45 VIETNAM GOLF along the coastline; it is also part of a large resort (as far as we have been able to discern, all the golf in Vietnam is public). The Jones firm, Gorman says, has two further projects in development in Vietnam, one near Hanoi, the other outside Ho Chi Minh City. “I first went to Vietnam in 2005/6 with Tony Cashmore and Tom Phillips of the Faldo group – Tony was doing work for Faldo in Australia,” says South African architect Paul Jansen. “Tom got a couple of leads and called me to say, ‘We have a few potential projects in Vietnam’. A few weeks later I was there. “We toured a couple of sites, including the one that became Laguna Lang Co. We completed the drawings a year or two later and it broke ground in 2009. At that time the road only reached the top of the mountain and we had to walk all the way down to the site. A few months before, the only way the site was accessible was by boat. But it was stunning – we drew a lot of our inspiration from the surroundings. A third of the site was rice paddy fields, so quite wet, and we had to do some clearing in the jungle areas.” According to Calver, the Faldo firm now has two new projects in the country, Royal Long An near Ho Chi Minh City, with 18 holes open and nine in rough shaping, and Silk Path near Hanoi, which has started grassing and has a third nine in planning. “The golf courses in Thailand don’t have the natural settings that Vietnam has, but the operations are nailed down,” says Curley. “In Vietnam, the courses are there, but the operations are behind. When they figure that out, they are going to be impossible to beat.” Asia’s next golf destination Vietnam has made a concerted effort to become the ‘golf destination of Asia’. It is a beautiful country with wonderfully diverse natural landscapes, perfecting for creating a wide range of golf course experiences. Having travelled throughout the country to look at a wide mix of sites and play many golf courses, both David [Dale] and I have found that as a country there is tremendous potential to achieve this designation and Vietnam is going about it in a much different way than other countries before them. Vietnamese companies are bringing high levels of talent and proven experts to guide the process in creating internationally recognised golf courses and resorts. Da Nang is a perfect example as it has successfully created a wide variety of designs, including links, sand belt, Florida-inspired, jungle and most importantly indigenous-inspired courses that give a flavour of Vietnam. Areas like Na Trang are beginning to follow this model with an international airport and new courses coming up such as our Anara Binh Tien [pictured], which opened in 2022. Typically, in developing golf markets we see so called ‘golf experts’ come out of the woodwork, which unfortunately leads to a lot of missed potential in the best of cases and much worse in others. We are not seeing nearly as much of this as the developers are methodically seeking international talent with proven portfolios. You combine this diversity of golf, with sunny weather, great food, a welcoming population and you have a strong recipe for success. Kevin Ramsey of Golfplan provides insight into his experiences of working in Vietnam Photo: Golfplan
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