Located an hour’s drive north of Kobe, the 18-hole layout at Pine Lake Golf Club is an impressive mid-1980s Robert Trent Jones Jnr design, one of more than twenty Japanese projects the American architect has worked on down the years.
Overall rating
Located an hour’s drive north of Kobe, the 18-hole layout at Pine Lake Golf Club is an impressive mid-1980s Robert Trent Jones Jnr design, one of more than twenty Japanese projects the American architect has worked on down the years.
Pine Lake
Located an hour’s drive north of Kobe, the 18-hole layout at Pine Lake Golf Club is an impressive 1984 Robert Trent Jones Junior-design, one of more than twenty Japanese projects the American architect has worked on down the years.
Topping out a just over 7,000 yards from the back markers, Pine Lake is a serious test if you’re bold enough to play from the tips. Although hilly, the course is walkable and it’s a glorious ramble through pine-flanked hills and valleys where every hole is compartmentalised from another.
Tom Doak commented in the Confidential Guide to Golf Courses as follows: “One of the best modern courses I saw in Japan, Pine Lake is set in unspoiled mountain surroundings, and the back nine has some excellent golf holes to boot. Even the sleeper parts of the course are well-shaped to minimize artificial appearance, with the exception of the par-4 3rd, which feels like a giant slalom run.”
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The latest ranking of the Top 100 Golf Courses in the World serves as the ultimate global golf bucket list. Most members of our World Top 100 Panel are seasoned golfers, each playing 20-30 of these courses annually while travelling extensively over decades to form their opinions on others. We recognise that opinions vary—even among our panel members. Rankings are subjective, and there are undoubtedly 50 or more courses in the UK and USA alone that could easily fit onto this list. Links Golf Pilgrimages The rankings
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