Belize is starting to take golf seriously

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For years, every golfer I spoke to about Belize eventually asked some version of the same question. They liked the weather, the sea, the pace of life and the idea of spending winter somewhere that did not feel like a slightly warmer version of home. Then came the entirely reasonable objection: where am I supposed to golf?

There was no point pretending Belize had an answer comparable to Florida or Arizona. Roaring River offered a genuine, distinctly Belizean round in Cayo, and a small private course served the community at Consejo Shores, but golf was never a strong reason to choose the country. If the game sat at the centre of your winter, Belize required a compromise. That compromise is disappearing quickly enough that golfers should pay attention before the story becomes obvious.

Balam Golf changed the answer when it opened near Placencia this year. It is a proper nine-hole course with several teeing positions on each hole, so playing a second loop does not feel like simply retracing the first. The day begins with a short boat ride across the lagoon to the course, which is a far better way to arrive at a first tee than crawling through traffic past another Florida strip mall.

Balam also has something Belize has been missing: a place where golf can be the point of the afternoon without consuming the entire day. Its Maya Golf range is an open-air, target-based setup on the third level of the clubhouse, with food and drinks served at the bays. It is closer in spirit to Topgolf than to the old bucket-of-balls experience, although it is intentionally simple and low-tech. You can work on your swing if you wish. You can also bring people who do not own a handicap, order lunch and allow the accuracy of your advice to decline with each drink.

Maya Golf matters because courses are expensive to build and even more expensive to keep in good condition in a tropical country. The game often establishes itself first through ranges, simulators and short formats, which give people a way in without requiring several hundred acres. Placencia already has a SkyTrak simulator at the Flying Pig, while target ranges and other golf-style venues have appeared on Ambergris Caye. Nobody is flying to Belize to spend a week on a simulator, nor should they, but someone living here for several months wants somewhere to swing a club on an ordinary Tuesday. This is how a golf culture begins.

Roaring River still has an important place in that story. It is a compact executive course played through the jungle, with alternate tees creating an 18-hole round. It is unpretentious, affordable and unmistakably Belizean. The wildlife has been rumoured to include crocodiles at one point, which at least gives the golfer a respectable explanation for declining to retrieve a ball. It may not be the course that sells someone on Belize, but it proved long ago that the game could survive here.

The course that will change outside perceptions is Caye Chapel. The private island had a golf course years ago, but the entire property is now being remade around the Four Seasons resort and residences. The new Greg Norman-designed championship course is being introduced in phases ahead of the resort opening, together with a shorter par-three course. It is private club golf, so access will remain limited, but the ambition is on a completely different scale from anything Belize has offered before.

Caye Chapel has produced enough announcements over the years to make a little caution sensible. I will believe every final detail when we can walk it. The course itself is real, the project is advancing and its earliest players are beginning to see it. Those people will have the rare pleasure of forming their own opinion before the course has a reputation, a ranking or a familiar set of arguments attached to every hole. Golfers spend a great deal of time travelling to places because somebody else has already declared them important. There is something much more interesting about arriving first.

Other Belize developments have included golf in their plans, particularly in the north. Some will be built and some may remain very handsome drawings. I have worked around development for too long to confuse a rendering with a tee time. Still, developers do not keep reserving large pieces of land for golf unless they believe the demand is coming. A few years ago, golf was almost absent from the conversation. Now it is appearing in projects at several different levels of the market.

The wider country has been moving in this direction throughout the time I have lived here. Better resorts have opened, major international brands have arrived, air access has improved and places once considered remote are now active property markets. Golf is following that growth because visitors and owners increasingly expect the same depth of amenities they would find elsewhere in the Caribbean.

This is especially relevant for Canadians. More people are reconsidering the assumption that a winter home must be in the United States, but many do not want to abandon the routines that made those winters enjoyable. Not that many years ago, a serious interest in golf could end the Belize discussion rather quickly. Today it changes the discussion.

Belize still will not satisfy someone who wants a different championship course every morning. That golfer should wait as things continue to develop fast. For someone who wants to play regularly while also enjoying the life that brought them to Belize in the first place, the country has become far more plausible. Balam can be played now. Roaring River offers a completely different inland round. Caye Chapel is beginning its life at the top end of the market, and more courses are likely to follow if development continues on its present course.

I would never advise someone to buy a property because a golf course has been promised nearby. Ask what is open, who can use it and how access actually works. A course under discussion has no value to your winter until somebody can hand you a scorecard.

The appeal lies in the timing. Belize is still at the beginning of its golf story. New courses rarely arrive without years of received opinion, crowded tee sheets and somebody insisting you must play the back tees to understand the architect. Belize still offers the pleasure of discovery.

For the first time, the question is moving beyond whether you can golf in Belize. It is becoming which new course you will play first. That is a substantial change, and golfers who come now may have the best stories to tell about how it began.

For more information about real estate opportunities in Belize click HERE.

Will Mitchell is the Canadian-born Regional Owner of RE/MAX Belize, overseeing 13 offices and more than 100 agents. He has been visiting Belize for two decades and living there for nearly 15 years.