Vinpearl - Phu Quoc

KN Golf Links Cam Ranh gets Shark’s seal of approval Greg Norman said during his latest visit to Vietnam that KN Golf Links Cam Ranh’s breadth of character will make for an experience unlike any other in the booming golf nation. "The scale and natural topography of the property lends itself beautifully to a great variety of golf holes," Mr. Norman said while playing with the course’s owner — KN Investment Group Chairman Le Van Kiem — and other influential figures in an invitation-only tournament earlier this month. "It plays links because there’s a lot of up and down and natural contouring to the layout, so you get these sensational visuals from tee boxes especially and really cool run-off areas where the ball can roll and turn. It’s a lot of fun already." Scheduled to officially open later this year, KN Golf Links Cam Ranh will be Norman's third course in Vietnam (the other two being: Bluffs Ho Tram Strip and Danang Dunes) and the first in Cam Ranh, a new resort destination taking shape along an 8-kilometer stretch of coastline less than an hour’s flight from Ho Chi Minh City. The span is dominated by spectacular white sand dunes and is within minutes of an international airport that by May will be home to a new, US $163 million terminal. Norman’s 104th creation is located at the southernmost end of that long and gently curving sweep, interrupted only by a ruggedly beautiful headland and where the height of some of the terrain makes for a number of remarkable viewpoints. KN Golf Links Cam Ranh is routed through many of those spots. Two of Norman’s favorites are at the 10th and 15th holes, a pair of par-4s that play downhill toward azure ocean waters and three small islands about 10 kilometers offshore. But what one of the greatest golfers of all time likes most about the 7,165-yard, par-72 layout is its playability. “You can make a course difficult, but you can also make it so people can get around on their own skills,” said Mr. Norman, who was known as The Great White Shark during his playing days and held the No. 1 ranking for a remarkable 331 weeks. “What’s clear to me here, especially after observing a range of players have a go at it, is that anyone can play all 18 holes.” Managed with consultation from IMG, KN Golf Links Cam Ranh is among 31 courses in Vietnam in some stage of development and the third golf facility developed by Mr. Kiem, whose company also owns and operates Long Thanh Golf Club near Ho Chi Minh City and Long Vien Golf Club in Vientiane, Laos. “There is a reason Greg Norman Golf Course Design is recognized as the premier signature golf course design firm in the world,” said Mr. Kiem, who represented Vietnam in golf in the 1999 SEA Games. “His design philosophy of ‘least disturbance’ — whereby he effectively utilizes the surrounding environment while highlighting natural features — has given golfers so many world-class courses. “KN Golf Links Cam Ranh is Mr. Norman’s latest masterpiece, and perhaps his most distinct links-style golf course in Asia, if not the world.” When finished, KN Golf Links Cam Ranh will be the first milestone in the inaugural phase of KN Paradise, an 800-hectare hospitality venture that’s also slated to include a suite of hotels, an array of real estate opportunities and entertainment options, and at least nine more holes designed by Norman. “I could not be more pleased with how this project is coming together,” Mr. Kiem said. “It fills me with pride and I cannot wait for the rest of the world to see it and experience it.”

