SEA Games (A & B)

Top 100 Golf Courses updates its Southeast Asia rankings Earlier this month, we published the second of three Asian chart releases, reporting on the South Asia countries of India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This ranking announcement now concentrates on the Southeast nations of Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. In this article, we report on the best golf courses to be found within a huge geographic area of four and a half million square kilometres, where approximately 650 million people live. We feature exactly two hundred courses across the eight countries that we’re revising so we think we have things pretty well covered across this subregion. It’s not the easiest of geographical areas to keep a close eye on so we’re grateful for our reliable network of contributors keeping us fully informed. In particular, Kimi Hoshiyama, our China and Southern Asia correspondent consistently goes the extra mile on our behalf to ensure we stay ahead of the game in this part of the golfing world. Indonesia The top four positions in our Indonesia Top 30 remain unchanged, so the Jack Nicklaus Signature course at Taman Daya Golf Club & Resort near Surabaya holds on to its No. 1 status. Unveiled in 1995, this resort layout is set on a rolling landscape with deep valleys and drainage canals adding to the playing interest. It was once the exclusive preserve of members and their guests but green fee-paying golfers can now play here with a little prior notice. Taman Daya Golf Club & Resort The highest of four new entries arrives at No. 15 and it’s the 18-hole layout at Parahyangan Golf Bandung, which opened for business in 2018. Laid out by Bob Moore from JMP Golf Design Group, the course sits thirty kilometres from Bandung, where two distinctive 9-hole circuits have been routed around terraced rice paddies and fish farms, totally integrating golf with its environment. Parahyangan Golf Bandung Only nine courses make an upward move in the new listings and two of them progress four places. The first of these layouts is Riverside Golf Club, located midway between Jakarta and Bogor (at #13), which is a Bob Harrison design from when he worked with Greg Norman. The second is the Sea View course at the 36-hole Bintan Lagoon Resort on Bintan Island (at #21), and this Jack Nicklaus Signature course overlooking the South China Sea fully complements Ian-Baker Finch’s Woodland track at the resort. Rank/ To view the complete detailed list of the Top 30 Golf Courses of Indonesia click the link. Laos The landlocked country of Laos in the middle of the Southeast Asian Indochinese peninsula has a new No. 1 and it’s the 18-hole configuration of the Vientiane and Long Thanh nines at Long Thanh-Vientiane Golf Club, on the outskirts of the capital. Part of a large residential project that will eventually include a hotel, school and hospital, the development is due to have a fourth 9-hole circuit completed this year, enabling six different 18-hole combinations to be brought into play. Long Thanh-Vientiane Golf Club To view the complete detailed list of the Top 5 Golf Courses of Laos click the link. Malaysia Nine golfing layouts in our Top 40 remain in the same position as last time and one of the non-movers is our national No.1, the West course at TPC Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club, retaining the top spot for the fifth successive edition of our Malaysian rankings. Venue for the now discontinued CIMB Classic tournament between 2013 and 2018, this is a Nelson & Haworth design that was extensively renovated by Ted Parslow and Jason Winter to toughen it up at the start of the new millennium. TPC Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club - West course The biggest climber in the new listings is the course at Impian Golf & Country Club, reversing a three-place fall in our 2018 chart with a nine-place rise to No. 20. Designed by Ross Watson, the course is draped across a 142-acre property as two returning circuits, the Golden nine and the Negara nine, with a number of the holes carved through a hardwood tropical rainforest. Impian Golf & Country Club The first of two new entries appears at No. 32 and it’s the Jack Nicklaus and Jack Nicklaus II co-designed Legacy course at the 36-hole Forest City Golf Resort in Johor. In contrast to the tight Classic course which opened at the resort last year, the older Legacy layout is characterised by wide fairways that run through mangrove swamps bordering the Pulai River, with many of the holes flanked by these water hazards and sandy waste areas. To view the complete detailed list of the Top 40 Golf Courses of Malaysia click the link. Myanmar Our new No. 1 for Myanmar is the course at Myotha National Golf Club, which is an 18-hole layout from Schmidt-Curley Design that debuted in 2018, forming