Britannia Golf Club at the Hyatt Regency on Grand Cayman

Anyone who has ever lived on a Caribbean island knows that improvisation and flexibility are important, if you want to keep your sanity.

The people at the Hyatt Regency knew this when they hired Jack Nicklaus to build the first golf course on Grand Cayman, the Britannia Golf Club.

With little room on the small island, which is six miles wide and 22 miles long, Nicklaus and his team designed a golf course that would provide as much variety as possible in such a small area.

So essentially they designed two courses in one: a nine-hole regulation course that can be played twice, from different tees, and an 18-hole executive course.

Actually, if you want to be technical, you can play it three ways, the third way being with a restricted-flight "Cayman ball" that travels about three-quarters of the distance of a regular ball. But they don't do that much anymore.

It's a fairly ingenious set-up. A par-5 on the regulation course, for example, is turned into three par-3s on those days it's played as an executive layout.

On days when it is played as a nine-hole regulation course, the tee boxes for the executive course are hidden by the many mounds Nicklaus installed, so that they are hidden.

"It's a really cool design that way," said Head Professional Dave Johnson.