Top 25 Golf Courses of Vietnam 2018 We normally revise our various rankings every two years but occasionally, when circumstances dictate, we’ll update a listing within that time span, especially if a new data source comes to our attention or if there’s such a high level of golfing activity within a particular region or country that it would remiss of us not to reassess things more expeditiously. As there’s a lot going on these days on the golf front in Vietnam, we’re reappraising the country less than fifteen months after our previous chart was updated, expanding it to a Top 25 and refreshing the positions. Across Asia, nearly 200 new golf facilities have been unveiled in 24 different countries since 2010 and there are currently more than 170 golf projects at various stages of development so the entire continent, and not just Vietnam, is a hotspot of golfing activity at the moment. Even though we’re unsure of the exact number of Asia’s new and proposed facilities that are attributable to Vietnam, we’re pretty certain it’s an inordinately high percentage of the overall total. As evidence of this, we mentioned in our November 2016 Vietnam article that architects Schmidt & Curley – who seem to specialise in ultra-large golfing enterprises in Asia – have just started on the first two 18-hole layouts within an enormous ten-course initiative near Dong Hoi. Additionally, a new Brian Curley layout is due to open soon near the World Heritage site at Halong Bay. There are currently around forty courses available to golfers around the country but that number will easily be doubled in the next few years if a national golf development plan comes to fruition and is completed in its entirety – it really is hard to believe it was only twenty-five years ago that the nation’s first modern golf course opened for play at the King’s Island Resort in 1993. The Greg Norman-designed course at Bluffs Ho Tram Strip remains our Vietnamese number 1, a position it’s held since entering our rankings in 2015. Our US Consultant Fergal O’Leary played here last year and his opinion was “the Bluffs course is routed around wonderful sand dunes with the land for the back nine being much more interesting for golf.” He also thought the course might benefit from a couple of refinements: “new tees to add some angles to the holes and a comprehensive removal of vegetation across the smothered sand dunes. Thankfully the club is working on these improvements.” The highest new entry in our last chart update at number 4 was the Ocean course at FLC Quy Nhon Beach & Golf Resort, a Nicklaus Design layout that now moves up one place to number 3. It doesn’t quite make the runner-up slot because that’s now occupied by its stablemate at FLC Quy Nhon, the Schmidt & Curley-designed Mountain course, which comes straight in at the number 2 position. Carpeted throughout in all-Platinum paspalum, the Mountain layout is set in the hillside above the Ocean course, where sixteen of the fairways enable golfers to enjoy a direct visual connection with the coastline. It’s worth noting that both courses at FLC Quy Nhon were built in record time by Flagstick, a Schmidt-Curley Design spinoff company that’s become one of Asia’s top golf construction firms, and they now comprise the exciting 36-hole golfing component of a massive residential venture overlooking Nhon Ly Beach and the South China Sea on Vietnam’s eastern seaboard. Surprisingly, only two other courses make an upward move in our new Vietnamese listings. The first of these is Ba Na Hills (up one to 4) near Da Nang, Luke Donald’s inaugural course design in conjunction with IMG, and the second layout is the 18-hole Lake course at Sky Lake Resort & Golf Club, an hour’s drive southwest of Hanio, which rises a commendable eight places to number 12. Another Greg Norman design about to open in the second quarter of this year (according to IMG, who will manage the course) is the initial 18-hole layout at Cam Ranh Links Golf Resort in southeast Vietnam, sited next to Cam Ranh international airport. It’s part of an ambitious 2,000-acre seaside development that includes multiple high-end hotels, luxury villas, an upscale marina, entertainment zone and theme park. There’s more than a fair chance this new facility will feature in our next chart update so we’ll be keeping a very close eye on it between now and then. Rank/ To view further details of our newly updated Vietnam Top 25 rankings click the link. We always like to know what you think of our re-ranked national listings so please make use of the “Respond to this article” link at the top or at the bottom of this page if you’d like to get in touch regarding our newly enlarged Vietnam Top 25. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses

Top 100 Golf Courses of Asia 2018 Welcome to our inaugural rankings of the Top 100 Golf Courses of Asia. Since the new millennium, the development of new courses in Asia has reached a remarkable number. Among these new courses are layouts aimed at holding events on the Asian and European Tours, along with resort courses attracting tourists from abroad. However, in South Korea, most new courses are owned by private golf clubs whose focus is on satisfying Seoul’s celebrities. In some cases, these private clubs also offer nine public access holes so non-members can also pay-and-play at these private 27-hole facilities. Woo Jeong Hills (#26), Pinx (#91) and Nine Bridges (#9) were the first Korean golf clubs to be actively promoted via the Korean media to the world at large. Regulations were strict at that time, development of the coastline was not permitted, and the course had to include water across more than 3% of the site’s overall area. However, since 2008 the development regulations have been relaxed and new courses are appearing in wonderful locations overlooking the sea, such as South Cape (#3) and Pine Beach (#39). South Cape genuinely deserves to be higher rated than Nine Bridges, despite Nine Bridges being much more highly acclaimed in GOLF Magazine’s latest World Top 100. Whistling Rock (ranked #10) is an original Ted Robinson Jr. design, but since 2016, Tom Doak's Renaissance Design team has reinstated the strategic and aesthetic qualities of classic architecture, reviving this delightful mountain course. The start of Chinese golf course history began in 1985, but recently issued regulations by the Chinese government for golf courses were shocking. 