"These are two fantastic, expertly designed courses that have aged gracefully," golf course architect Brian Curley said of Pelican Hill's Ocean North and Ocean South layouts when the renovation was announced last October. He wasn't describing a facelift. He was describing the first real rework those two courses have had since Tom Fazio's original design team spent two years re-perfecting them back in 2005.
If you live up the hill from the resort, you've probably absorbed some version of this story secondhand: Pelican Hill is under construction, something about the golf courses, maybe something about the spa. What's harder to piece together from a distance is that the project is actually running on two different clocks, and only one of them is close to striking twelve.
The South Course Is Playable Again
Ocean South went first. Construction firm McDonald & Sons handled the physical work under Curley's direction, focused on bunker restoration and realignment, tee expansion and leveling, green surround repairs, cart path widening, and raising more than 2,000 fairway sprinkler heads to even out conditioning across the layout. According to the resort's own tee time booking page, the South Course reopened in July 2026 after that restoration.
That's a meaningful reopening if you've played the course before. This is the first structural update Ocean South has had in over two decades, and the scope wasn't cosmetic. Tee boxes were leveled, not just replanted. Green surrounds were rebuilt, not just mowed differently. If your last round there was pre-2026, the course underfoot is measurably different now, even if the routing hasn't changed.
The North Course Is Still Mid-Surgery
Ocean North is the course still in progress, and this is the part of the story that matters if you're trying to plan a fall round or just wondering why the back nine has looked half-torn-up every time you've driven past on San Joaquin Hills Road.
Work on the full 36-hole project began in November 2025 and was scoped as roughly a 50-week construction and grow-in cycle. To keep the resort playable throughout, the renovation is staged so only nine holes close at a time, which means 27 of the 36 holes remain open on any given day even mid-project. As of this fall, Ocean South is done and Ocean North is the one still absorbing that rolling nine-hole closure, with completion targeted for late fall 2026.
That timing matters right now specifically. Late fall 2026 is not a distant milestone from where the calendar sits today. It's a couple of months out, not next year. If you've been avoiding Pelican Hill until "the renovation is finished," you're closer to that finish line than the marketing language might suggest, at least for the golf course half of the project.
The Renovation Under the Renovation
Here's the distinction that gets lost when people talk about Pelican Hill "finishing" this fall: the golf courses are one project, and the resort itself is running a separate, longer one.
The course work is part of what Marriott and the resort have been calling a year-long renaissance, and the golf renovation is the visible, dated piece of it. But the broader renaissance touches the hotel proper too. Locker rooms began closing in May 2026, with completion targeted for late July. The men's and women's lounges, the salon, and the spa boutique started what the resort described as discreet enhancements in June 2026, with services running uninterrupted and the layout staying the same. None of that runs on the same 50-week clock as the golf courses.
And there's a third clock underneath both of those: the resort is set to be re-flagged as a St. Regis property in 2027. That's not happening this fall. It's not even happening this year. But it explains why "renovation" at Pelican Hill isn't really one event with one reopening date. It's a golf course project closing out in the coming months, layered under a slower-moving hotel refresh, layered under a brand transition that's still more than a year out.
If you're a member or a regular guest, the practical read is simple. The course you can measure and plan around, the one with an actual completion window, is Ocean North. The broader resort work is still unfolding on a timeline nobody outside Marriott has published in full.
The Recreation That Was Never Under Construction
While all of that has been unfolding behind Pelican Hill's gates, the free public recreation half a mile away hasn't paused for a single phase of it.
The Newport Coast Community Center at 6401 San Joaquin Hills Road has been open the entire time, running its own calendar that has nothing to do with course closures or spa refreshes. It's been there since 2007, and it has nine dedicated pickleball courts, six outdoors and three indoors. The outdoor courts are free and open to the public with no reservation required. The indoor courts require joining a paid league, but the gymnasium itself is lined for basketball, volleyball, and pickleball on top of that, and the center runs its own roster of classes for karate, basketball, and gymnastics.
None of that has a renovation timeline because none of it has needed one. It's just been sitting there, fully operational, the entire time the resort next door has been rotating nine holes at a time through construction.
The same is true of the trail that starts almost at the same address. Buck Gully Reserve has an access point right off San Joaquin Hills Road near the Community Center, with a second trailhead across the canyon near the intersection of Poppy Avenue and 5th in Corona del Mar. The full point-to-point route between those two ends runs about 2.6 miles one way, or 5.2 miles round trip if you're walking it both directions. The Irvine Ranch Conservancy manages the reserve and runs docent-led naturalist hikes through it. AllTrails lists December through October as the best window to hike it, which covers essentially the entire year except a narrow stretch, and one loop variant within the reserve doesn't allow dogs, so it's worth checking which segment you're on before you bring one.
Reading the Two Calendars
None of this is really about golf or pickleball on their own. It's about knowing which clock you're reading. The Pelican Hill golf renovation has a targeted completion window this fall, and it's the closest of the three. The broader resort renaissance, the one that eventually lands on a St. Regis flag, runs well past that into 2027. And the recreation that costs nothing and requires no membership, the courts and the trailhead sitting on the same stretch of San Joaquin Hills Road, was never on either clock to begin with.
If you've been waiting for Pelican Hill to be "done" before you engage with it again, the targeted completion of Ocean North's construction phase this fall is the signal to watch for, not the hotel refresh and not the eventual rebrand. And if you haven't walked over to the Community Center courts or picked up the Buck Gully trailhead next to it, that option was never waiting on anyone's construction schedule.
This is the kind of granular, season-by-season tracking we do anyway for the neighborhoods we work in, right down to which nine holes are open on a given week. If you want that same level of detail on your own stretch of Newport Coast, Team Todd Davis is easy to reach. Let's Do This Right.
