The Country Club - Philippines

In the mid-1990s, several like-minded individuals had the vision to see that a tract of scrubland scarred by deep gullies to the south of Manila might just, with the right architect in place, make a good golf course.

Tom Weiskopf was the man entrusted to transform the land into one of the best golfing layouts in the country and he duly accomplished the task in some style a couple of years later, routing the fairways around the natural contours of the terrain.

The Country Club is a very private facility that’s a training base for the Philippine golf teams and they put their home advantage to good use when the course was used as the venue for the golf tournament of the 2005 Southeast Asian Games. After all the scorecards were tallied up, the host nation claimed individual and team gold medals in the men’s competition and individual and team silver medals in the women’s event.

In 2014, The Country Club hosted the Solaire Open, an Asian Tour event, which Canada’s Richard T. Lee won by one shot from Plaphol Chawalit of Thailand. Two years later, the Philippine Open, one of the oldest golf tournaments in the world, was held at the club for the first time, with Steve Lewton from England winning the event by one shot, posting a winning score of 287, one under par for four rounds.