100 courses were destroyed and many lost their operational rights. Some golfers will remember the former World Top 100 ranked Stone Forest Leaders Peak course, laid out by Schmidt-Curley Design within a spectacular UNESCO world heritage site. Unfortunately the course no longer exists. Various Chinese clubs that were cleared by the government to operate were instructed by the state to relinquish some holes for environmental policy reasons, such as developing windbreaks. Even Shanqin Bay, #4 in the new Asian Top 100 and the only Chinese course ranked in the World Top 100, has also lost a fairway to the planting of a windbreak forest. Despite the elimination of much of the corruption surrounding the illegal building of golf courses, it’s hard to understand what these central government policies actually mean and whether or not there will be an end. Vietnam is now attracting attention instead of China for all the right reasons. The Bluffs Ho Tram Strip (ranked #7) is a course laid out in a sand dune area with elevation changes of 150 feet. However, as Fergal O'Leary has also commented, the layout and routing of holes 4 and 15 are peculiar. In order for the club to become a true World Top 100 contender, improvements to these two holes are essential. The FLC Quy Nhon Mountain course (#12), designed by Brian Curley, also received high praise. Additionally, Brian has laid out a course at Halong Bay from where there are views of the World Heritage site’s towering limestone pillars, topped with woodland rising up from the sparkling waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. This new FLC Halong Bay development will celebrate the grand opening later this year. Vietnam is blessed with a wonderful coastal sand dune area that stretches for more than 600 miles. In the future, world-class golf courses will be born in these sand dunes. But, unfortunately, in Vietnam’s ongoing development, residential and resort hotel building is the main focus rather than golf courses. Therefore building developers are commandeering sites facing the coastline. The oversupply of housing developments is deeply concerning for the future of golf tourism. Courses around Bangkok in Thailand have many courses that feature water hazards as strategies due to the area’s wetlands. The premier course in Thailand, Ayodhya Links (#11), has been designed with water in play across all eighteen holes. It’s not an easy course to objectively rate. The Lodhi course at Delhi Golf Club in India (#93) has been renovated and improved down the years, but generally the number of Indian golfers is small by comparison to the country’s long golfing history. Wonderful courses have been developed in Southeast Asia, but many are design concepts that are more conscious of PGA tournaments rather than creating a club atmosphere, which to my mind is a prerequisite for fathering genuine golf club culture for future generations. More than 1,000 golf courses were built in Japan during the bubble economy of the 1980s, leaving no spare acreage to develop new courses. Consequently over the last twenty years or so Japan has missed out on the new millennium’s architectural “Golden Age”. Tokyo Classic (#31) is one of Japan’s first new courses to be introduced for decades and it was sympathetically fashioned by Nicklaus Design. However, just as much attention was paid to creating a genuine club that combines golf with horse riding and polo. Coore & Crenshaw’s redesign work at Yokohama Country Club West Course (#5) received high praise from many raters. Before being redesigned, Yokohama was not even on the nomination list for inclusion in the Top 50 golf courses in Japan. However, the unique topography and elevation of the terrain was such an asset that we felt it could be a top-class course if someone completed a great renovation – and so it came to pass. Gil Hanse is now renovating the traditional Japanese dual greens at Tokyo Golf Club (#8) and he’s also performing the remodelling at Karuizawa Golf Club (#36). Logan Fazio’s renovation of the Kasumigaseki East course (#13) disappointed some Japanese raters. The essence of the East course centres on the classical dual greens and bunkering. However, post renovation, raters felt that the East had been transformed into a modern Florida-styled course, in fact, respected course commentator, Darius Oliver, formerly rated Kasumigaseki East above Tokyo GC and Kawana (Fuji) (#2). You can judge for yourself when the world’s spotlight shines on the East course at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Masa Nishijima Rank/ Producing this inaugural Asian Top 100 was extremely challenging. Selecting just one hundred courses from forty or so Asian countries not only required breadth of knowledge but also many lengthy debates. If you'd like to share an opinion, then let us know by using the “Respond to this article” link at the top or at the bottom of this page. To view further details of the Top 100 Golf Courses of Asia click the link.