40 course, drawing on the resources of the Saigon club, but in 1975, the course ceased to exist again. It was finally restored to play in its present form in 1994. During this period, Vietnam’s first modern course, the Vietnam Golf & Country Club in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) came into being. And since then, golf has spread up and down Vietnam. Originally, the logic behind golf in Vietnam was tourism. The country – which The Times recently called ‘Asia’s most intoxicating’ – is one of the world’s fastest-growing tourist destinations. From 2.1 million international visitors in 2000, Vietnam received 18 million in 2019, although it has dipped below 13 million post pandemic. South Korea, a golfing hotbed, is Vietnam’s largest source of guests. And it is obvious that firstly, a proportion of those tourists will be golfers, and secondly, as elsewhere in the world, that golfing visitors are, on average, high spenders. Within Asia, Thailand is, as is well known, the most successful golf tourism destination, with around 800,000 tourists visiting the country to play golf. China’s Hainan Island was another attempt to create an Asian golf tourism hub, but the country’s anti-corruption drive saw a severe crackdown on golf development, and consequently Hainan has fallen out of the headlines. Given the growth of tourism in Vietnam, and the country’s natural attributes – the country has 3,260 kilometres (2,000 miles) of coastline – it is hardly surprising that golf became a subject of conversation. Globetrotting architect Brian Curley, now of the newly-formed CurleyWagner firm, says: “I first went to Vietnam in about 2015. China had hit the buffers, and I had to pick up my ball and go somewhere else to do business. I had been hearing ‘Vietnam is going to build golf’ for some time, and I picked up a job designing the Stone Valley course in Hanoi. On my first visit, I checked into my hotel, and bumped into the hotel’s general manager, who saw my roll of plans and asked me what I did. I said, ‘I’m building a golf course.’ He said, ‘Oh please, build me a golf course. I have so many people asking about golf, and there’s nowhere to play’.” “ The country – which The Times recently called ‘Asia’s most intoxicating’ – is one of the world’s fastest-growing tourist destinations” VIETNAM GOLF Photo: Brian Curley Brian Curley recently added a third nine at Stone Valley, which has been built among towering Karst rock formations
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