Top 20 Golf Courses of Indonesia 2015

Top 20 Golf Courses of Indonesia 2015

Bali National makes a spectacular return to the Indonesian rankings

Top 100 Golf Courses first began ranking Indonesian courses in 2009, when Bali Golf & Country Club was placed at number 8 in the national chart. It dropped one place to number 9 when the rankings were updated two years later then it fell out of the listings altogether in 2013, due to a renovation that caused the lengthy closure of the 18-hole layout.

The extensive makeover, which allowed the construction of additional residential units for the new owners, entailed architect Neil Haworth of Nelson & Haworth overseeing the relocation of the clubhouse, the repositioning of holes, the rebuilding of tees and greens, the sand capping of fairways and the relining of lakes.

Now, two years further on, the revamped layout at Bali National Golf Club (the facility has been rebranded) enters the first edition of our extended Indonesian Top 20 at position number 4, the highest new entry.

The three places above Bali National remain unchanged; indeed they’re occupied by the same courses that featured in the first three positions of our inaugural chart six years ago. Truth be told, it will take something very special to dislodge Greg Norman’s Nirwana Bali, Jack Nicklaus’s Taman Dayu and Gary Player’s Ria Bintan (Ocean) courses from the top spots in the Indonesian table.

The next new entry on our list arrives at number 10 and it belongs to Rancamaya, an early 1990s design from Ted Robinson Jnr. Although most of Ted’s work has taken place in the United States, he’s also been involved in a couple of other Asian projects – Pinx and Whistling Rock – which both feature in our South Korean listings.

Three of the remaining eight newcomers in our newly expanded Top 20 follow this course into our chart at positions 11 to 13. The first two, Jagorawi (New) and Gunung Geulis (West) are Thomson, Wolveridge and Perrett productions which operate within large, well-established golf complexes whilst the third layout, Imperial, is a quirky Des Muirfield design that will bring a smile to the face of even the most hardened golf critic.