Los Canales de Plottier Nicklaus Design

Plottier sits just outside Neuquén city in Argentine Patagonia, where the Rio Limay and Rio Neuquén converge before feeding the vast reservoir system that defines this high-desert landscape. The region is better known for its wine production and fly-fishing than for golf, which makes the ambition behind a Nicklaus Design project here all the more striking. Los Canales — "the canals" — takes its name from the irrigation channels that transformed this arid plateau into agricultural land, and that layered history of water engineering runs through the course's very identity.

Nicklaus Design layouts in South America tend to work with dramatic natural topography rather than against it, and Patagonia offers plenty of raw material: volcanic soils, sweeping winds off the Andean foothills, and wide skies that make distances deceptive. Expect strategic bunkering and ground-game considerations that reward local knowledge of how the wind moves through the valley corridors.

As a resort and residential development anchoring a growing community, Los Canales represents a broader push to establish golf as part of Patagonia's upscale leisure identity, alongside skiing at Chapelco and world-class trout fishing on the Limay.