the sporting centrepiece of a master planned community outside Mandalay. Packed with dramatic elevation changes, this 8,000-yard goliath is grassed with Zoysia to help foster firm and fast playing conditions. Bunkers, in the words of Brian Curley, are “strong and bold, in keeping with the scale of the property,” while greens “are often large (with) strong slopes including backstops and bowls”. Myotha National Golf Club To view the complete detailed list of the Top 5 Golf Courses of Myanmar click the link. Philippines The Country Club course was ousted from the top rung of the Philippines Top 30 when we last re-appraised this country but it has immediately bounced back from the runner-up slot to regain the No. 1 position. Situated to the south of Manila, between Santa Rosa and Canlubang, this Tom Weiskopf-designed layout has recently been extended, allowing it to host major national events like the Philippine Open, with the last three editions of this event held here. The Country Club Only six other courses improve their chart standing and the one to make the biggest impact is Anvaya Cove Golf & Sport Club near Subic Bay, which gracefully glides up four places to No.3. Kevin Ramsey of Golfplan laid this one out within a substantial seaside residential development and there are two distinct 9-hole circuits, “Mountain” and “Seaside,” with the front nine set out around housing further inland, followed by a back nine that heads towards the shore before returning to the clubhouse. Anvaya Cove The highest new entry arrives at No. 16. and it’s the Tagaytay Midlands course at the Tagaytay Highlands resort mountain resort located around sixty-five kilometres south of downtown Manila. Developed in the mid-1990s as a retreat for those wanting to escape from the capital, the resort is split into three residential communities, with two of them, Highlands and Midlands, boasting their own 18-hole course. Such is the extreme terrain here, the two clubhouses are connected by a funicular transport system. To view the complete detailed list of the Top 30 Golf Courses of the Philippines click the link. Singapore Unfortunately, golf in Singapore has contracted in the last few years as the government has taken a rather hard-line stance of not renewing land leases with golf clubs. The national plan in the early 1990s was to increase the number of courses from 22 to 29 but there are now only fifteen still in operation. As a result of this decline, we’ve reduced our Top 15 to a Top 10. The Serapong course at Sentosa Golf Club maintains its strong grip on the No.1 berth at the top of the chart. Designed by Ron Fream of Golfplan back in the early 1980s, the layout was renovated fifteen years ago by current general manager Andrew Johnston when he worked with Bates Golf Design Group. Now he’s heading an in-house team that’s just embarked on an intensive 3-month upgrade, having only recently carried out a redesign of the Tanjong course. Sentosa - Serapong course The Sentosa’s fairway drainage is being improved, bunkers are to be relined and new white sand installed, greens are undergoing a “drill and fill” enhancement program, and tees are to be resized, re-lasered and re-grassed with Platinum Paspalum. It’s this sort of ambitious project which keeps Serapong ahead of the pack so, for the current host venue for the Singapore Open, upgrade work like this is totally understandable. The most impressive positive move in the rankings is made by the Dendro and Vanda nines at Orchid Country Club, which lies next to the Lower Seletar Reservoir, advancing four spots to No. 10. Host to the Singapore Open in 1999, the course was also used by the Asian Tour for the short-lived Singapore Classic professional tournament from 2010 to 2012. To view the complete detailed list of the Top 10 Golf Courses of Singapore click the link. Thailand Having started out with a Top 10 for this country ten years ago, we’ve gradually included additional courses to our Thai table to create a Top 50 chart. There’s been quite a shake-up with this, the fifth revision of our inaugural listing, as there are only five non-movers and eight new entries. The course at Ayodhya Links is still the national No.1, a position it’s held for the last eight years. Originally designed and built by Peter Thomson and Ross Perrett, the entire layout was subsequently raised by Founder/Chairman Pitak Intrawityanunt to prevent the possible recurrence of flood damage suffered in 2011. Ayodhya Links Our US Consultant Fergal O’Leary posted a review six months ago, saying “the greens have interesting shaping and certain pundits laud over them. I appreciated them for the setting they were in, and the character that they add. Some are better than others for sure… I was more captivated by the commendable chipping areas and the routing”. The highest new entry at #26 is Grand