bend a ball right to left when I always fade it. But that’s what the shot required, and after somehow landing it in the fairway, I bounded toward my ball with the energy every golfer gets from pulling off the unexpected.

During construction, the Fazios recommended removing the island green adjacent to Paulo Sr.’s home, which was on the course. It didn’t go well—Paulo Sr. liked the hole just the way it was. After convincing him to make the change, the Fazios plowed the old green under and created a new target that can be found only at Santapazienza. It remains a par 3 from an elevated tee where the only place to land the tee shot is the green, but, instead of water, the green is surrounded by rainforest.

When I arrived, the pin was tucked in the far-left corner of the green, its narrowest spot, buried behind a deep bunker. Paulo smartly suggested I play to the broader, safer area on the right. I grabbed a 5-iron, took a big cut and pulled it dead left. But the ball headed straight toward the hole and landed softly about 12 feet away. I couldn’t hit that shot again if I tried, but that’s the beauty of a risk-reward pin on a well-designed hole.

The par-4 fifth plays from a significantly elevated tee box where you must cross a water hazard to a narrow strip of fairway. Big hitters may try to drive the two-tiered green because it looks possible, even though for many it’s unlikely. Santapazienza specializes in these types of mind games.

The Fazios have now visited the property on many occasions over the years. Logan returned the most frequently, until his death in 2022. On one such trip, he suggested adding an additional tee box on the par-3 13th to make the angle of play more compelling. The only problem was that the land needed for the new tee box was on the grounds of a small church adjacent to the golf course. But Paulo liked the idea, and he approached the diocese about buying the required parcel. The bishop said it wasn’t available, but offered a counter: The Malzonis could buy the entire church property, as the building wasn’t currently in use. They agreed.

And they didn’t just add the tee box. They remodeled and renovated the church, adding a tall bell tower at the entryway to improve the façade. They had frescoes repainted and framed with antique wood imported from Italy. Locals now use the striking church once a month.

Then the Malzonis added a complete banquet facility for weddings via a lovely breezeway that can accommodate more than 1,000 people. The room was acoustically tuned by laying each brick in the correct direction to perfect the sound quality. Finally, they built specially decorated rooms for both sides of the wedding party. The Malzonis don’t do anything halfway.

The drivable par-4 15th hole requires a slight cut off the tee over the water’s edge to a green tucked against the rainforest. Prudence would say to hit a 200-yard hybrid to the left of the water, but Paulo recommended driver. I split the difference and pulled 3-wood, sending my tee ball pin high, just off the right of the green. Paulo then told me to hit a second ball with my driver, which I floated onto the green with a baby cut. I got up-and-down from my first tee shot and two-putted the second for a pair of birdies. You have to love it when every option works.

After putting out, we stopped at a little refreshment hut and enjoyed the best coconut water I’ve ever had, from a big straw sticking out of the shell.

The 16th hole used to feature an exposed concrete cart path that crossed over a pond. The Fazios and Malzonis didn’t like the look, but there was no way to move the path to a suitable location without negatively affecting the routing. Then Paulo Sr. had an idea: Submerge the bridge a few inches under the water so it wouldn’t be overtly visible. The Fazios loved it, and, after a bit of creative engineering and the necessary permitting, they built the underwater path. It’s now nicknamed the “Jesus Bridge.”

The abundant rainforest flora and fauna never let up. A kaleidoscope of greens is interrupted only by splashes of bright orange, purple and yellow across the seemingly countless varieties of trees, plants and flowers. Then add the monkeys swinging in the trees, the orange, black and yellow-billed toucans and the massive capybaras—the world’s largest rodents, which are the size of miniature pigs—and it was golf unlike anywhere I’d ever seen.

At first, I was surprised by the immaculate conditioning, but, after getting to know the Malzonis, I shouldn’t have been. They hired Rick Holanda as their director of grounds, and he is absolutely perfect for the job. Holanda had a prior stint at Santapazienza before making stops at Oakmont, Shadow Creek, Aronimink, Merion and Scottsdale National. The Malzonis convinced him to return in 2018 to oversee the Fazio updates. Holanda had recently married a Brazilian woman, and he laughingly told me that maybe Paulo and his dad had convinced her to come back to Brazil from Arizona and to drag him along. Today, Holanda has a well-trained staff, most of whom have been with the club for half a decade or more.

Although an invitation is extremely rare, the Malzonis clearly love to host. My wife might play twice a year at most, but Paulo insisted she join us, saying it wasn’t about how well she played but about the camaraderie of the game. Hard to argue with that. So we played 10 leisurely holes with Paulo and his wife, Erika, before settling in for a memorable lunch that has ruined pineapples and mangoes in the U.S. forever for me and Melissa.

After the round, we retired to our on-site accommodations near the clubhouse. I meandered through the wooden hallways stuffed with hundreds of pieces of collectible golf art and memorabilia. A first-edition copy of Bobby Jones’ seminal book Down the Fairway, among a dozen other clearly handpicked titles on my nightstand, confirmed that this was a level of hospitality I’d never seen.

Over caipirinhas and another mouthwatering meal of local ingredients at Paulo and Erika’s home, we fell deep into conversations on places we’ve seen and courses we’ve enjoyed. Even though we never wanted the night to end, at one point I couldn’t help but think about getting home so I could tell anyone who would listen about the best 18 holes in South America.