Prix Golf Club’s track which is located an hour’s drive north of Kanchanaburi. This golf facility was developed by Dr Prachin Eamlumnow, Chairman of the Bangkok International Motor Show, with holes laid out around a series of lakes in two returning 9-hole circuits. A sizeable river bisects the property, adding to the challenge, as do quite a number of split fairways and multi-tiered greens. Grand Prix Golf Club The biggest rise in chart position is made by the Rajjaprabha Dam Golf Course (up nineteen to #31), lying close to the Khao Sok National Park, where a dramatic 18-hole layout was carved from a dense rainforest by the electricity Generating Authority of Thailand at the start of the new millennium. It’s one of Thai golf’s best-kept secrets due to its remote location. To view the complete detailed list of the Top 50 Golf Courses of Thailand click the link. Vietnam Two years ago we added five courses to our Vietnam chart, fashioning a Top 25. Such is the pace of golfing progress in that country we’re now extending our standings to a Top 30 and, with two courses falling away from our last revision, we’re actually adding seven new tracks this time around. The big news is that the Greg Norman-designed course at Bluffs Ho Tram Strip holds off a very strong challenge from a couple of new 18-hole layouts that come crashing into the national chart at #2 and #3 to continue as the No. 1 course in Vietnam. A reviewer last year termed this “an outstanding course… very well-conditioned” with “a great variety of holes [and] green complexes [that] are beautifully engineered”. Bluffs Ho Tram Strip Tom Doak included Bluffs Ho Tram Strip as one of the eighteen “Gourmet’s Choice” courses in Volume 5 of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, with one of his co-authors, Masa Niishijima (our International Consultant), writing: “above all, The Bluffs makes good use of the unique dunes terrain, and at every hole you feel connected to the ocean, even if you can’t always see it”. Incredibly, only two tracks make any forward advance in our new table: the first is the Dunes course at the BRG Da Nang Golf Resort (up two to #4) which was Greg Norman’s first Vietnamese design when it opened a decade ago, and the second is the B and C nines at Chi Linh Star Golf & Country Club (up four to #14), where the first professional event (the Carlsberg Masters) in the north of the country was hosted back in 2004. BRG Da Nang - Dunes course The two highest-placed newcomers make their chart debut quite a bit ahead of the others. The course at Hoiana Shores Golf Club is a Robert Trent Jones Jr. design (new at #2) that opened just last year, situated close to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hoi An on a coastal property of pure sand. The architect describes his experience of working in the region as “a lovely treasure hunt that ends with us finding a golf course project hard by the sea. Where great land meets the sea, great golf can happen.” It seems like that’s exactly what has transpired here. Hoiana Shores Golf Club Hard on the heels of RTJ2’s new production, yet another Greg Norman course enters the chart at No.3. KN Golf Links Cam Ranh, Norman’s 3rd Vietnamese course and his 104th worldwide, is also situated on the South Central Coast of Vietnam, with fairways occupying a landscape dominated by enormous sand dunes. According to the designer, “the scale and natural topography of the property lends itself to a great variety of golf holes. It plays links because there’s a lot of up and down and natural contouring to the layout [and] it’s a lot of fun”. KN Golf Links Cam Ranh To view the complete detailed list of the Top 30 Golf Courses of Vietnam click the link. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses

Top 5 Golf Courses of Cambodia and Laos We extend our Southeast Asian rankings in the adjoining countries of Cambodia and Laos Cambodia Cambodia’s still very much an emerging Southeast Asian golf destination. In a country of fifteen million people which has taken four decades to recover from the genocide carried out by the 1970s Khmer Rouge government (when an estimated two million residents were killed during a brutal 5-year period), it’s astonishing that golf exists at all in a nation with such a troubled recent history. Top 100 Golf Courses has featured a couple of Cambodian courses for a while now, but we feel it’s time to shed some light on a few other recently constructed top-end facilities that have opened for business so we’ve created a new national Top 5 chart to showcase a handful of the best layouts available in and around the country’s two main golfing hotspots, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. There are still only 500 players registered with the Cambodian Golf Federation so golf is still seen by many as largely the preserve of visiting foreign tourists and businessmen. Still, it helps that the Prime Minister is a reasonably proficient player himself and somebody who sees the value in having his administration help developers provide a golfing infrastructure that enhances the overall tourism product. Our number 1 Cambodian course remains the Nick Faldo design at Angkor Golf Resort situated close to Siem Reap International Airport. Unveiled in 2008, the course is carpeted in Seashore Paspalum, allowing consistent, all-year round playing conditions from tee to green. Measuring 7,279 yards from the back markers, it hosted the Handa Faldo Cambodian Classic on the Asian Tour four years after first opening. Two other ranked courses are located within a short drive from Angkor. To the east, at number 2, Siem Reap Booyoung is a big-budget venture that’s undergone several changes of ownership since debuting in 2009. To the west, at number 3, the course at Phokeethra Country Club has been in operation since 2007, when the Cambodian Open was also contested at the club the same year. All three layouts are similar in that a lot of soil was shifted to shape a landscape that’s largely level, with substantial water hazards now featuring at most of the holes. There’s also plenty of sand to contend with and no doubt, in time, the many thousands of trees that have been planted will play their part in the defence of the courses as they continue to fully mature. Positions 4 and 5 in the new national chart are occupied by a couple of courses that lie within easy access of Phnom Penh city centre: LYP Group’s Garden City (at number 4) is another all-paspalum grassed layout that’s currently managed by IMG and Grand Phnom Penh (at number 5) is a Nicklaus Design track which acts as the sporting focal point in a big residential and commercial project to the north of the capital. Rank/ To view further details of the Top 5 Golf Courses of Cambodia click the link. Laos Lao, or Lao People’s Democratic Republic to give the nation its full title, is a landlocked country in the middle of the Southeast Asian Indochinese peninsula, bordering Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and China. Lao’s been under communist rule since the mid-1970s but it’s gradually beginning to adopt a more outward looking approach, as evidenced by its membership of the World Trade Organization in 2013. Tourism is scheduled to account for around US$1.5 billion of the nation’s annual income by 2020 as visitor numbers continue to grow (around 4.5 million international visitors are estimated to have arrived last year) with temples, trekking, wildlife trails and World Heritage sites all presenting themselves as obvious attractions. Still, there’s no doubt that new golf facilities also have a role to play in boosting the intake of potential visitors. As with Cambodia, Top 100 Golf Courses has listed a pair of Laos courses for a few years now and we think it’s about time people were made aware of a few other high class golf facilities that have recently thrown their doors open to the public, allowing the formation of our new Top 5 chart for Laos - admittedly, that represents more than half the total number of courses in the entire country but we certainly think they’re all worthy of national recognition. And so, new at number 1, the heavily-wooded course at Luang Prabang Golf Club is now our top track in Laos. Hewn from thickly forested terrain, this 6-year-old layout sits close to the Mekong River in a mountainous region where every hole on the course is played in almost total seclusion. An eminently walkable course with only moderate changes in elevation, it’s one for true golfing nature lovers. Three hundred kilometres to the south, just outside Vientianne, the lakeside course at Dansavanh Nam Ngum Resort drops down one position to the runner-up slot at number 2. On the other side of the capital, Long Thanh-Vientiane Golf Club also falls one place to number 3, with this course being the first of two 18-hole layouts planned for a massive residential development that’s due to open in 2020. A new entry at number 4, the three nines at SEA Games Golf Club were constructed specifically for the 25th edition of the Southeast Asian Games in 2009 and our final newcomer at number 5 is the layout at Lao Country Club (formerly known as the Youth Garden Golf Course) which recently underwent a substantial renovation to bring the course up to modern resort standards. To view further details of the Top 5 Golf Courses of Laos click the link. If you’ve any strong views on either of our updated Asian rankings then please get in touch with us by using the “Respond to this article” link at the top or at the bottom of this page. We always welcome feedback, whether it’s positive or negative, so don’t hold back on sharing your thoughts. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses